While my residence for many years was elsewhere, my hometown was Portland, Oregon.  Should I say my hometown is Portland?  I prefer was.  The novelist wrote you can’t go home again.  That’s true.  Portland is still there, of course, God help it, but home was thirty years ago.  I can’t go home.

With his followers, Jesus departs from Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  He went to his hometown.  Why?  Did it just happen to lie along the road they were taking?  Did he have some reason to make this particular excursion?  Was he nostalgic?  Jesus is always teaching.  What did he want to teach his disciples, in returning to Nazareth?

Note that it was his “disciples” who accompanied him.  Not followers, not apostles.  Now, the apostles were disciples, and the disciples did follow, but “disciple” is a particular word: it means a student, a learner.  It would be no mistranslation or misrepresentation of Mark here to say that Jesus was accompanied by his learners.

I have to suppose that Jesus is in and around Nazareth for at least a day or so before the sabbath arrives, but we aren’t told just what he was doing during that interval—readying himself, perhaps, through much prayer.  “When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed” (6:2).  Well, this is familiar, not at all unprecedented.  Recall, once more, that amazement doesn’t in the first place mean delight or happy wonder.  It means shock, offense.  It means incomprehension, rejection.  It means a biased refusal to give the man his due.

The Living Word proclaims and explains the Word of God; many were offended. Bible student W. Graham Scroggie suggested that, if they were astonished, it was because Jesus was saying astonishing things, perhaps in an astonishing way—unconventional, contrary to the establishment’s established ways.  Scroggie then adds, “It is to be feared that there is very little astonishing preaching nowadays, and so there is little astonished hearing.”[1]  Ouch.  I think he’s probably right.

Many were offended because Jesus was saying astonishing things.  Familiar though we may be with the Bible, we know there remain some astonishing things in this book, things that still have the power to shock, even disturb us, things we just don’t understand, don’t like, don’t see how such things could happen, be allowed to happen, how God could or would do such things, say such things.

Which means God remains bigger than we can comprehend.  “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord” (Is 55:8).  A somewhat famous book in ministry circles several decades ago had the title, “Your God Is Too Small.”  That continues to be a point of concern.

People there in the synagogue in Nazareth were also shocked, that day, because it was Jesus saying these things.  Jesus?  Joseph’s boy?  Him?  We sometimes make Jesus out to be more God than man, sort of glowing, barely touching the soil, folks being slain in the spirit right and left while he hovers along.  No one in Nazareth appears to have been thinking of Jesus as more God than man.  Quite the opposite.  They knew he was human all right, had been his whole life.  The shy, quiet boy.  The scrawny teen.  The momma’s boy.  Oh, yes, they also remembered how he worked and worked, after Joseph’s death, devoted himself day and darkness to support his family, earn enough to feed his mother and younger siblings, day by day.  It’s not that people there didn’t respect his work ethic, but, you know, he wasn’t really educated.  He wasn’t from one of the established families, though they remembered how Joseph always spoke with pride about his being descended from David.  Sure, sure.  Jesus was a poor laborer’s son.  So who was he to come here and act like he knew things, like he knew exactly what he was talking about, in a way not even the rabbis from Jerusalem would talk?  I mean, excuse me.  Get off your high horse.  You think you’re better’n us?  That’s when you’re supposed to know it’s time to shut up, or else.

“‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked. ‘What’s this wisdom that has been given him?  What are these remarkable miracles he is performing?’” (6:2).  Him?  These are good questions, if those asking cared to wonder about the answer.  Only, the questions weren’t really questions.  They were contemptuous dismissals of anything Jesus had to say.  Mr. Knows-Things.  Ha.  Who does this guy think he is?  If Jesus had only said what the people already believed, if Jesus had congratulated them on their wisdom, proper values, and admirable performance, if he had cracked a few jokes, patted them on the back with smiles and hugs for all, I very much doubt anybody there that day would have felt too upset.  They were upset.  That tells me he must have been pushing them, teaching unconventional things contrary to the establishment’s established ways, asking them to expand the horizon of belief, to revise what they had understood about obedience, works, salvation, faith, love.  He was pushing them, and you and I both know there is a definite limit to pushing.  People don’t come to be pushed.

Maybe if Jesus had been more humble.  But, maybe you also think of Jesus as about the humblest person you’ve ever known.  Moses was described in the same way, yet Moses was the one through whom God spoke to His people, to give His way.  Humility is hugely important, crucial!  If I have ever seemed to you less than humble, I sincerely ask your forgiveness.

All I claim to know is God’s Word.  I don’t claim to know all there is to know about it.  I do claim to know something about it, and what I claim to know I share with you, Sunday after Sunday, these nearly seven years now.  There always is and should be room for discussion, debate, even disagreement—only let us avoid division.  And let’s all also be reading God’s Word, reading together, and growing in and by God’s Word, together.   When all the Word we get is whatever Word pastor preaches of a Sunday, we’re not availing ourselves of the best medicine, the most effective balm that we have.

Who is Jesus?  Where is he getting all this . . . this knowledge, this . . . authority, this . . . conviction, this . . . passion?  Excellent questions!  If only people were willing to consider the answer Jesus was telling them.  A prophet?  Ha.  A priest?  Oy.  A king?  Sigh.  What those there with Jesus in the congregation that day were telling him by their expressions and responses was there’s nothing special about YOU!  It would change everything, after all, if they even entertained the possibility that there was, after all, something special, different, remarkable, something holy, about Jesus.

Jesus responds, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home” (6:4).  There’s that old maxim: familiarity breeds contempt.  Well, contempt seems a bit strong, but we read here that Jesus is being strongly rejected, and Jesus often is strongly rejected, even today.  We claim some awfully big things about Jesus!  The gist of that old saying is something we know for ourselves very well: we tend to value least the things with which we are most familiar.  We don’t consider them because they are always there.  We take such things for granted.  Air, for example . . . light, salt, bread, drink.

Jesus isn’t truly valued by his own.  Ouch.  That’s an old, old story!  That was true there in Nazareth, that day.  It was true in Jerusalem there at the cross.  Must it also be true in the churches today?

What we value we take care of—now what that says about our typical diet, I’m not sure, but we take care of our responsibilities at work.  We take care of our families, our livestock, our property, our trucks.  How about our faith?  But how does one take care of faith?

It’s at this point that Mark records some of the sadder, tougher words in the Gospels: Jesus “could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (6:5).  Could not.  Was Jesus, then powerless, there in Nazareth?  In a strange way, beloved, yes.  Not because he had no power.  Jesus could have commanded whatever it pleased him to command, and it would have been done.  Such is the power of God.  The one thing Jesus will not do is exercise his saving, healing power against a person’s wishes, against his or her will.  And Jesus was in a special, horrible sense powerless there in Nazareth that day because no one sought the power he was offering, the power of reconciliation, restored relationship, healing, peace.  Who expected any of that from Jesus?  Oh, is Jesus going to heal you?  Is Jesus going to save you?  Ha!

“He was amazed at their lack of faith” (6:6).  Believe, Jesus kept saying, pleading, only believe.  If not on account of what I say, then on account of what I do, he told them, several times.  If you don’t or can’t believe I am in the Father and the Father in me, at least believe God, have faith in God who is doing something wonderful in your time!  We can talk about faith, and if faith isn’t what guides our daily living, choosing, hoping, and praying, then what are we really doing?  I have the sinking feeling that those there in that synagogue that day weren’t driven by faith.  Faith wasn’t the active, motivating principle in their lives.  Oh, they could talk about it, and did, in synagogue.  Outside those doors, though, they had better things to talk about and better things to do.

What we value we take care of.  Lord, help us.  Here, today, God shows us what He values.  He values you.  The proof is that, here, He shows and reminds you of His special care for you: in this Word, in bread and juice, body and blood, Christ’s offering of his own life, that we might have life, and have it fully.  The most Jesus could do there was “lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.”  Lord, may it be.  Only believe, and let belief work its work in you.

[1] W. Graham Scroggie.  Gospel of Mark.  Study Hour.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976, 108.