HOLINESS IN ORDINARINESS | The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost | 07 July 2024 | Mark 6:1-13 | David H. Brooks |

Mark 6:1–13 English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles

1[Jesus] went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. ²And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? ³Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. ⁴And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” ⁵And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. ⁶And he marveled because of their unbelief.

And he went about among the villages teaching.

⁷And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. ⁸ He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— ⁹but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. ¹⁰And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. ¹¹And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” ¹² So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. ¹³ And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

Martin Luther was famous for his disdain of pilgrimages, seeing the effort to travel to an exotic location—or at least to a “far from here” location—in hopes of gaining some spiritual benefit as, at best, a waste of time and money. Far better, he declared, to turn your focus on what was happening in your local parish, for there, he said you “find Christ right where you are” as you serve the neighbors God has so helpfully placed around you.

We, of course, (to the relief of tour organizers everywhere) reject such an idea, for we are enamored of the new and the novel, the out of the ordinary. We want innovation, celebrating what economists call “creative destruction” that brings the original and the avant-garde to every aspect of life, including our very selves. A recent confessional-style essay described how a woman walked away from her marriage because any effort to save it would be a conservative betrayal of her progressive, avant-garde life and consequently close herself off to new discoveries, new growth, a new way of being. Many may cluck tongues at her conclusion, but most of us operate by the same logic, even if we are not willing to take such logic to it’s… err… logical conclusion.

Jesus is not immune to our desire for the novel and unique. Over the years, people of all walks of life have insisted that Jesus was not who he is as presented in the Gospels, but rather was someone special: a space alien, a world traveler, a Muslim, a Mormon, a Buddhist, a secretly married man with kids, a secretly gay man, a secretly disguised woman, and so on. Even as I share this list, you may be thinking in your mind “okay, but Jesus was not ordinary!”

Would his own family agree with you?

Part of the challenge this story from Mark puts to us is that it strongly critiques our notions of what God should do, or what divinity is about. Jesus comes to his hometown, his own family, and it does not go well. They know this kid from Nazareth who went away and managed to build up a bit of reputation for himself. He’s a carpenter! He’s Mary’s son! His brothers are all here! In an echo of an earlier story where Jesus’ family suggests that he is out of his mind, the townspeople might as well have said “you’re out of your mind if you think we’re going to take someone as ordinary as usseriously.” They will not accept him as he is, but are scandalized, outraged stumbling over what they see—or do not see. God should not work this way, among the ordinary and the common.

In this story of Jesus coming home, we are confronted by the theology of the cross—the fact that God is found in places and moments that we do not expect and flatly refuse to accept. God should not, cannot be found in moments of ordinariness, much less in moments of humiliation and failure.  Suffering may come, but it must be suffering for a noble cause or born in noble fashion. The hometown crowd rejects the one who comes in the name of the Lord because they know “the truth:” there is nothing noble or extraordinary in him.

We hope to solve the problem of the cross by highlighting how extraordinary Jesus is. It does not help. We also believe that God (gods?) should be extraordinary, and so we try to save Jesus from the shame of ordinariness by creating for him a story that shows his superiority and uniqueness, that explains his suffering as we want our suffering to be explained: I am special, and I suffer because I nobly do things “my way” which the world does not understand or accept.

Mark reports that after the poor outcome at home, Jesus moved on. His way is forward, moving toward other villages, other places that await the dawning kingdom. His way is the way of God, and those whom he invited journeyed on with him. As they journeyed with the Lord, they found the days were so ordinary: there were meals to secure and arrangements to be made; there were sleepless nights, arguments and fights; there was boredom and confusion and puzzlement; there were people who got on board and more who did not; there was at least as much failure as success. But as they traveled with Jesus, they saw in him—and in time, themselves—the power to turn back the power of Satan, the power of chaos and sin and death. This power did not come because of an extraordinary back story, or because of any special qualities: it came because the disciples were willing to be obedient, to practice what Jesus taught, and rise each day and put up with each other and themselves.

And now we journey with him, we have been invited to come along and discover in one another—and yes, within ourselves—something that is truly extraordinary: that in the midst of all the things from which we’d gladly walk away, and all the events that outrage us, and all the people that we would overlook and dismiss as ordinary and common—God is at work, bringing forth healing and forgiveness and peace, bringing forth wisdom and purpose and joy, bringing forth the kingdom right where we are.

Amen.

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© Pr. David H. Brooks

Raleigh, NC USA

Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com