Some young people leave home and never look back.  Once you leave, you can’t go back because home isn’t there anymore.  My family and I traveled to Portland, Oregon.  You might not know that Devon and I are both originally from Portland.  Texas is now home for us, as for our boys.  We could go and live in Portland, but it wouldn’t be home.  Home was more than seventeen years ago.  Home is a time also, not just a place.  Devon and I both still have family in Portland, though most of my family are in the cemeteries of Portland.  I saw many familiar sights and places, and many are long gone, with the Portland that was, that was my home.  It’s hard to go home.

          Jesus returns to Nazareth.  He was living about twenty miles to the northeast, by the Sea of Galilee, in Capernaum: that’s where he was living when it was time to go down to John at the Jordan, go down into the water and come up again to go up to Jerusalem at the time the Father had appointed long before.  Jesus goes back to Nazareth, but it’s hard to go home.  It isn’t there anymore.  Jesus doesn’t go back to be the little boy with big brown eyes in the woodshop, the dutiful son who always stopped and did what his mother asked as his friends continued down the street.  Jesus now brought God’s Word to Nazareth.  Perhaps the people would listen, turn, and be healed; perhaps, since they knew him, they would accept him and listen to him.

          He goes to the synagogue, where he is warmly greeted: “Look who’s back!  It’s been so long!  Too long!  Why have you stayed away!?  Where have you been?  What brings you back?  We’ve heard many things about you, Jesus!  You’re making a name for yourself in the world!”  Slaps on the back and smiles with stony eyes.  Perhaps they’ll listen, and be healed.

          Does the thought of sharing the Gospel with another human being terrify you?  Between starting a conversation about Jesus and getting a root canal, which would you pick?   Presbyterians are lousy evangelists: we have this notion that, to be an evangelist, we have to evangelize—you know, bullhorns and signs, trying to guilt or scare people to God and such.  We’re gentle as doves—we wouldn’t upset a soul!  We’re so glad Jesus never upsets us.  Lord Jesus, make us wise as serpents, to know what to say when You put opportunity before us.  You might be amazed at how many people actually are open to hearing what you have to say about God, faith, hope, Jesus.  Not everyone will accept him on the spot—very few, actually—but God opens hearts word by word, to let in His light, to make room for His love.  You just have to begin, take that leap, say something rather than nothing.  If nothing else, ask how you can pray for them.

          We’re afraid of exactly the thing that happens when Jesus returns to Nazareth: “How can this man be so knowledgeable?” one says.  “How is it that he can do all these things?” says another.  “We know his people!  Nobody from that family ever did anything worthwhile.  Now he presumes to teach us?!”  Their amazement isn’t happy amazement.  The gist of it is “just who does he think he is?”  Did you have Jesus figured for arrogant, presumptuous, and superior?  That’s how people in Nazareth are receiving him.  They’re shocked, offended, thunderstruck by this nobody’s pretensions, his gall.  Jesus may have this experience in mind later, when he says to whoever will listen, “blessed is any person who does not take offense at Me” (Mt 11:6).  We’re so glad Jesus never upsets us; our Jesus doesn’t; we’d never let him. 

          It was the authority with which Jesus spoke that evoked this offense in those who listened, the authority with which he taught: with even greater confidence, and seemingly even greater knowledge, than the greatest students of God’s Word, as though Jesus not only knew all of God’s Word but understood it, as though he both had it by heart and lived it the same way.

          People call Jesus rabbi, teacher: they recognize that he talks and acts like a teacher.  But who taught him?  Luke tells us about an early hint of the deep, holy wisdom of Jesus when his parents find him in the Temple, speaking with and listening to the great teachers of God’s Torah (Lk 2:41-52).  The townspeople appear never to have noticed much wisdom that way in Jesus.  I wonder how well they really knew him.  Maybe they knew him the way they wanted to.  They knew what they wanted to know about him.

          They, too, have heard that Jesus has been doing works of power, unlike any rabbi, more like one of the prophets of old, though not really like them, either.  Jesus, whom they knew through and through, knew all about, who was as familiar to them as their own breath, their own life, Jesus had become unfamiliar to them.  Jesus was not there among them on their terms, anymore.  Jesus was now among them on his own terms, the terms of his Fathers’ business.

          “And they took offense at him” (6:3).  He wasn’t behaving the way he was supposed to.  Don’t you just hate that?  He hadn’t come among them according to his place on the social totem pole, the town pecking order.  “He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him” (Jn 1:11).  John’s sorrowful words tell us not only about Jesus, but about God in relation to His people.  If Jesus came to West Columbia today, to each of the churches here today, and said all he said while he walked on this earth—all he said—how many would receive him, and how many would pay no attention and pass on to more appealing things?  The Jesus they want to know.  We’re so glad Jesus never upsets us or gets in the way of doing what we want.  Jesus is the door, beloved, not the doormat.

          Mark now tells us one of the most stunning things: Jesus “could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (6:5).  Could not do.  As though he were powerless, there; as though Nazareth was his kryptonite.  But the could not was not from failure or weakness on the part of Jesus who is power, the power of the Word of God: creation power, salvation power, life power.  The failure was the old failure, the failure always with us, nagging and gnawing away at our hearts, our peace of mind, our souls: the failure of faith, our failure, our weakness.  Miracles happen where there is faith.  God displays His saving power for those who trust in His saving power; for all who do not trust, these displays of divine power come as disaster and judgment.  For those without faith, there are no miracles.  Never forget, beloved, that faith itself is a miracle: you know God has worked at least one miracle in your life.

          Faith is required for the experience of faith power.  Christ’s power is faith power.  His power speaks to faith.  Those with no faith will not experience faith power, will not experience Christ; they will not know him; they will be offended by him.  There’s the terrible trouble!  Those who most need to experience Christ are those who cannot experience Christ because they lack the one thing needed to experience Christ: faith!  And what can you or I do about it?

          Nothing.  Neither you nor I can do anything about it.  But Jesus can.  And he does, did you notice; did you hear?  He did no act of power there in Nazareth, not like what they were wanting to see—a sign!—you know, like making the sun go back, or raising the dead: something to bowl them over, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, thunderstruck.  Then they would be impressed.  As for his words, his teaching: meh.  “He was amazed at their lack of faith” (6:6).  Hardened hearts.  How much lack of faith Jesus encounters, not just in Nazareth, and not just in days of old.  “[W]hen the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Lk 18:8).  Lord, may you find faith here.

          God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and full of committed love.  Jesus, despite the amazing absence of faith, “la[id] his hands on a few sick people and heal[ed] them” (6:5).  Here we are.  We were sick, and he healed us.  He is healing us, still.  He healed us because his Father has blessed us with faith by grace through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, who gives each of us breath for living, who gives us the breath of life, the bread of life, and the cup of salvation.

          Each person has organized his or her life according to some principle.  Whatever the principle, it gives each person meaning and purpose.  Jesus found many such principles there in Nazareth.  In a few instances that principle was faith; God was that principle.  These were the ones who were able to receive his blessing, the blessing of his healing touch, his strengthening presence, his fulfilling Word.

          Now, to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.