You Won’t Be Disappointed

By

Reverend Litton Logan

July 9, 2006

Scriptures:

Mark 6:1--13 (NRSV)

¹ He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. ² On 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! ³ Is 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. ⁴ Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” ⁵And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. ⁶ And he was amazed at their unbelief.

The Mission of the Twelve

Then he went about among the villages teaching. ⁷ He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. ⁸ He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; ⁹ but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. ¹⁰ He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. ¹¹ If 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.” ¹² So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. ¹³ They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Sermon:

          After my grandfather Logan retired from carpentry work, he would hang out at the Billups service station not far from his house.  I remember the Billups company slogan well, “Fillup with Billups.” Grandpa Logan and his old buddies would hold forth on anything and anybody.  These guys could solve the world’s problems from 9:00 a.m. to noon on any day. Their solutions to the world’s problems reflected their life long experiences and prejudices.  I went with Papa Logan to Billups on many occasions. That was the only place I could drink Coca-Cola and pour Tom’s salted peanuts in the coke without my mother or grandmother going into orbit and lecturing me about getting peanuts in my lungs, which would cause pneumonia and kill me.   On one occasion when I was there and all the old guys were perched on their respective Coca-Cola cases—the old wooden ones that held the 6 oz. glass bottles—one of the fellows started talking about a man who up grew up in the community and was the grandson of a mutual acquaintance.  Seems as though the kid had become a doctor and had come back home to Clarksdale to set up practice.

          One old fellow commented, “Well, he maybe a doctor in some folks’ books, but I wouldn’t let him within 10 feet of me.  I knowed that boy since he was a droopy-drawered youngin.  I knowed his folks when they come up from Tallahatchie County.  Ain’t nothing good come out’a Tallahatchie County since old Ned the mule pulled out a load of fire wood.”  I remember thinking that Tallahatchie County must be a bad place and this doctor must be a freak of nature.

          I’m sure many of us have heard stories like this--small town kid goes off, gets a professional education, becomes a doctor, lawyer, agronomist, or minister and comes back home to practice their calling only to be shunned or discounted.  This is especially true if the hometown kid teaches or advocates something new and radical.  

Having served pastorates in rural communities, I’ve seen this phenomenon several times.  As long as the kid had stayed away, people back home were proud of them.  However, let these kids-made-good come back home to practice their profession and it becomes a different matter—the bragging stops and the remembering begins.

          Why is this?  Well I think in part it is because those who leave the community and do well or sometimes even those who stay in the community and rise above their expected station in life cause others to feel accused of wasting their potential or for not changing, not growing, and becoming more than their family or community expectations.  In addition, those who do well and prosper are often viewed with suspicion because anything out of the ordinary or the expected is to be treated warily.

          Moreover, stability—expected order--in a small community or in close-nit groups is very important.  In fact, social stability, the familiar, the routine, and the expected are frequently elevated to the level of a virtues and worshipped.

          It is so sad that deviations from our sense of the normal can rob us of the talents and potential blessings that others may bring to our lives.  Such prejudices, suspicions, and misgivings die hard, if ever.  Like the story of the Church elders and the new female minister.

♦

Several of the more enlightened Church elders decided to invite their new female minister—a local girl made good--to go fishing with them.  They especially wanted to expose her to this one old boy, who resented the whole notion of a female minister much less having one at his church.  These elders want to do this in a more neutral setting than church.  The minister was a little late getting to the dock.  She had stopped by the hospital to visit a sick parishioner and had been held up.  She arrived and they shoved off in the boat.  When they were about fifty yards or so from the shore she said, apologetically, “'I'm sorry--I've forgotten my fishing rod!”

So, she hopped out of the boat, walked across the water to the bank and picked up her rod. As she strolled back the old boy, who resented female ministers, was heard to mutter, 'Typical of a woman--always late and always forgetting things!'”

♦

          In today’s scriptures, we see this same sort of thing playing itself out.  Isn’t it amazing that some things don’t change.

          Jesus, a hometown boy, has become something of a celebrity as a holy man.  In fact, in the two previous miracle stories concerning the healing of the woman with the issue of blood and raising Jarius’ daughter from the dead, Jesus has become a real celebrity and force to be reckoned with.

Jesus has come back home in hopes of evangelizing and working miracles among those who helped raise him, cared for him, taught him, and nurtured him into adulthood.  The leader of the synagogue in some patronizing deference to Jesus and his newfound status asks Jesus to read and expound on scripture. 

          We do not know what passages of scripture Jesus read or what his exposition was; however, what we do know is that his insights and exposition were well beyond the normal expectations of someone of his education and station in life.

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! ³ Is 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. ⁴

They took offense at him.  Jesus did not intentionally give offense; they took offense.  Valuable insight.  We often bring a lot of pain and consternation in to our lives when we take offense predicated upon our prejudices and hypersensitivities where no offense was intended.

          The question about what wisdom has been given to him, what deeds of power are being done by his hands would have carried in the minds of at least some the people there that day that such powers could either come from God or Satan.  If Jesus taught something that was radically different from the elders’ conventional interpretations of scripture then these questions would have alluded to Jesus being demonically possessed.  Even his healings and raising the dead would have been suspicious and smacked of the demonic.

          Nevertheless, who does Jesus think he is with all this high-falutin stuff and saying these things to his elders, his family, and friends?  How dare him, he is just a common tradesman, son of Mary.  Please note that in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is not referred to as the son of Joseph—Joshua bar Joseph as was the custom—but rather as the son of Mary.  Although Mark has no mention of the virgin birth tradition in his Gospel, this calling Jesus, the son of Mary, smacks of a question concerning Jesus paternity and was meant as an insult, i.e., who does this uneducated, illegitimate clod think he is talking down to us like this? 

We also may understand from Mark 3:21 that Jesus’ wandering around and preaching beyond his station has in the minds of many of the villagers brought dishonor on not only him, but his family and his village.  Therefore, Jesus’ would have been a double affront to his family, friends, and community.  Jesus was definitely not going to be the local boy made good that had a street or a local high school named after him in Nazareth.

          It is obvious that this community and its leaders didn’t have high expectations of themselves or of their children.  It is obvious that they had a limited sense of good available to them and their community.   Because they didn’t expect much they didn’t receive much.  Their lack of faith that God could work in one of their own in ways other than the expected prevented many of them from being healed and blessed.  Their ideas about God and one another restricted God’s power in their lives.

          Such reasoning and prejudices never ceases to amaze me.  Also, such lack of faith and faulty logic reminds me of the story of the…

♦

Two women that came before wise King Solomon, dragging between them a young man in a three-piece suit.

"This young CPA agreed to marry my daughter," said one.

"No! He agreed to marry MY daughter," said the other.

Therefore, they haggled before the King, until he demanded silence.

"My sword! Bring me my biggest sword," said Solomon, "and we shall hew the young man in half. Each of you shall receive a half."

"Fine, sounds good to me," said the first woman.

However, the other woman said, "Oh Sire, do not spill innocent blood. Let this other woman's daughter marry him."

The wise king did not hesitate a moment. "Indeed, the accountant must marry the first woman’s daughter," he proclaimed.

"But, she was willing to hack him in two!" exclaimed the king's advisor.

"Precisely!" said wise King Solomon. "That shows she is the TRUE mother-in-law.

♦

          So, it is with Jesus’ friends, family, and neighbors—they are true family, friends, and neighbors because they discounted him, his powers, and his radical understanding of the divine-human relationship.  You can always count on family and friends to keep you humble and in your place, can’t you?

          Sometimes we in the church exemplify this kind of thinking and action.  It seems that we have a sense of a limited amount of God’s good available to us based upon our expectations of ourselves and others based upon education, vocation, and socio-economic status.  We also narrowly define what is acceptable in our faith life and in the life of the church so as to minimize our religion’s affects on social stability.  We do this to the point that we frequently denounce and condemn any possibility that God’s Spirit could lead us into something radically new and it still be of God.  We also tend to reject those messengers of God—be they hometown or out of town—when they preach the Gospel in such away as to accuse us of wasted potential or missed opportunities in God’s work and in our own spiritual growth. We mock and condemn those whose insights and interpretations threaten our stability and our comforts. 

          The price we pay, like the people of Nazareth, is that there is little healing of body, mind and soul, and virtually no miracles occur among us.  Yet, we have stability, a well order society where everyone knows their place and those who prosper beyond the expected are looked upon with suspicion and reservation but generally accepted as benign anomalies.

          We wonder why our churches don’t grow.  We say its demographics—our towns are dying.  We say young people aren’t interested in church any longer.  We can’t compete with the distractions and attractions of the secular world.  We say people are moving out of this area of town into another area, etc. Well folks it’s not that complicated.  It is very simple.  Truth be told, we limited the power of God to our rationales and we worship our Lord Stability and his demons of comfort, safety, social acceptance, and cost effectiveness.  Our rationales often reflect our sense of limitations.  We don’t expect anything great to happen among us or from within our number and we are not disappointed.  

          Jesus marveled at this pernicious thinking.  To compensate for such thinking we read in verses 7-13, that Jesus prepares and instructs his disciples to go out and proclaim the Good News of God.  As proof of their words, he gives them the power over unclean spirits, which were believed to be the sources of sickness, disease, and sin in the ancient world.

          Several major insights come to mind from our scriptures today.  1. If we don’t expect God to do great things among us, then we won’t be disappointed.  2. If we will not step out in faith to do God’s work, we can at least support those who will go and proclaim the Good News and heal a broken and demonic world.

          If we want great things to happen among us then we must have faith that God wants to work among us in miraculous ways.  Please, let us forego the notion that we have to go out and get some super hired-divine-gun and bring them in to improve, enhance, or grow our ministry here in this church.  Friends, all we need is to be open to God’s power to use our talents and skills. 

Question: Are we willing to be local believers, local church folks, made good; that is, people of faith who violate the expectations of convention and produce healing and wholeness in our midst?  My friends, never under estimate God’s power and willingness to use you, your talents and your skills.  Yes, it may set you apart to some greater or lesser degree, but there are some things in this world and the one to come that are worth the suspicions and discounting of family and friends.  Dare to be different in God.

♦

An elderly lady was well-known for her faith and for her boldness in talking about it. She was so bold and on fire for God, that she would often stand on her front porch proclaiming God’s word and shouting "PRAISE THE LORD!"

Next door to her lived a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, who would get so angry at her proclamations he would shout, "There ain't no Lord old woman, shut up!”

Hard times befell the elderly lady, and she prayed for GOD to send her some assistance.  She went to her knees one evening in her living room and prayed, “Lord, I’ve fallen on hard times and I need food.  Please Lord, send me some groceries.”  Unbeknown to the lady, her next-door neighbor heard her prayers through an open window. 

The next morning the lady went out on her porch, noted a large bag of groceries, and shouted, "PRAISE THE LORD."

The neighbor jumped out from behind a bush and said, "Aha! I told you there was no Lord. I bought those groceries, God didn't."

The lady started jumping up and down and clapping her hands and said, "PRAISE THE LORD, PRAISE THE LORD. He not only sent me groceries, but He made the devil pay for them. PRAISE THE LORD!"

♦

          Remember, if you don’t expect great things of yourself and from others as God’s people, then you won’t be disappointed,…will you?