Sufficient Grace

7-8-18 (Proper 9/Ordinary 14 B, Semi-Continuous)

2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

Sufficient Grace

There’s something I’ve always found interesting about this passage in Mark - in fact, it’s always been a little bit of a hangup for me when this passage comes up in my studies and in the lectionary.  It happens right there in verse 5: “Jesus could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”  It’s a peculiar little verse, and it’s troubling at the same time.  It’s also an account that is unique entirely to Mark’s Gospel, the Gospel that shows the most human picture of Jesus that we have in all of the New Testament.  Throughout all the rest of the Gospels, and even in Mark’s own Gospel, we see Jesus performing incredible deeds - even in the reading from last Sunday, we see Jesus healing the woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years and raising Jairus’ daughter from seeming death - and in the other Gospels, even though he encounters trouble in his own hometown and struggles with his own people rejecting him, we never see it get to the point that it hampers his own ability to do anything.  And yet, here, in this one little moment, we see a Jesus who is limited, a Jesus who encounters obstacles that he is unable to surpass.  It’s unsettling.

I mean… what do we do with something like this verse?  For some, it’s one of several particular verses that causes them to question their faith at a core level - those challenging passages that paint a deeper picture of our faith, our heroes, even our core beliefs that shape the very way we understand God and what God is about.  When the basis of our Christian formation teaches us of a Savior who is all-powerful, perfect, above sin and shortcomings, when our art and imagery show us a gentle, mild, loving shepherd who beckons children into his arms, who reaches out with compassion and love, who stands at the door and knocks… what do we do with the image of a Christ that can’t?  Do we pass over this verse and move to the sending of the disciples on their first missionary journeys?  Do we ignore Mark’s narrative and accept the other three because they aren’t as challenging?

As with so many of these kind of challenging verses, it helps us greatly to begin by looking at the context.  If we look at the reaction of Jesus’ own neighbors to the message he preaches and the ministry he tries to perform in his hometown, it helps to remember some of the things that have already come before in previous readings.  Jesus has already begun to deal with opposition and rejection from the religious authorities, and they have done a lot to try to discredit him, to challenge him, to question his ability and authority.  He’s also faced concern from his own family - they come to him with their worries, they express their desire for him to come home, to take some time to eat, to spend some time with his mother, his brothers, and his sisters.  And Jesus’ response was to distance himself from that family, to redefine the entire view of what family is: “Anyone who does the will of God is my mother, my brother, and my sister.”  I can imagine his family tromping home in poor spirits after this, their neighbors hearing about what has happened, and already feeling a little perturbed that Jesus would forget where he came from in such a way.

Add to this the fact that Jesus is coming home to people who know him, and it becomes even more complicated.  These are people who remember him and know his family, as well as the scandal that has always surrounded them.  They remember the rumors that flew about around the well about how Mary had been pregnant before she’d even married Joseph, and that the baby wasn’t his.  They remember the little boy that Joseph nevertheless raised as his own, the young man who was supposed to grow up and follow in Joseph’s trade as a carpenter.  It might be a little bit like if Reece had gone off after he graduated, then came back into town with stories of miraculous doings and healing people, and if he were to stand in this pulpit some years down the road from now and start telling us that we were getting it wrong, that we needed to change our ways, that the Kingdom is here… would you find yourself struggling to put those two ideas together?  This is the kid you saw for years taking up the Noisy Can offering and running around the sanctuary.  This is the boy who stood in the back with the candle-snuffer and dancing during that last hymn.  This is the boy whose diapers some of you remember changing, who was only just a few years ago driving the tractor through the rows and helping plant corn and beans.  He’s the one whom you taught in Sunday School, whom you helped make crafts and to teach songs to in KidzConnect.  And now he’s presuming to teach you?

This is the reception that Jesus gets as he comes home - except it’s a lot more hostile than we even really understand it.  In Jesus’ society and culture, children were referred to in relation to their father.  Jesus would have been Yishua ben Yosef, “Jesus, son of Joseph.”  For the people to call him “Mary’s son” was to say that he had no father, that he was illegitimate.  Some also suggest that this means that at this point, Joseph has died and Mary is left a widow.  They ask “isn’t this the carpenter?” and name his brothers and sisters, insinuating that not only is his sonship questionable, but also that he has abandoned his role as the oldest child and failed in his familial duties to provide for his mother and siblings.

When the bigger picture starts to come together, then, perhaps it’s not so much that Jesus wasn’t able to do much of anything in his hometown so much as that the people wouldn’t even allow him to do anything.  Jesus walks away from that place “amazed at their unbelief” in verse 6.  And again, here we need to be careful once more in how we interpret these things - many have taken this idea and translated it as meaning that people have to have faith in order for healings to happen, in order to experience the miraculous, and that because the people didn’t have faith in Christ, he was unable to work in their midst.  But there are other places in the Gospels where Jesus acts even without demonstrations of faith on the part of people whom he heals, just as often as he heals people and tells them that their faith has made them well.  Here in Nazareth, we see a willful rejection, more so than a lack of faith.  The Kingdom of God is only effective insomuch as you are willing to actively participate in it.

And yet, there is still something even more profound when you look at the even larger picture, and something that should bring hope to us even as we sit here and listen today.  Jesus continues his ministry - he immediately follows up this rejection by sending out his disciples and giving them a greater participation in his mission.  And Jesus goes even further in his ministry, even giving his life on the cross for the very people who rejected him and refused to allow the Kingdom to enter into their midst.  In spite of the rejection that he faces, the Kingdom nevertheless breaks through.  In spite of the questioning, the doubts, the challenges and the hostility, the Kingdom breaks through.

And this is the good news for us, as well - we live in a world in which, more and more, it often feels that people have grown hostile to the Gospel.  We live in a world where God’s call for justice, for compassion, for loving our neighbors as ourselves, is constantly butting up against a culture that encourages us to put ourselves before anyone else, even while telling us that we can’t even love ourselves because we’re not good enough.  We live in a time where it is truly difficult to live into the values of the Kingdom, where people are being arrested for bringing food, water, and clothing to those in need, whether they be homeless people or refugees.  And yet the Kingdom still finds ways of breaking through.

At the General Assembly in St. Louis two weeks ago, I saw that Kingdom breaking through, even as we recognized how much work we still have to do as the church.  I saw hundreds of Presbyterians acting for justice as they delivered over $40,000 in bail money to the justice center in St. Louis.  I saw our church take steps toward addressing its own role in generations of inequality, racism, and injustice, committing to making apologies to affected groups of people and raising awareness of the issues that we have ignored for far too long.  I saw the Kingdom embodied as people from all walks of life, all different experiences, genders, colors and theologies came together around the table to share in communion.

Paul writes to the Corinthians of his own struggles, of his prayer that God would remove the “thorn from his side,” and of God’s promise that “My grace is sufficient.”  In our own world full of struggles, I pray that we can find that same sufficient grace, that we can continue seeking out those ways in which the Kingdom breaks through, and that we can continue to keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open to the way in which God is calling us to be part of that Kingdom.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.