NOT ACCEPTED IN THE HEARTLANDS

Reading: Psalm 48, Ezekiel 2:1-5, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark: 6:1-13
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, July 8th 2012

A printable PDF file can be found here

It's always a strange experience visiting your homelands after you’ve been away for a while. Things are so familiar, yet at the same time so different. Time moves on.  People move on. Things change. There’s a new building here.  An old landmark is no longer there. Who we are, is not who we were.

There is the awareness that you have moved onto other things, whilst some of those who stayed where they were are much the same as they have ever been.  You see them through different eyes, but often they see you as they always did.

I was reading of the Welsh singer Tom Jones, (who had hits like, "It's not unusual" and "The Green, Green, Grass of home"), and how, for him, visiting his home village was a unique experience.  In the eyes of the world he was perceived as a glitzy Las Vegas nightclub superstar.  In his hometown he was still 'Tom, y’know, Mrs. Jones's boy, who sings a bit and went off to America.'

He found it a liberating thing to walk around his town and be treated just the same as everybody else.  There’s something in being around folks who knew us when we were growing up that is a great leveler and which can be very accepting and comfortable.

The reverse side of it is that it can limit people’s expectations of us. It is almost as though the people who think they know you the best, feel a need to set limits on what you should and should not be able to achieve in life.

That’s seems to be what happened when Jesus went to his hometown after being on His first mission trip. People wouldn’t accept Him. “Why, He’s just Mary’s boy, the carpenter. We know his brothers and sisters! He’s nobody special.”

It could even be that the townsfolk thought He was dodging His responsibilities. As there is no mention of Mary’s husband Joseph in the account, the presumption is that he had died and left Jesus, as the oldest child, as the head of the household.  To walk out on the family and go on some crazy preaching tour was not the thing to do!

For whatever reasons, be it familiarity or just resistance because of actions He had taken that were socially out of line, Jesus is met with rejection when He returns to His hometown.  The people are offended by His teaching, viewing it as alien to their understanding of what should and shouldn’t happen in their locality.

Jesus marvels at their unbelief, quoting them a parable, “A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house”.  A few receive Him.  A number receive healing, but these are a small number in comparison to the multitudes that were touched elsewhere.

It has been said that home is where the heart is. As one who has lived in a number of different situations, I take a lead from the phrase “Wherever I lay my hat, is my home”.  I know that, right now, where I grew up is not where I‘m meant to be.  Home for me, right now, is here in Baldwin, NY.

When I lived in West Virginia, I found I could whole-heartedly throw myself into singing, “Country Roads, Take me Home, To the place where I belong, West Virginia…” because back then that's where I lived. Now I find myself singing along and feeling all homely when any of the classic New York songs come on the radio. 'If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, New York, New York...'

Returning to our passage. Reflecting on the thought of Jesus not being welcome in His homelands, challenges me to ask the question, “How welcome is Jesus in my heartlands?” By that I mean, that there is no more familiar place to us than our own lives.  In our own experience we can easily become content with the way things are and not face the challenge of developing in our spirituality

We have heard the gospel message so many times that it has become familiar to us, so familiar that maybe we think we know what it’s all about and see no need for change or greater understanding.  We can become so satisfied with the status quo of church life that we lose the expectation of God’s Spirit breaking in on us, renewing us, and changing us.

Jesus could not do the work He wished to do in His homelands because the people were imprisoned by a view of life that allowed no room for the unexpected in the common daily life of their community. They knew the mighty works He had done, they recognized His teaching as having great depth, and they didn’t deny great things were taking place.

What they had a problem with was fathoming how a man from their little village had been anointed with such great wisdom and power. They found the thought that He had a divine work to do in their midst an offense.  Who was He to tell them how they should be living their lives?  Wasn’t He, after all just a carpenter, just a local boy? Things like that didn’t happen in their town!

In a similar way in our inner heartlands we can limit the work of God.  We find the thought that Jesus wants to do some divine work in our midst somehow unbelievable. After all, that’s not our daily experience. Of course we believe Jesus can do great things, and we know He gave great teaching, but does it really penetrate our hearts?

William Barclay, in his commentary on Mark, tells the story of the poet Thomas Campbell, a man of considerable talent.  His father had absolutely no sense of poetry whatsoever. When Thomas achieved his long time dream of having his poems published, he sent a copy to his father.  The old man looked at it. 

At least he looked at the cover and the picture on it. He never actually opened the pages and read anything. His only comment was “Well, who would have thought our Tommy could have a book made with a nice picture on it?”

“Sometimes” comments William Barclay, “when familiarity should breed a growing respect it breeds an increasing and easy going familiarity.  Sometimes we are too near people to see their greatness”. I would want to add; “Sometimes we are so familiar with our limitations that we fail to see the possibility of there being anything more.”

Yet there were some in Jesus hometown who were not content.  Though the majority reacted with an unbelief that Jesus marveled at, some were healed.  So there is a way to break beyond our familiarity barriers and expand our horizons! It may not be the way the majority takes, but has not that always been the case with those who desire to walk with God?

Consider Ezekiel, the prophet of our Old Testament reading.  God addresses him as ‘mortal man’ (for that’s what he was) yet identifies him as being a person of faith amongst a nation where many disbelieved. (Ezekiel 2:3) “Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have turned against me”.

Consider how, after His rejection by most of His own folk, Jesus does not despair or change His plans, but rather carries on expanding His work, training His small band of twelve disciples by sending them out two by two to give them their first taste of preaching the Good News of the Kingdom.

Consider how, though initially rejected by His family, His mother Mary was one of the few who stood by Jesus to the end, when the rest of the disciples deserted Him. Consider how His brother James, after the resurrection, came to be regarded as the apostle and the leader of the Jerusalem church.  Though their familiarity was a stumbling block, it was one they eventually overcame.

We have stumbling blocks in our faith journeys.  We have problems that we don’t seem to be able to get over. We become content with our unbelief and our unfamiliarity of God’s ways. We give up on ourselves.  We give up on each other.  We give up on our churches.  We let hope pass us by. The familiarity of our heartlands causes us to feel nothing can change or will change. We become so hardened by our familiarity that we reject even the words of those who tell us change is possible.

It doesn’t have to be that way. It wasn’t that way for Ezekiel.  It wasn’t that way for those in Jesus town who found healing that day.  It doesn’t have to be that way for us if we heed Christ’s words that we should seek the things of His Kingdom over and above all the other things we want in life.

This passage challenges us today, that though we are simply mortal women and men, it is in our lives, cluttered as they are with everyday concerns and mixed motives, that God wishes to work in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. It is for us to invite Jesus into our heartland, to see not the limitations that both ourselves and the world around us place upon us, but the vast possibilities that the Grace of God opens up to us. 

Let us not be like those, whose familiarity with Jesus actually prevented His work taking place in their lives. Rather let us be those who, day by day, are being renewed and recreated by the love of God, found in Jesus Christ and known in our hearts through the working of the Holy Spirit.

 Let us pray that today is a day that we make room in our heartland for the work of God.  Amen.


Rev Adrian Pratt