Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (sermon text)
Scriptures: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Psalm 48, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13
When I was younger, I thought that I knew how to fold my own clothes. Then I joined the military, and it turned out that I couldn’t even fold a shirt right.
My first week of OCS, or “officer boot camp,” my roommates and I watched youtube video after video, trying to learn how to properly tuck and fold each garment, in between frantically unfolding and donning it in the 3 minutes we had between our 5am wake-up-call and morning call-to-attention in the dorm hallway. We were less concerned about being able to fit it all into our standard-issue bags, and more concerned about not getting chewed out for doing it wrong.
When I read Mark, chapter 6, it takes me back to OCS. Jesus has called all these adult followers, who had lives and jobs before meeting him, and he commissions them for something new. Here, we read the list of items they’re supposed to take as they begin their own ministries.
Verses 8-9: “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.”
Like me and my military instructors, I’m not sure these disciples are going to impress the people they meet, at least, not with any show of earthly power.
Mark is the oldest Gospel we have, the first written account of Jesus’ life. Matthew and Luke both drew on it when they wrote their Gospels. Luke used about half of the book, while Matthew used almost all of Mark, about 90%. The three “synoptic” Gospels, as we call them, put most of the stories of Jesus’ life in about the same order, sometimes even using the same words and phrases.
As a side-note, if you’ve never read a Gospel parallel, I’d encourage you to find one at the library or online, and spend a little time reading the side-by-side comparisons of the texts. It’s really exciting to see where the texts have small differences that help us see Jesus’ ministry in a new light, or huge differences that lead to inconsistencies worth our time for reflection.
The story in today’s Gospel is a difficult one. Though Matthew and Luke tell a version that’s arguably “cleaned up” a little, all versions of this story still include people smearing Jesus’ name through the mud, and reducing his identity to the job he grew up doing, trying to paint him as a lesser person for the type of work he was raised to do. This episode might even seem like a seeming stumbling block in his ministry.
The most difficult element of the story, at least in the first reading, may be that the antagonists are the very people who should love and support Jesus the most: the community that raised him. Luke’s version ends with an even more extreme response, not just rejection. When the people realize Jesus is preaching to convict them, they try to throw him off a cliff, Luke 4:29.
What might seem even more difficult is that Jesus, in the face of his townspeople’s unbelief, seems unable to perform great miracles. Until this point in the Gospel, Jesus’ ministry has always found fertile ground. Everywhere he has gone, he has encountered at least one person whose life he will transform.
Matthew presents this differently in that Gospel’s 13th chapter, verse 58, writing, “[Jesus] did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.” That’s easier to swallow than in Mark, which as you heard, reads, “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”
On the one hand, Jesus has a spiritual power that nobody around him fully understands, but even the people who don’t believe in him recognize it. There’s another power imbalance here, though, and it’s the root of the problem. Jesus grew up without influence, in a family without importance. He had no “power,” in the world’s eyes, but people who didn’t know him before his public ministry wouldn’t have known about his humble beginnings.
Those who met him and had faith recognized that his type of power couldn’t be seen with the eyes, that it wasn’t related to his station in life, or his wealth and influence – or lack thereof.
In a word, in the eyes of his most immediate neighbors, Jesus was a nobody. The doubting people of Nazareth are responding to the messenger as much as the message itself, and their response proclaims their indignation: how dare God’s favor rest on the weak; how dare someone so insignificant proclaim God’s glory; how dare a savior not descend from up on high but rise from what the world would call “nothing.”
I’ll return to those questions in a few moments. First, there’s an Old Testament character who’s often compared or contrasted with Jesus: David, shepherd and king.
When you hear about David, what’s your image of him? We have a much fuller picture of David than most Biblical characters. If you’ve ever wondered why David’s father didn’t think to bring him out when Samuel asks to see his sons, it’s probably because David is about 9 or 10 years old or younger when we first encounter him. Yet as we read, God directs Samuel to choose him as king over others who seemed like much better candidates, at the time.
In our reading today, David is around 30 years old. In other words, there were 20 years between his anointing by Samuel and him becoming king over the unified kingdom.
Like Jesus, David has faced doubt from others. Here, finally, we see him embraced by the country God has given him to rule; or to look at it a little more biblically, the people finally accept the ruler God chose to replace their first king, Saul, whom God had also chosen but whose reign had quickly soured. God raised David from shepherd, to court musician, to rebel, to king, and the people rejoiced.
This type of story is what we might have expected from Nazareth. “Local boy makes good.” Instead, their response is, “Who does he think he is?”
Today’s Gospel story wasn’t the end for Jesus’ ministry, of course. It wasn’t even an end for the people of Nazareth. Even this brief reading ends with hope: Jesus’ gave his disciples authority earlier in Mark, and they finally begin their own ministries of preaching and healing and exorcising unclean spirits after Jesus is rejected at home.
As for Nazareth, the stories of most of the people there are lost to time. However, we have multiple accounts, from a variety of sources, of one whose doubt turned to faith. You may remember that Jesus also clashed with his family in Mark chapter 3. This story ended with Jesus seeming to reject his earthly family, instead taking as his family anyone who follows the will of God, Mark 3:35. Yet his own brother, James, went on to become one of the most influential leaders of the early church. He is mentioned by Luke in Acts and by Paul in two epistles, and is even named as one of the “pillars of the church” along with Peter and John.
Christ’s faith overtook James’ doubt. Like many of the church’s earliest leaders, James was martyred, and is said to have prayed for God’s forgiveness over his murderers as he died. That is no small faith.
And whatever else you may take from our epistle reading today, hear when God says to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness,” verse 9. God’s words: my grace is enough. Christ meets us in our human weakness.
As Christians, our sacraments speak to God’s presence in our rightful humility. Water washes us clean in baptism. A meal of bread and wine feed us with the body and blood of Jesus. In them, we receive God’s grace.
Thinking back to the disciples’ packing list: a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; sandals and no more than one tunic. That’s what it took to spread the Gospel message like wildfire in first-century Judaea. Then from Paul we have this even shorter list: God’s grace is enough.
What do we expect ministry to take today? Could we rely on those lists, and what as followers of Christ do we add to it as essential needs? Coming out of a pandemic that has rocked our society for over a year, when we hear God say, “my grace is enough,” do we say, “well, grace plus….” As you go about your week, I encourage you to remember Jesus’ words about his family: he did not reject his family members, but expanded his family to everyone who would follow God’s will.
Live into the promises of God as a sibling Christ has chosen, cleansed, and sent. Pack light. Remember that God’s grace is enough.
-Pastor Will Bevins