In the Gospel accounts, people are always being amazed by Jesus.  Even Pontius Pilate is amazed at Jesus, though not for quite the same reasons as others.  We hear this word amazed, and we think of that as a good thing.  We like amazing things: amazing food, amazing places, amazing people—just glance over facebook.  When Jesus begins his ministry, and begins speaking, teaching, in the synagogues in Galilee, the people listening to him are amazed.  The people in his hometown, listening to him, are also amazed.  They aren’t amazed in the same way, though.

Elsewhere in Galilee, the amazement people feel as they listen to Jesus can be positive or just confused—they don’t know what to make of Jesus; they just know he makes a deep impression on them; they don’t soon forget him.

In Nazareth the people were amazed and more; as Mark’s Greek puts it, they were scandalized, shocked.  They were offended and angered.  They say among themselves, “Where did he get all this?” “What wisdom is this that has been given to him?”  “How does he perform miracles?”  They couldn’t believe that there was anything special about Jesus.  People sometimes wonder what Jesus was doing all those years between the age of twelve, when we find him in the Temple, and thirty or so, when he is baptized, and tempted, and begins his preaching.  If we’re going to believe the people of his hometown, Jesus lived all those eighteen years about the same way as any of them, so much so that there appeared to them to be nothing remarkable about Jesus, so far as they knew or could see; nothing at all remarkable about Jesus the carpenter, the builder.

If you’ve seen enough Jesus movies, you may have noticed that the directors just can’t avoid making Jesus different.  Often, Jesus is different because he is portrayed by actors like Max von Sydow, or Jeffrey Hunter, or Robert Powell, blue-eyed and very European, or American.  And the actor is always lit just right, especially around the eyes, so that he seems to sort of glow, even in daylight.

That’s not how people actually saw Jesus, though.  Here’s the stumbling block.  Jesus is a stumbling block.  I mean, if a guy just glowed, even in daylight, we would probably take an interest in him, who he was, what he was doing, and what he had to say.  A lot of people, even in his own times, even in his hometown, took no interest in Jesus, or who he was, or what he was doing, and they certainly took no interest in anything he had to say.  Oh, he may have been a novelty, an oddity, perhaps even a celebrity, a superstar, but who was going to take him seriously?  It would be like Cousin Bubba getting religion.  No one ever took him seriously, and they aren’t about to begin, now.

Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was exotic for people to be Buddhists.  Hinduism just never quite caught on.  Islam was foreign, but there were a lot of rules, and, you know . . . rules.  What made these religions attractive was that they were not Christianity, not the religion everybody seems to have, or at least claim, when questioned: the faith that everybody had, and that few seemed to practice in any meaningful, life-shaping way.

For those people in Nazareth, Jesus may have been just too familiar.  Beloved, I hope that we can keep Jesus from becoming too familiar, ordinary, uninteresting.

Jesus?  Everybody knows Jesus!  Just love people, or whatever, right?  Be nice and whatnot.  Be good.  So that’s what Jesus is all about?  That’s what Christianity is all about?  That’s all God cares about?  Do love people, be nice and be good.  But Christianity is about much more.

Jesus begins to tell those who knew him what God cares about, and their response is “who does he think he is?”  Our pew Bibles say that Jesus “was not able to perform any miracles there, except that he placed his hands on a few sick people and healed them.  He was greatly surprised, because the people did not have faith” (6:5-6).  That’s a bit mild.  He marveled at their unfaith; he was amazed, struck, even shocked, by their lack of faith; that is, their inability or unwillingness to perceive God, their inability or unwillingness to know God—their inability or unwillingness to love God.  Yes, they might acknowledge God: most people, after all, might be prepared in principle to acknowledge that there is something we can call God.  But such grudging, uncommitted and uninterested acknowledgment is not the same as perceiving, knowing, and loving.

Faith is a consequential acknowledgment of God.  One of the things God does in sending Jesus among us is to test each of us, to see first of all if we will acknowledge God, and then, more importantly, to find out if our acknowledging God will have any consequences in our lives, to learn if we will perceive God, know God, and love God.  It’s not as if God does not know—the test is so that we can learn.  God is a God of truth.  Most of those in Nazareth, apparently, were not passing that test, at that time.

Directly after being rejected, Jesus sends the twelve out to proclaim the Good News.  If the people who knew Jesus rejected him, what hope was there for the twelve?  If the people did not listen to Jesus, who was going to listen to the twelve?  St. Mark tells us that Jesus called them together and sent them.  Called and sent.  That’s just what we are, too.  If you are sitting here today, listening to me share God’s Word with you, know that you are called, called by God, and God is calling to you right now.  Listen, he is saying, listen, and live.

Just as God has called you and is calling you, He is also sending you.  Most of us are here once a week, a few of us a couple times a week, and some of us, for various reasons, might be here once every few weeks, or every few months.  The rest of our lives we spend elsewhere.  When we come and gather here, we must also go out.  My prayer each week is that we may all go out touched, blessed, fed, encouraged, sustained by God.  If our main interest in gathering to worship God is what’s in it for us, we’re not worshipping God.  Still, we do hope that there will be blessing.

Go out we must, yet I would invite you to think of it this way, you do not go out so much as you are sent out, sent out by God, sent out with God and in God, sent to proclaim Good News through words of faith, acts of faith, through faithful lives.  Faith is a consequential acknowledgment of God, knowing God in such a way that it makes a difference in your life, a difference that you begin to notice, a difference that those who know you notice, a difference that makes a difference in your corner of the world.

Jesus sends the twelve in pairs.  There is something powerful and helpful in a pair, as I hope you couples have discovered!  Something you might do in pairs is a prayer walk (or, if need be, a prayer drive) in your neighborhood.  Go together, stop every few houses, or at every house, and ask God’s blessing upon those who live there.  Ask that God would help those who live there to have faith and to grow in faith.  Going in pairs also has the benefit of some built-in accountability.  What is hard for one is not quite as hard for two.

Jesus doesn’t permit the twelve to take very much with them for their journey: they may each take a walking stick.  They can wear shoes.  That’s about it.  That’s not much.  I would like to have a little more—well, I would like to have a lot more!  It’s as if Jesus is sending them out with nothing, next to nothing, anyway.  But is he?  “He gave them authority,” Mark tells us.  Authority.  From Jesus.  Is that so little?  Jesus lists the things they may not take.  They won’t need such things.  They won’t need them because they have authority from Jesus.  So long as they have faith in Jesus and faith in his authority, they have all they need.  What about water, or food?  God will provide it.  What about a place to sleep at night, or shelter when it rains?   God will provide it.  What about strength, or endurance, or patience, or wisdom?  God will provide it.  The only thing we really need isn’t a thing at all; it’s God.  When Jesus gives his followers authority to preach, restore, bless, and heal, God gives this authority to them.  This is what the people in Nazareth failed to comprehend, what they could not recognize: what Jesus does, God is doing.  This is still the stumbling block for so many.

Those people, all too familiar with Jesus (or so they thought), did not want the Good News.  It wasn’t welcome to them.  Jesus tells his followers that some will listen, and some will welcome what they have to say.  Not all.  Some will not listen.  What the disciples have to say will not be welcomed by all.  To want and to welcome the Good News is to want and to welcome God.  People are becoming honest enough today to say openly that they do not want God, that God is not welcome to them.  I’m not saying this is a good development—it is very sad!  Truth and honesty, however, make a good starting point.  The disciples found rejection: that was hard, and sad.  The disciples also found welcome.  What the disciples were learning was that what they needed to rely on for what God asked of them was God.  They needed to rely upon God.  Through it all, they learned to trust in Jesus, who gives his followers authority, power, ability, to tell the Good News, to restore, bless, and heal.

Jesus sends you to proclaim, to restore, to bless, and to heal.  That may scare you, a bit; I hope though, that it excites you, too, excites you more.  Be excited for God, and for the amazing things God will be doing, through you.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.