An Unexpected Destination

Mark 6:30-56

I think that even for Jesus things didn’t quite go as he expects.  We pick up in his story here probably just a few weeks after his small town hometown rejection.  The elders of his hometown, really the whole town, couldn’t see past the Jesus they knew to see Jesus their Messiah.  All they knew was that Jesus, the eldest son of his family was shirking his family responsibility of looking after his widowed mother and unwed sisters to go play kingdom of God.  Then, just after this rejection Jesus got the news that John the Baptist had been so senselessly executed.  Rejection and senseless execution was there any reason for him to expect any other end to his ministry. 

Well…there were some indicators that things might go a little better for him.  Our reading this morning picks up with Jesus’ disciples returning to tell him all that they had done on what was the first time Jesus sent them out as an expansion of his own ministry.  They had been amazingly effective in proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God being at hand and inviting the people to come along in the way.  Just like Jesus they had cast out demons and healed the sick – the very works that Jesus had sent and empowered them to do.  At least Jesus could know that if something bad happened to him, his disciples could carry on with the mission of bringing in God’s Kingdom.

And there was also the wild popularity Jesus and his disciples had.  People were coming from every nook and cranny in the countryside bringing their sick to be healed.  Jesus and the disciples were so popular that they could get no rest, no time even to eat.  I think Mark tells the story here on the polite side.  I think Jesus probably said, “I’ve had enough of this ___. Get in the boat boys. We’re going to the cottage for the weekend.”  Jesus needed to teach them that rest from the ministry was as important as the work of the ministry. 

They got in the boat and headed for a deserted place in the wilderness. But that crowd, that relentless crowd, they see where Jesus was heading and they run, on their feet, to get there before him to meet him and carry on with the craziness.  When Jesus gets to shore he doesn’t get upset at the crowd.  Rather, he was moved with compassion for them.  To him they looked like sheep without a shepherd.  They weren’t looking for or needing “follow-the-law” religion.  They needed to know how God really is.  They needed a king who really cared about them.  They needed a God like Jesus.

Jesus began to teach them and his lesson ended with a profound miracle that proved he was God’s Anointed One, the Messiah King they were expecting, a community dinner.  Jesus fed this crowd that likely numbered over 15,000 on five loves of bread and two fish. The Kingdom of God was at hand.  No one could deny that.

The day ended and Jesus told the disciples to get in the boat and go to Bethsaida.  Bethsaida was hometown to Peter and Andrew.  They would have a place to stay that was family-like and familiar.  Jesus stayed behind to dismiss the crowd and then he went up the hillside overlooking the lake to pray.  All night he watched his disciples down there in that boat struggling in vain against an adverse wind.  There was no way they could get to Bethsaida and rest.

This moment was a bit of a sign to Jesus.  Without him in the boat there was no way they could get to where he had sent them.  So, he walks on the water to the boat and the disciples are terrified because they hadn’t quite yet caught on to who he is.  Jesus got in the boat and the wind ceased and they smooth sailed it on to their destination of Bethsaida and some much needed days of rest.  Right?

No.  Not even with Jesus in the boat could they get to where Jesus had sent them for the rest they needed.  They came ashore in Gennesaret, which was in the completely opposite direction, and there the sideshow started yet again and this time it was even weirder.  As soon as the people recognized Jesus, they started bringing the sick to him on mats so that they could just touch the hem of his cloak and be healed just like that lady who had a haemorrhage for twelve years back in chapter five.  Those who touched him were healed.  Healed means made whole.  They were restored to full and meaningful lives.

Twice in these passages Jesus and his disciples have unexpected and un-hoped for outcomes to their plans.  They want to go to a quiet, deserted place in the wilderness and yet get mobbed when they get there.  They want the family-like familiarity of a home to rest in and yet get challenged by nature and wind up completely opposite to where they want to be and again they get mobbed.  They are tired and there is no rest.  The vital need that people have for Jesus and his healing kingdom is too great that even Jesus himself seems powerless to get away from it.  He always seems to wind up in the middle of his own ministry.

There is a lesson in this for us.  Like the disciples in the boat, we small and aging congregations in this cooperative seem to be rowing against an adverse wind trying to get back to a family-like place we are familiar with so that we can rest and the young folk can carry the torch.  So few people are so tired from having to do so many things for “the church”.  Fatigue rather than wonder and amazement at Jesus and his Kingdom ministry is the most expressed feeling I hear. 

All the while the church seems to be going nowhere on the lake if not in the completely opposite direction.  Instead of people crowding in to find wholeness in Jesus here in our midst, we struggle and worry about our survival as a church.  To cap it all off in a few weeks we will be down to one minister and some of you are going to discover gifts for ministry you didn’t know you had as we share in Christ’s ministry less dependent on clergy and which hopefully will become more involved in Jesus’ wholeness giving ministry.

The lesson these passages teach us is that if we are tired and looking for rest God may not give us the luxury of rest.  Maybe what he has in mind for us is to feel Jesus compassion and his desire to teach people the truth and to impart wholeness to people who want nothing to do with institutional religion.  I am hoping that rest in the family-like familiarity of Bethsaida or quiet rest in the wilderness of deserted sanctuaries is not where we are headed.  But rather, I hope our destination is in the completely opposite direction of discovering the Kingdom of God reality in the midst of exhausting community dinners where people sense the presence of the Lord in their midst and we feel compassion and people find wholeness.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Jesus is in our boat.  Let’s see where he takes us.  Amen.

Small Town Matters

Mark 6:1-13
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When I lived in West Virginia, I lived in a small town of about 900 people.  I absolutely loved it.  The sense of community was so strong.  There is security when everybody’s face is familiar and over the years you get to know who everybody is.  You know, I feel the urge to sing a song about small towns.

Well I was born in a small town

And I live in a small town

Prob'ly die in a small town

Oh, those small - communities

All my friends are so small town

My parents live in the same small town

My job is so small town

Provides little opportunity, hey!

Educated in a small town

Taught the fear Jesus in a small town

Used to daydream in that small town

Another boring romantic that's me

But I've seen it all in a small town

Had myself a ball in a small town

I brought my big city wife to this small town

Now she's small town just like me

No I cannot forget where it is that I come from

I cannot forget the people who love me

Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town

And people let me be just what I want to be

Got nothing against a big town

Still hayseed enough to say look who's in the big town

But my bed is in a small town

Oh, that's good enough for me

Well I was born in a small town

And I can breathe in a small town

Gonna die in a small town

Ah, that's prob'ly where they'll bury me

That is Small Town by John Mellenkamp. He’s nostalgic and sometimes sarcastic about the good side of small town life.  But, he left out one thing – small towns are great, if you fit the mould.  Mellenkamp says, “Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town and people let me be just what I want to be.”  That’s true if “what I want to be” meets expectations.  Not meeting small town expectations is a different matter.  That’s why Jesus was rejected by his hometown, the small town Nazareth.

Nazareth was like any other small town.  It had about 500 people.  If you were an economically comfortable observant Jew, it would have been a great place to live.  But there’s that thing of everybody knows your story. Nazareth was hometown to Jesus’ mother Mary and everybody would have known that there were paternity questions surrounding Jesus’ birth.  But, Jesus’ “father” Joseph was apparently a honourable man and did right by them.  His “Chesed”, act of loving kindness, in not disavowing Mary helped to keep the rumours at bay.

As far as employment goes, Nazareth was on the edge of the agricultural heartland of Israel, the Jezreel Valley.  But, Nazareth was also only a three-mile walk from the big Roman city of Sepphoris, which during Jesus’ teens and early adult years was the most significant building project happening in Galilee.  It was likely that Jesus, Joseph, and probably his brothers too worked construction in Sepphoris. 

As for his growing up in a small town of observant Jews, we know that Jesus was well taught in the Jewish faith.  Luke tells us that when Jesus was twelve he and his family were returning from their annual visit to Jerusalem, he snuck away and went to the temple and gave a schooling to the rabbis.  This childhood story shows that Jesus was precocious, with rebellious streak, and apparently out to make the point that he new there were some questions about his paternity.

As for his adult life, we know that at some point Jesus’ father Joseph died.  As the oldest son Jesus would have had to assume responsibility for the family especially for providing for his mother and his sisters.  But at about the age of 30, Jesus suddenly left his stable employment and his family responsibilities and became a wandering miracle working preacher who proclaimed the imperial Gospel, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe the Good News.”  This is where Jesus fails to live up to small town expectations.  Trouble begins.

So looking at Mark, after being away from Nazareth on his Kingdom of God mission, he returns and his precocious, rebellious side comes into play.  One Sabbath morning he assumes he can just get up and start teaching in his hometown synagogue that the Kingdom of God is at hand and they need to get on board with it.  This was not a honourable thing to do.  Though his teachings were amazing, the leaders who had known him all his life began to take him to task for dishonourably shirking his family obligations.

“Where did he get all this wisdom and miracle working power?  He’s just a builder.  Isn’t this Mary’s son?”  The fact that they didn’t call him Joseph’s son here was their way of saying the bastard son isn’t doing right by his mother.  I apologize for not being so polite their but that’s what they were saying.  To heap a little more shame to the pile, they name each of his brothers who have had to step up in his place to provide for his mother.  Finally, they mention that the village was having to look after his sisters for him.  “Are not his sisters here with us?”

Mark tells us the people of Nazareth took offense at Jesus.  Basically, that means that they could not accept the validity of his message that the Kingdom of God was at hand because of his dishonourable conduct in leaving his family obligations behind to go on a Kingdom of God mission.  I suppose they were thinking that if Jesus and his message really were from God, then Jesus would not have left his family obligations behind contrary to Scripture. 

Jesus bites back on them, “Prophets are not without honour except in their hometown, and among their kin, and in their own house.”  It’s the people who know a prophet the best who can’t see past who the prophet is to accept the prophet’s message from God.  The people of Nazareth could not get past the Jesus they knew to accept Jesus the Messiah and so the Kingdom of God didn’t appear so at hand there.  Jesus could only do a few healings.

An interesting thing happens after this hometown, small town rejection.  In order to help the hometown crowd to see past him to what their God was doing in their land, Jesus begins to send the twelve out in two’s to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God being at hand and to demonstrate it by casting out demons and anointing the sick to cure them and they indeed proved his point.

This story is applicable for the church today.  For over fifty years now, the people of North America have had a hard time seeing Jesus and hearing his message that "the Kingdom of God is at hand, so get on board" because they can’t see past the church.  Like people who can’t see the forest for the trees, people cannot see Jesus for the church. 

One of the reasons for this is our own fault.  For centuries the church was that institution in our culture that defined the "expected” behaviours and then presumed upon the authority of God to enforce them.  Just as in small town Nazareth where the Law-observant element of the ancient Jewish faith shaped the expectations of how people were to behave, so has the Church done in Western culture.  Yes, there have been times when the church, like Joseph, demonstrated the chesed of God, the loving kindness of God, but for the most part we have been usurping the authority of God to police our moral expectations of people in order to maintain a place of standing in our culture.  We have been the Christian Empire rather than the Kingdom of God.

Too often we have policed morality for our own political gain.  Take North American Evangelicalism and its political behaviour the United States since the 1920’s as the example.  They will support immoral and unethical politicians because they claim to support the same “moral” “anti’s” and “pro’s” on their respective political agendas.

For those who pledge allegiance to Jesus and his Kingdom, there is a way out of this predicament where people can’t see Jesus for the church.  Just as Jesus sent his disciples to go forth with his message and empowered them to manifest the Kingdom as his ambassadors, so we must go forth as his sent disciples into our small towns or our urban neighbourhoods and show people the love of God.  What would happen if we really loved our neighbours the Jesus way.  We must find ways to make our buildings become community space rather than our own private property that we dub sacred space.  We must cease policing morality and the judgementalism that task demands and instead, just as God listens to everybody’s prayers, so we must start listening to the real hurts of the broken people around us and let compassion rule the day.  Amen.