Going Home Again

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.

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In today’s gospel we hear a passage that has two distinct stories. In the first, Jesus is going home to Nazareth and in the second Jesus is sending out the Twelve to spread the good news to all who will hear it. At first glance these seem unrelated, but digging deeper we see that the two stories intertwine each other and have similar themes and lessons.

As we go home with Jesus and his disciples we remember that just before this, Jesus was out in the community performing miracles. He had just healed some pretty sick folks. He made the woman who had been sick for twelve years well and brought Jairus’ daughter back to life. He calmed the storm on the water, exorcised demons, and healed others along the way. These were big, loud proclamations of faith. We heard that those who saw these miracles were astounded and in awe of Jesus and the goodness he brought. They were joyous and had deep faith in who he was.

All that stands in stark contrast to what we see in the story this morning. Jesus is back home for a visit now. We do not know how long he has been gone or why exactly he is coming home, but you would think that he would have a big hometown fan base waiting for him after all the miracles he has performed. By now, they should have added to the town sign “Home of Jesus: Savior of the World.” However, that is not what happens. The folks back home are not too sure about who he is and what he says he can do. They do not have much faith in him.

When he was in the synagogue teaching, those who were listening at first said, “Wow! Look at this guy! He knows so much! These are great teachings!” But that quickly changes and they start to question who he is and what he is teaching. It sounds like a nightmare for anyone coming home. Here Jesus is, coming home after a long trip and he is met by people who are put off by his presence. They are offended by what he is saying. The red carpet is not rolled out for him, there is no parade, just townspeople who remind him exactly who he is. A carpenter. The son of Mary. Just a normal guy.

Jesus seems unbothered and responds by saying that, “Prophets are honored everywhere except in their own hometowns, among their relatives, and in their own households.” He seems to have expected this unbelief. Apparently Jesus could not even perform many miracles because of their stubbornness and lack of faith. It is strange. Why wouldn’t Jesus want us to stay and keep working at changing these hearts? It is suggested by scholars that, “unbelief made a miracle not so much impossible as meaningless, and therefore in most cases futile.” So Jesus was not powerless, but performing a miracle would not have permeated the hardened hearts of those listening. So he moves on with his disciples and teaches elsewhere. He just brushes off their rejection and their stubbornness.

If we have been paying attention though, this is not the first time that Mark has told us how Jesus was rejected, and ultimately we know what is going to happen at the end of the story and the rejection to come for Jesus. But nevertheless, I think it is safe to say that Jesus was probably a bit annoyed at what he came home to. These were supposed to be people who knew him best, the longest, the most intimately. Some were even family.

They should have celebrated his return, but all he got was questioned about who he was and folks unwilling to believe that he was a prophet. The one they were expecting and looking for. But he was too normal, they said. He was not this larger than life figure. In their eyes, he was just the boy who had grown up in town and ran around the market when he was little.

This might be a familiar scene or feeling for some if not all of you. I think this experience of coming home is interesting. A lot of times you are not really sure what you are “coming home” to and your expectations might not be met. Depending on how long you were gone, things change, people change, and it is not the same place anymore.

I have had that experience of coming home so many times. On school breaks I came home. After I finished college I came home. After I finished grad school I came home. And each time there were challenges. Each time I realized that while I was always coming home to the same place that my parents had always lived and the same house I had grown up in, it was different. I was different. Each time I came home I was a stronger version of myself, always evolving and figuring out who I was, as we do in our twenties. And each time I met someone at home that still had an old idea of who I was in their head. Each time I came back I was at risk of shrinking back into the person I was before, not good or bad, just not fully me anymore.

Coming back to preach here at church feels a bit that way. A homecoming. Trying to fit back in. This place is really near and dear to me and I owe a lot of my spiritual formation to people who were here over the years. Some of you have been here since my family joined back when I was just going into middle school. And for that reason I get a bit nervous about preaching to you. (It’s also my first time with a full live audience, but still.)

Today’s gospel brought to light a lot of thoughts I have when I come back to this place and preach here for you all. I think about your expectations of me. I think about how I want to make you all proud of who I have become. I want to say the right words and preach a good message that speaks to at least one person. I want to stay true to what I want to preach but also preach a message that challenges those who hear it in whatever way they need. And I trust God is active in all of this and I know that I have a word to share.

But sometimes we hold on to ideas about people and who we think they are like those in Nazareth are doing in today’s Gospel, which prevents us from seeing the fullness of who they have grown into and I think it also inhibits our own growth. Obviously I am not the same shy kid I was when I first came here and what a good thing that is! :) I am really proud of who I have become. We have all moved beyond the people we used to be and the ideas that people hold in their heads about who we are and have grown into who God created us to be instead.

This is what is happening in the gospel today. Those Jesus encountered in town are unable to see the fullness of who he is, a prophet! Those in Nazareth were blinded by their narrow viewpoint they had locked themselves into and were unable to see the fullness of what Jesus was doing and who he had grown into. Maybe they even had expectations that he would still be that carpenter they all knew. But he does not feed into their expectations or shrink to make himself smaller. He knows who he is. He has been out traveling, living into his calling and who is meant to be.

For this reason I think one of the lessons for us this morning in Mark’s gospel is to stay true to who you are and the beautiful person God knows you to be. To stay true to the work that you know is important and to trust yourself in doing it. You might come home and be wary to share who you are and who you have become since you went away. You might be confronted with people who are unhappy with who you are or question it. They can be stumbling blocks. But Jesus does not let the opposition sway him or convince him he is someone different and neither should we. God cannot be convinced that we are not God’s beloved children either. That identity is unmovable.

We have a God that loves us big and sees us as good and valid and whole. We are valued in and for ourselves. We have a God too, who sends us out into the world to share that message with others. And we see this in the second part of the gospel. Jesus sent out his disciples two by two. He tells them to pack light. This isn’t a bring everything you think you might need just in case kind of deal. It is an instruction that I am sure they questioned.

I am someone who likes to pack for a trip with lots of “just in case” items. I make lists and I pack a week ahead of time at least. I like to be prepared for anything and want others to feel safe and ready for anything too. I was usually told to pare it down growing up and that I did not need to bring so many shoes. So hearing that the disciples are not meant to pack a full suitcase, stresses me out. But, they are to pack light because they are to expect hospitality. So it is okay that they do not have everything they need. Jesus tells them that they will find welcome, but they will also experience resistance and opposition just like they just experienced in his hometown.

So I can probably abandon some of my strict packing rules and trust that along the way, what I need will also be provided. And that has proven to be true so far for me. Not everywhere has been the right place for me, and I think we can all feel and know what that is the case, but like the disciples, we can go on our way trusting that more will be provided down the road. It is the true risk of discipleship. But it is also what we are called to do. Yes we might feel responsible for a place or connected to a hometown. I definitely feel the same. I feel connected to a place. I do not live here in New Pal anymore, but I still feel like it is a part of me in some ways. I think this is okay to feel this way. We all have hometowns. But those feelings of commitment and care towards those places should not prevent us from our real task: which is going out just like the disciples do in the second half of the gospel. If our hometown rejects us we can move on.

We are called to be at home among strangers trusting that welcome will follow. He knows that the people in his town are unable to believe at this moment, but the seeds have been sown. It is now time to go out and receive the hospitality that is out there waiting for us if we just take the first step. And if we are not welcomed into a place, Jesus says to shake off the dust and move on. This meant something different than it does now. There were ideas back then about not bringing dust or soil back into Israel that was considered dirty.

I hear now that we can brush it off and trust that there is another, better fitting place for us out there waiting for us to discover. I hear that we are meant to move on because there will be another place that will accept us. We do not have to always do the work from within if we are unwelcome. I hear him saying that if someone is not ready to believe or is not receptive to it, then move on because we are just seed planters, called to plant. We do not necessarily have to see the entire plant grow. There are other planters and others who can tend to the growth. But we can trust that some of these seeds might grow into the tallest trees or the most beautiful flowers.

We remember that some who heard Jesus in the gospel today were unable to see the full expansion of what he was doing and how vast the love of God is. But my hope is that we are able to broaden our viewpoints and allow space for people to bring their full selves into our communities. I hope we also have hearts that are open to the task of going out, leaving home, trusting that just like the disciples we will find welcome, nourishment and hospitality abounding. And that we will always share the love of God in ways that remind people that God’s love is always expanding. Always accepting who we don’t, and always assuring us that we too are wonderfully made.

Amen.

Desperate Measures, Deep Mercy

Mark 5:21-43

When [Jesus] had crossed again to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him and he was by the sea. Then a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, came and fell before him and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.” So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.

Now, there was a woman who had suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped and she felt, in her body, that she had been healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus said to the crowd, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you. How can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus looked around to see who had done it. And the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came to him with fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house and said to him, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” Overhearing them, Jesus said to him, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed only Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, to follow him. As he approached the leader’s house, he saw a great commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered the house, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead, only sleeping?” And they laughed at him. He put them all out of the house and took the child’s mother and father, and those who had come with him, into the place where the child was. He said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means “little girl, get up,” and the girl got up and began to walk about. (She was twelve years of age.) At this, they were filled with amazement and Jesus ordered them sternly that no one should know about this. Then he told them to give her something to eat.

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The woman in this morning’s Gospel reminded me of something I read – and the author, who I’ve seen in a couple of different ways on TV and in social media – recently.

(Newsun Zip)

Jane Marczewski is a 30-something-year-old cancer survivor from Zanesville, Ohio. She’s had the big, ugly, scary, evil cancer diagnosis three times already at her young age and has been given a 2% chance of survival. (Like the woman in this morning’s gospel, you might say, “she has endured much under many physicians. She’s spent all she had. She is no better, in many ways, but has only grown worse.”) Like I said, she has a 2% chance of beating this thing. And her husband left her, too. And all of that is hard to believe if you’ve watched her sing on America’s Got Talent or seen her interviewed on any number of television shows, lately. She’s full of wisdom and life and hope and joy – because of and in spite of all she’s been through.

And she wrote something in her blog called “God is on the Bathroom Floor.” I won’t read it all, but portions of it made me think Jane and the woman in today’s Gospel are kindred spirits. She wrote,

“I spent three months propped against the wall. On nights that I could not sleep, I laid in the tub like an insect, staring at my reflection in the shower knob. I vomited until I was hollow. I rolled up under my robe on the tile. The bathroom floor became my place to hide, where I could scream and be ugly; where I could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep, even with my head on the toilet.

“I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed thirty. There are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story. I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that He will say I disappointed Him, or offended Him, or failed Him. Maybe He’ll say I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn’t grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this: He can never say that He did not know me.

“I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses. Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.”

It's that last bit that brought to mind the nameless woman in Mark’s gospel. She was like God’s downstairs neighbor, too – not banging on the ceiling with a broomstick – but pushing her way through the crowd to get her hands on the cloak of Jesus.

And without a whole lot of work, I’m guessing we can see – or at least imagine – where the woman in this morning’s Gospel, and Jairus, that leader from the synagogue, are coming from, can’t we? Who among us hasn’t been there ourselves or loved someone who is or has been: sick for years, I mean; sick and tired of wrong or insufficient answers; sick and fed up with expensive treatments that may or may not work; sick and out of money, sick and out of energy, sick and out of patience, sick and out of time, even.

And I think the gift and the good news of this morning’s Gospel isn’t just in the hemorrhage that stops or in the little girl who gets up to walk again. Those are beautiful, hopeful, life-giving things. But you and I know not everyone wins that lottery.

(For what it’s worth, I decided this week, maybe that’s why Jesus is always telling people – “sternly ordering them,” actually – not to tell anyone about his miracles and healings. Because Jesus was sensitive and kind and wise. And Jesus knew those kinds of miracles and healings wouldn’t happen for everyone, all of the time. So don’t boast about it. Don’t brag about how your prayer got answered, leaving someone else to wonder why theirs did not. Just accept it, gratefully, joy-fully, with humility. And live differently because of it, but quietly, perhaps …) But I digress.

I think the gift and the good news of this morning’s Gospel – and in Jane Marczewski’s story, too – is in the way Jesus receives and entertains those in such desperate need in the first place, and no matter what. Even Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, was welcomed by Jesus. As a leader of the synagogue, Jairus was supposed to be suspicious of Jesus, if not downright opposed to what he was up to. Still, he stated his case, made his plea, and Jesus followed him home – no questions asked.

And along the way, Jesus gets interrupted by this unclean woman who he could just as well have ignored or dismissed or driven away, even, for having the nerve to soil him with her unclean, uninvited, unwelcome touch. But he calls her out, instead. He announces her healing for all to see. And he sends her home, blessed and better, in spite of what the crowds must have wondered about her – or him – because of it all.

In other words, it would have been easier – and expected – and entirely acceptable for Jesus to have nothing to do with either of these two who approached him that day as he went about his business. But Jesus chose otherwise. And we can be grateful for the kind of grace that portends for each of us, just the same.

And Jane Marczewski tells a similar story. Not of a miraculous healing or of being raised from death or deep sleep or whatever was going on with Jairus’ daughter. But she tells of the desperate ways she has come looking for God’s grace in her sickness and struggles and has somehow found it. She says,

“I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it. I have told Him I wanted to die, and I meant it. Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for Him. These are the prayers I repeat night and day; sunrise, sunset.

“Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair. Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened. But count me also among the friends of God. For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow, squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: ‘I’m sad too.’”

And she writes about how she has learned to see God’s grace in spite of herself and her struggles and her sickness. She says,

“I see mercy in the dusty sunlight that outlines the trees, in my mother’s crooked hands, in the blanket my friend left for me, in the harmony of the wind chimes. It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do.

“Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me.

“Even on days when I’m not so sick, sometimes I go lay on the mat in the afternoon light to listen for Him. I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t really explain it, but God is in there—even now. I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.”

Unlike the woman in the Gospel, whose social status was such that we don’t even get to know her name, Jane Marczewski, has two names worth knowing about. See, Jane also goes by the stage name, “Nightbirde.” She tells the story of how she woke once in the middle of the night to birds singing in the dark, from a tree outside her window. She thought she was dreaming or imagining it, that it didn’t make sense, that it was too early for them to be singing because it was still too dark outside. The sun hadn’t risen yet. But the birds were singing, anyway, like they knew the sunrise was coming. Hence her second name, “Nightbirde.”

And that’s the kind of faith we long for, right? The faith of the woman with the courage to approach Jesus in the crowd… The faith of the man who asked Jesus to follow him home… The faith of Jane Marczewski, God’s downstairs neighbor who bangs on the ceiling to get God’s attention, who approaches God with songs and curses, apologies, hard questions, and more…. The faith of birds who sing in the darkness of night, because they know, somehow, that the sun is coming.

So let us be bold and brazen about our desire and our need for God’s grace in our lives – especially when it seems too dark to sing… or that we aren’t worth the bother … or when we’re too tired to find the words. Let’s not be shy about asking. Let’s not pretend we can live – or die – without it, God’s grace. Let’s not pretend we deserve it, either, of course.

But let’s go out of our way, nonetheless. Let’s fight the crowds and our pride and our fear and trembling, too. And let’s see what God does with our humility and our gratitude and our faith when we can muster however much of it is left.

God only knows what it might yield. And it may not be what we’re looking for. But we will always be God’s – Chosen, blessed, sought-after – as Nightbirde sees it. And that will always be enough.

Amen