They Knew Him Too Well...

Deepest appreciation to the writing and scholarship of David Lose, who helped me put my brain around the reading.

I have to say a word about the excessive use of italics in the following reading. As I've mentioned, I write like I speak; the metering, phrasing and the paragraph breaks aren't always grammatically correct or particularly pretty.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been forgoing printing out the manuscript of my sermons, choosing instead to take advantage of technology and read them from the screen of my trusty BlackBerry. This saves paper and means that I don't have to drive to another county to write and print.

It also means that I don't have the luxury of penciling in breaks - lines I place between words in a sentence to get the emphasis right - or to underline words that need a particular stress. Thus the egregious generosity with italics. I beg your indulgence and forgiveness as you read the following.

To the point of the sermon: It turns out that knowing Jesus is all well and good. The difference lies in what we do about that knowing...

Mark 6:1-13

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

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

This is the Word of the Lord.

It’s easy, this side of the Resurrection, to shake our heads in disgust at those villagers of Nazareth. Imagine, having the living Word of God right there in front of you, speaking the very words of God, and blowing it off as nothing more than a home town kid trying to make himself more important than he really is.

Oh, sure, just like everyone else in that region of Judea, they’d heard the rumors, they’d listened to the wild tales of healings and exorcisms and miracles and signs. Every story seemed to be stranger than the last, and the travelers who told them seemed to get more and more excited every day. Could this Jesus be the Promised One?

The residents of Nazareth, almost to a person, rolled their eyes when they heard that. They knew Jesus too well to fall into that trap!

There were frightening stories, too – Jesus challenging the Pharisees, openly defying the most powerful people in the province. Mary had even taken James and the family and gone to try and bring him back to Nazareth before he went and got himself killed… but they’d come back empty-handed, and said nothing about the trip to anyone. That figured, they all thought. They knew the guy, after all. They knew him well.

So that Saturday, the synagogue was buzzing as Jesus took the seat of the teacher and began to speak… but it wasn’t an excited buzzing. After all, this guy was just a carpenter, or at least he had been until he laid his tools down and walked off. Who did he think he was, anyway, acting like a teacher? He wasn’t even legitimate! Everyone knew about how Joseph had left town for the census with a very pregnant fiancée, and returned from Bethlehem with a new baby. Why, some folks had even whispered that Joseph wasn’t the kid’s father to begin with!

That first synagogue, in Capernaum, the people had heard Jesus speak with authority and had responded with wonder and confusion: “What is this,” they asked, “A new teaching—and with authority!” Today, though, in this synagogue, though Jesus spoke with no less authority, the whispers were not filled with wonder; rather, their words dripped with derision. “Where did this guy come up with this stuff? The gall! Doesn’t he know who he is? Doesn’t he know that we know who he is? Does he really expect us to forget what he is?”

We’re told that Jesus “could do no deed of power there,” and that “he was amazed at their unbelief.” Imagine it! It is beyond comprehension, isn’t it, that the very Lord of Life found himself at a loss, that anything could offend him in such a way!

We who have read the Gospels know that Jesus healed people, like the crippled man at the healing pool, who didn’t know how to ask for what they needed. Jesus even healed people without intending to – like the hemorrhaging woman we met last week. And then there were the people who were beyond asking for what they needed, like the demon-possessed or the little dead girl. In every instance, though, there was some degree of faith, some openness to the transformative power of Jesus. But here, in Nazareth, in the synagogue he had known his whole life, among the people who knew him best and who should have loved him the most, they had instead slammed shut the doors of their hearts. They had nothing for him, and wanted nothing from him.

They knew him too well to believe him. They’d seen this guy, had shared meals with him, had hired him for carpentry jobs. They were his brothers and sisters, cousins and neighbors, and while everyone had always known Jesus was different, they didn’t view this difference as a good thing. Jesus had been a weird kid, and had not changed when he grew up. Rabbi? Healer? Messiah? Please, don’t be ridiculous. He was Mary’s kid, the odd one.

God couldn’t speak through him, he was just Jesus. No one special, not qualified to interpret the Scriptures, certainly not worthy to speak the Word of God! If anything, he was an OK carpenter. Best to ignore him, and maybe he’ll get the message and go back to his hammer and saw and leave all this crazy talk alone.

And I have to wonder, how often do I do the same thing? Close the doors of my heart to a word from God because the messenger is someone I know too well, or have dismissed as unworthy of my attention? What would it mean to my faith journey if I laid aside the need to check credentials, to dismiss someone who is outside my circle, or who is so familiar to me that I “know” God couldn’t use them?

Could I be more like the disciples who, even though they struggled with the things Jesus said, wrestled to understand who he was and what it all meant, were willing to do what he said – even though it meant traveling into the unknown, walking two by two out into the countryside, with not a dollar or a loaf of bread to their name, dependent upon the hospitality of utter strangers, preaching a message they didn’t quite grasp?

There was no guarantee of success; in fact, there was every possibility that they would fail spectacularly, starve on the road or end up stoned to death by an angry mob. Yet as Jesus sent them, they went, no questions asked. They went because they knew him so well.

Yes, let’s not forget that these disciples were just as intimately acquainted with Jesus as the people who’d grown up with him. They had spent long hours on the dusty roads with him, had eaten with him, shivered in the cold night as they slept in the desert between towns. There had to have been hundreds of conversations about nothing, jokes told around the fire and long, comfortable silences.

They knew him too well… to not believe him. And despite their shortcomings, despite their doubts and utter lack of comprehension in so many areas, when they commanded demons to leave people, they did! When they anointed people for healing, they got well! When they preached repentance, people listened!

The difference between the people of Nazareth and those road-worn Apostles was simply faith.

I have to tell you, this idea that the difference between the miraculous and the mundane being in us, and not in God, makes me very uncomfortable.

I’ve been brought up in my faith journey to believe that God doesn’t need us, that God isn't inhibited by our faith or lack thereof, that what I believe or think or do matters not at all when it comes to God accomplishing God's purposes.

Isn’t one of the central elements of our belief system the doctrine of “justification by grace through faith?” Isn’t it a cornerstone of Reformed Theology that it's all up to God? God is the one who justifies. It's by grace, not by our work. Our faith is really just an awareness of and trust in what God has done.

Without God’s grace, without the drawing of the Holy Spirit, are we not all like the citizens of Nazareth, Jesus’ neighbors and family members, who look at the hometown prophet and are left cold, offended and ultimately disinterested? Everything: our faith, our inclusion in the Kingdom, our being born again to eternal life is under the complete control and will of the Creator of the Universe, and not a thing we ourselves have any power over.

This is a fact. But what if what’s at stake here isn’t a matter of God’s ultimate purposes or our eternal destinies? After all, it’s not like Jesus couldn't do anything there, we read that he did perform some healings, though it wasn’t like other towns where they were breaking down his doors. What if, rather, the Word of God is simply inviting us to contemplate the possibility that we have actually have something to do, that we have an important role to play in the Kingdom. To say it another way: this isn't about doing works to attain salvation, or about willing ourselves to have enough faith to reach out to God, it's about the role each one of us is invited to play in sensing, experiencing, and making known God's will and work in the world.

We who are the Church apparently have a choice to make: a new choice every day, when we face that front door to our hearts. Do we consult our list of doctrines, our criteria for inclusion and acceptance, and decide that we’ll only hear from God if it’s through someone who meets the standards, thank you very much? And if the terrifying happens, that God actually has a word or an action for us to carry out, a Kingdom work which will change the life of someone else? Isn’t it safer to lock the doors, nail a board or two across them, and go see what’s on TV?

Or will we boldly, recklessly fling open the doors of our hearts? Take them off the hinges, even, and set them up on sawhorses and make communion tables out of them? Will we walk out onto the dusty roads with comfortable shoes, a walking stick, and not a dollar or a loaf of bread to our name, and see what the wild, boundless, joyous and unpredictable Spirit of God has in store for us today?

May we always, habitually, joyfully throw those doors open wide. May we know Jesus too well to not believe him!

Sermon for September 6, 2009: "When the Gospel Went to the Dogs"

Mark 7:24-37
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.

Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

This is the Word of the Lord.


I am indebted to the writings of Sarah Dylan Brauer and Heidi Husted, who calls our Gospel reading “the day the Gospel went to the dogs,” for some of the ideas behind this sermon.

"Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

I am not the only preacher who has read our Gospel passage this morning and contemplated basing the sermon on the Epistle or the Old Testament reading. The Jesus we meet in today's Gospel reading, frankly, makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

We're used to seeing Jesus heal everyone who asks, and even a couple who don't ask. We're used to seeing Jesus lay the verbal smackdown on the scribes and Pharisees. But to refuse to heal? To use the common disparaging term of his day in calling this Syrophonecian woman, and by extension all Gentiles, “dogs?”

We're tempted to tap this Jesus on the shoulder and ask, “who are you and what have you done with the real Jesus?” After all, Jesus, you're traveling around in Tyre, for cryin' out loud. Gentile Central. If I go to a police station, I'll very likely meet a cop. If I go to a barber shop, I'll probably meet a barber (who will wonder what I'm doing there).

If you go to Tyre, you're gonna meet a gentile, dude. If you're not here to provide healing and teaching for the Gentiles, what on earth are you doing in Tyre in the first place?

Now, I do not want to suggest that my answer is the only correct answer; I don't presume to speak for Reformed Theology or have enough of a grasp on Biblical criticism to claim any authority. What I am suggesting is something we've done before; we're exploring a “what-if” scenario. With that said, I think the answer to what in the world Jesus was doing in Tyre that day is that Jesus was learning.

There are some apocryphal “Gospels” floating around out there, most notably the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” which portray the childhood Jesus as someone fully aware of Who they were, able to perform all manner of miracles and to make prophetic proclamations. This fictional child Jesus brings clay pigeons to life, parts the water in a pond, strikes some folks dead, raises some others from the dead... he is, in short, a monster.

No, the real Jesus had to do it the hard way – like everyone else. He had to be potty trained. He had to learn to feed himself. He had to learn to walk and talk and dress himself and everything else every human child has ever had to learn.

He learned Joseph's trade, he learned the Scriptures... he spent the first three decades of his life learning and preparing for his ministry.

Now, something that is important to remember in any context is that when a person stops learning – be they 12 or 30 or 48 or 65 or 80 years old – that person is either dead or dangerous. The old cliché, “you learn something new every day,” is true. Sometimes the lessons are painful, like finding out the heating elements in an oven are hot (don't ask). Sometimes the lessons are fun (for example, did you know that Brent Spiner, who played Data on Star Trek/Next Generation has a Twitter account? I'm a geek, I admit it). But the point is, we learn. We grow.

The argument can be made that the Pharisees stopped learning, because at some point they decided that they knew everything there was to know about how to rightly keep the Law and the Jewish faith. In our own time, people like Fred Phelps and the members of the Westboro Baptist Church could safely be accused of no longer learning, with their hateful websites and angry picketing at soldiers' funerals. Try as I might, I can think of no positive example for any person or any group that ceased to learn.

So is it too much of a stretch to suggest that Jesus was in Tyre because his Father wanted to show him something?

To be sure, not compassion, and not an openness to including the marginalized in his ministry. After all, this is the same Jesus who touched lepers, ministered to Samaritans and even made one the hero of one of his most famous parables, who ate with tax collectors and sinners. That the Syrophonecian woman dares to speak to him at all, and that he actually acknowledges her right to speak to him, is an astounding departure from the cultural norms of the day. People are always more important than propriety.

Yet up to this point in the Gospel, Jesus has been ministering to people who are ostensibly Jewish in that they worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Gentiles, on the other hand, would have been members of one pagan society or another, worshiping a plethora of greater and lesser gods. Whereas Jesus shared a common culture with the Jewish people, Tyre was given over to Greek ideas and lifestyles.

And as much as Jesus tried to keep his presence in Tyre a secret, word got out, and it wasn't long at all before a woman came in the house where he was staying and fell at his feet. She needed healing for her daughter, and whatever gods she worshiped, whatever things she believed, she knew that this Jewish prophet had healed people before, had cast out demons before, and it didn't matter if he said “no,” she'd heard “no” before; it didn't matter if he called her a dog, she'd been called a dog before; she was not going to stop until he did it again.

I don't want to read too much into the story here, or to suggest something that may be unScriptural, but I wonder.

I see the scene: Jesus standing in the middle of a room in a Greek-style home, a woman crumpled at his feet, pleading for her daughter. When he speaks to her, it's not in a dismissive, angry tone, but in the voice of someone who is trapped by policy, who can't do what needs to be done because that's not in his job description: "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

I see the woman look up at him, fire in her eyes. The fact that she would reply at all is breathtaking, I mean, that sort of thing just wan't done in those days – her courage radiates even through the fear for her daughter. She answers in a strong voice: "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

I wonder if Jesus had an ah-ha moment? You know what I mean, a moment of realization, where you learn something you didn't know before, and it changes everything. One thing is certain, from that moment forward no one, Jew or Gentile, is excluded from the healing and teaching and attention and ministry of Jesus Christ.

Now, if this is true – if that's what happened – then we have both a glorious promise and a life-and-death directive.

The Syrophonecian woman prayed earnestly, and was unwilling to give up until her prayer was answered, and as a result, everything was changed. The glorious promise then is summed up in the words of an old bumper sticker: prayer changes things! Scripture tells, time and time again, of events and judgments and outcomes that were altered by prayer... and we can rest assured that events and judgments and outcomes are changed still today when we pray.

The life-and-death directive is to follow the example of Jesus – to be open to having our minds changed, to bne open to new experiences and new people and new ideas that alter the course of our faith journey, that change our lives. If we had a few hours I could give examples of how that's happened in my life – how a group of teenagers at a Waffle House in Vestavia made me a better Christian and a better person – and I'm sure you could tell me similar stories.

When we are no longer open to change, to growth, to learning, we cease to function as Christians and as human beings. We are on a faith journey, and as long as we have a pulse the journey continues.

How will you be changed today – this week – by the people God brings into your life?

Almighty God,
We pray that we are challenged daily... hourly... moment by moment, to see all people as beloved community. To see all people as worthy of our attention, our advocacy, our thoughts and our prayers. Help us to be like Jesus, to engage with one another outside of our comfort zone, and stretch us
mightily for your work in this world.

We bring confident prayers this morning for (prayer needs list)...

In the name of Jesus, our Lord and savior, who taught us to pray... (Lord's Prayer)