Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Mark 6:1-13
This may be a bad way to start a sermon, but… I may consider it my biggest personal failure if I am never asked to leave a church. Yes you heard that right. I may consider it my biggest personal failure if I am never asked to leave a church. I hope it is not today or anything. I hope I am never asked to leave because I am perceived as lazy. I hope it is never because I messed up the finances or was mean to people for no reason. I hope that someday, I will be asked to leave because I came on too strong about the central message of the Gospel.
I love to hear that people like my sermons. I do lots of things to make them more interesting, easier to follow, even fun. But, when it comes right down to it, the message that I have to deliver is radical and counter-cultural and if it doesn’t occasionally make someone mad, I am probably not trying hard enough.
1He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him
The idea of hometown is not as powerful in my generation as it has been. We are all so very mobile. The little town I grew up in was probably more like where Jesus grew up in the fact that, as a kid, most of the town knew who you were and knew who to call when they saw you doing something you shouldn’t be doing.
2On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!
I hear this a little differently each time I read it. I wonder if we see a difference in perception based on delivery verses content. Already read in Mark’s Gospel we have heard the amazing things that Jesus can do well. He has been healing, and teaching and telling these great parables that make hard concepts more understandable for common folk. Now he is in the synagogue and he’s got PowerPoint running. He’s using movie clips and props. He’s hired a praise band and he even gets worship out on time. Everybody loves this stuff. But then:
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.
Most people read right over this and miss what happens, in one verse the crowd goes from adoring to angry. What happened?
I think they started listening.
I think for a while they were mesmerized by his performance, but then they started realizing that his content was a little upsetting.
4Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
The first two times I preached on this text, I read too much into this line. It is a pretty common saying in antiquity and I think we all sort of get it. People who know you too well have trouble taking you seriously.
I have a long time friend in
4Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
I think that this may be more than Jesus stating the obvious point that sometimes people who know us too well have trouble taking us seriously. This may have just been Jesus way of saying, “My ultimate identity does not come from your evaluation of me.”[1]
Now Jesus didn’t post his sermon from that day on his weblog so I don’t have a copy of what made everybody upset. Luke’s gospel takes a stab at filling in the blanks but Matthew and Mark portray the scene with no reference to what was said.[2] I think it is less important to dwell on what was said and more important to look at the rejection. Jesus was preaching a radical message of love and grace, a message of generosity and justice a message of peace and hope, especially for those who had no hope, a message designed to turn the world upside down and when he preached it in his hometown, people didn’t like it. Jesus response, “oh well, I will go preach somewhere else then. My message is from God and the fact that you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less valuable.”
5And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.
Off he goes.
Jesus mission is a bit larger than he can tackle doing all the preaching himself, so he sends out some other folks.
7He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.
This is the first ever Every Member in Ministry campaign. And it is worth pausing to say that this is where our word apostle comes from. Most of us have heard of the 12 Apostles. Sometimes we use that interchangeably with 12 disciples; I get lots of questions about this. The word apostellw means to send. Jesus began to apostellw them out two by two. Disciple comes from the Latin translation of the word matheti which means student, apprentice or simply follower. So, technically, Jesus apostled (sent) the disciples (followers).
To be an apostle is to be one who is sent. Now listen to what they get to take with them:
8He ordered 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 to put on two tunics.
Man that is pretty drastic. I won’t venture much further than the mailbox without some cash, a number of credit cards, and about a gallon of bug spray. I might go without food, but that is what the cash is for.
10He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.
This is sort of a confusing line, let’s look a little closer. Whenever you enter a house… Alright, they are going to be going to people’s homes to talk to them about the good news of the
11If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”
In our culture, it is too easy to read this as angry gesture. Shaking the dust of one’s feet might be likened to a certain hand gesture one might give another driver who has failed to yield the right of way as your are trying to exit S.P.I.D. But that would be missing the point of what is going on. Remember when things didn’t go well for Jesus in the synagogue?
4Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
Jesus knew that the apostles, if they delivered that same world-changing message the Jesus delivered would sometimes be treated the same way. So he gave then a little ritual.
11If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”
Remember your ultimate identity does not come from people’s evaluation of you. Your message is from God and the fact that people don’t like it doesn’t make is any less valuable.
This is an important message. Sometimes as Christians we tie ourselves in knots trying to make the gospel message more palatable, more friendly. Let me clarify, there is a difference between doing our best to make it understandable, relatable, exciting, relevant – all those things that may attract people to hear the true message… there is a difference between that and beginning to change the message itself to make it more acceptable.
We are doing a lot to live as faithful children of God and we need to celebrate that and lift up what we are doing. We also need to talk about Grace and how God’s love is available to all even when we are not who we should be. We are, at times, struggling against churches that think that Christianity is all about judgment and damnation, so we are very clear in our emphasis of Grace, that overwhelming, unmerited love of God that pursues us and pulls into relationship with God no matter what.
Even that sometimes puts me in a situation where I have to make a decision. I have been in many a conversation with other Christians, talking about Grace and we will be having a happy conversation and they will be thinking:
Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him?
And then I will keep going and say that I believe that God’s grace is available to all of God’s children. And the hair on the back of their neck will stand up. And they will ask, “You don’t mean everyone right?” To which I respond, “Yes God’s grace is available to everyone, every single last person God created.” To which they ask, “You don’t mean to gay people or Muslims do you?”
Then, I have to make a decision. Do I back down so they will continue to like me or do I speak the truth about the Gospel as I see it remembering that my ultimate identity does not come from people’s evaluation of me. My message is from God and the fact that people don’t like it doesn’t make is any less valuable.
Most people are ok with the Grace thing. But, we also need to stand up occasionally and say things that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Pastors need to have enough gumption to proclaim the word of the gospel even when it means people at the door won’t say “nice job pastor” but rather, “get lost pastor!”
We need to have the strength to not just follow along with the tide of the community delivering an acceptable message, we need to occasionally lead up stream. The reasons is, no matter how well we are doing, here in our church, at being graceful and kind, however well we are doing praising and worshipping God, the gospel is calling us to look at the world outside. The world outside needs us. That world needs you and it needs me to stand up for the radical, counter-cultural message of grace, peace, justice, and kindness. We need to stand up for that message, even when that goes against the me-first, money is king, profit-before people, might before mercy, everyone for themselves mentality of the world. And that, sometimes, makes people angry.
The point isn’t to alter the gospel to fit the world, but rather to change the world in the light of the gospel. But now I have tread into dangerous territory. I may have accidentally given you a dangerous weapon when I was trying to give you a burden. Some believe that we stand up for the gospel by standing on high ground and hurling moral judgments upon people we don’t understand. I want to reread verse 12.
12So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.
This is where we get messed up. We think that our task, if we really want to stand firm for the gospel is to go out and tell people to repent. And when most of us think of repent we think that it means something about not sinning anymore or feeling bad about our sins.
First of all, repent, metanoe,w, actually conveys of sense of turning -- of changing one’s mind. My favorite translation of metanoe,w is to turn one’s heart toward God. Let’s look at the whole verse again:
12So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.
Kai. evxelqo,ntej evkh,ruxan i[na metanow/sin
So having gone out, they proclaimed in order that they all might turn their hearts toward God.
There is a big difference between telling people to repent, change their ways, feel sorry for what they have done, especially when we all still have some ways of our own to change - and telling people about the world changing, counter-cultural message of the gospel, a message of radical transformation, rooted in “compassion, love, generosity of spirit, kindness, peace, social justice,”[3] grace and hope – trusting that this message will touch them and turn their hearts toward God.
We have to be willing to stand up for that good news. We have to be willing to stand up, not to make moralistic pronouncements about others as though we are free from sin, but to say, in Christ, there is a chance for a world based in hope instead of fear. We have to be willing to proclaim that God news and trust that people’s hearts will be moved toward God. We have to be willing to stand up and say we believe in and are willing to work with God and each other to create a world where no child will go hungry, where money isn’t the most important thing, where the earth is a gift to be protected, where meaning is more important than possessions, where bombs are not the best way to make peace, where generosity wins out over greed every time.
I am going to stand up for that Gospel. Even if people don’t like me or maybe even, if I am lucky, ask me to leave.
[1] The quotation marks reflect the thought I am attributing to Jesus, the idea for this comes from Roberta C. Bondi, To Pray and to Love, Conversations on Prayer with the
[2] Luke’s Gospel,
[3] Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God, Taking Back out Country from the Religious Right, (
