Jesus Preaches
Jesus Preaches
Mark 6:1-6
Last week, I had you look at ambiguous drawings. The question we asked was, “What are we looking at here?” I showed you how I could shape your expectations to the point where you would see musical notes on staff paper when, in fact, what you were looking at was cross country skiers. We looked at another drawing. Some people saw a rabbit. Some a bird. Some immediately saw both. We recognized that it’s possible to see different things and still be telling the truth. We looked at a third drawing that many people had seen before, an image either of an old woman or a young woman, depending on your perspective. Sometimes having someone near you who is experienced, they can help you see what you’d miss.
All of these things were just a warm up for the big challenge, a drawing from a collection known as the “Magic Eye.” If you want to figure these drawings out, you have to have someone help you. I suggested that you hold the paper close. Maybe, let your eyes feel like they are crossing and then relax. You have to trust me. You have to be patient. You have to be persistent. However, if you’re lucky, you may have the strangest experience: what was previously one dimensional becomes three dimensional, what looked like one thing looks like something totally different, things that weren’t visible suddenly emerge.
I love the experience of the Magic Eye drawings because in so many ways it feels like what ministry is to me. I’m trying to get you to look at something in a new way. I can help but I can only carry you so far. At some point, it’s up to you. How long do you want to work at it? How much frustration is too much frustration? All I can tell you is that if you learn to see things in a different way, you’ll be amazed at what happens. Things will no longer be one dimensional. You’ll see things that were not even there before. You might even find yourself a little slack jawed. Again, though, I can’t make it happen for you. I can only invite you and tell you that seeing things in a new way changed me.
This metaphor speaks to me this year because we are looking at the Gospel of Mark. The whole premise of the Gospel of Mark is that people only partially saw who Jesus was. Yes, he was a healer but that is only one dimension. As I’ve acknowledged during this Lenten walk, that one dimension as a healer was the one that made sense in a world that lacked real doctors and relied on healers, instead. Jesus was the greatest healer of all time in a world that accepted that there were healers. In our world, centuries later, the healing stories are often the exact opposite for us: an impediment to us approaching Jesus at all. It would just be so much more comfortable if Jesus had just found some other way to care for the poor…
Let’s agree that if we get sick we’ll go to the doctor and maybe pray a bit on the way there. The challenge is for us to ask the question that Mark would ask us, “So, what’s the role that we are totally comfortable with Jesus playing?” Maybe you think he’s a great teacher. Maybe you think he’s a great prophet—the model spokesperson for social justice. Whatever your comfort zone might be, Mark would challenge us: “If your understanding of Jesus is one dimensional—whatever the dimension—that’s not good enough.” Honestly, I think we all can easily cherry pick the Gospels and cobble together a Jesus that can make us comfortable, right?
Mark keeps making this point, again and again. One of my favorite moments is a healing that happens with a blind man. The man’s friends bring him to Jesus. Jesus takes him by the hand and leads him out of the town, away from everything that is familiar. Jesus goes through some “odd” (to us) healing rituals, and asks the man what he sees. The man says, “I see people but they look like trees, walking.” He’s not blind but he cannot see clearly.
That’s us, a lot of the time. I do my best to live what I believe, to put may faith into action. I stare at the page in the Bible or at the situation in front of me or at the person I want to help. I let my eyes go slightly cross eyed and I relax. I definitely see something. Still, do I see things clearly? Am I moving in the world with 20/20 vision? No, I’m walking along half-blind with my arms out in front of me trying to figure things out a step at a time. Most of the time, I’m working hard to convince myself that things are clearer than they are.
Mark’s whole promise is that Jesus is with us in the midst of our struggle to see more clearly and to make better decisions and take the next step in the right direction. In the story, Jesus doesn’t abandon the blind man when the healing doesn’t work. (Every other charismatic healer would have run for their lives!) Instead, he keeps on trying to heal him. He uses spit and mud and gets right up in the man’s face and makes sure that the man’s vision is restored. He’s not going anywhere. He’s definitely not abandoning anyone.
We all have this partial understanding of who Jesus was that leads us to partially respond to what he calls us to do. Thank God, I don’t see things the way that I used to see them. Thank God, I don’t make the same choices I used to make. Still, isn’t this supposed more clear? Am I missing something here?
If you can connect to the experience that I’m talking about then Mark’s Gospel intended for you. Even better, if connecting to Jesus as a healer is way out of your comfort zone, then today’s text is your text because no one is healed in this story! Nope, today, Jesus is preaching and teaching and who isn’t comfortable with that? Don’t be fooled, though… Mark’s not going to let us off the hook. No…he might just have us where he wants us…
So, Jesus is in his hometown and preaching and teaching at the synagogue where he grew up. You should know though that just before this text, there’s a whole lot of healing going on. He’s healed the craziest, strongest guy whom everyone feared. He’s healed a woman whom everyone had avoided for years. He’s even raised a child from the dead. Now, though, he’s back to basics, back in our “sweet spot,” back to being the Jesus we know and love.
In Luke’s gospel, this teaching scene happens at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Luke gives us a lot of details. He tells us that Jesus quotes Isaiah. Jesus reads the words about good news for the poor, about the the prisoners being pardoned, about the blind being able to see. Then, Jesus rolls up the scroll and announces: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled.” At which point, the whole place comes unravelled. The people of his hometown not only reject him but attempt to throw him off a cliff: “And don’t you ever come back,” someone yelled!
Mark, the earlier Gospel, has a bit of a different take. Jesus is in his hometown synagogue. He’s preaching and teaching but Mark never even mentions Isaiah. Instead, the story is less about what Jesus said than it is about people’s reactions. At first, they loved him. As Eugene Peterson, our translator, phrases it, Jesus “stole the show.” He impressed everyone: “We had no idea he was this good! How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get so good?”
You should think here of last week’s parable of the sower. Some of the “seed” grows but it doesn’t grow deep roots. When challenges come, the sprouts are blown away. At first, things are going great! Everyone is so proud of their hometown guy. Then, after about 10 minutes, they’re not.
Here’s the thing a preacher like me is tempted to fill in: “Oh, Jesus must have said something offensive!” This is the part of me that watches when someone gets up in the middle of my sermon and I desperately hope that person is hosting coffee hour and not the latest person that I’ve offended. It’s a delicate thing to say anything in public. (Someone almost always objects to my 4th of July prayer! )
This is not what our text is describing, though. In Luke, Jesus might have offended people by saying that Isaiah’s prophecy was now fulfilled. He might have offended people by paying too much attention to the poor or the prisoners or the blind and not enough attention to them. In Mark, though, none of those details are there. So, what’s up with the crowd? Why do they turn on Jesus? Mark implies that Jesus has simply turned out to be a different person than they expected him to be.
The crowd loves him—just thinks he’s the best thing around—until they don’t. Then, they turn on him. (If you don’t hear some foreshadowing of Palm Sunday and Holy Week here, you’re not listening carefully enough! The parading crowd loves Jesus on Palm Sunday. Then, within a few days, they turn on him and play a role in him being sentenced to die. Honestly, isn’t this what crowds tend to do?) The hostility grows one step at a time. “Isn’t this the carpenter?” “Isn’t this Mary’s son?” “We know his brothers and sisters. We know all about him. Who does he think he is?”
his is when Eugene Peterson’s translation speaks with such power. Listen to his words: “They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further.” This is such a human story. Here is someone who steps up and speaks up and at first, everyone’s excited. What a fresh voice! Even if we knew them before they did such things we grant them license to keep speaking. Then, something shifts. Maybe we’re jealous. Maybe what they are doing makes us feel less good about what we’re doing. Maybe, if we know them, we can’t shake the memory of that day on the playground in sixth grade. Whatever it is that annoys me, all I need is to see one other person who is uncomfortable we can turn on them togther. We’ll bring that person down to size. “I already know all that I need to know. I’ve seen all I need to see. Who does he think he is?” The little that the people of Nazareth knew about Jesus was just enough to block them from every knowing him better.
So, maybe you learned about Jesus as a child. Maybe you memorized a saying or two. Maybe you’ve spent just enough time to get slightly acquainted with the man—enough time to edit the things he said and did just enough to make him comfortable. Mark is looking at us this morning and saying that this is exactly the kind of understanding that can get in our way. Thinking we know who Jesus is might just be what keeps us from ever really knowing him.
If the Jesus you think you know never challenges you, never calls on you to love people who are really difficult to love, never compels you to forgive relentlessly when all you want to do is tee someone up, then it’s time to meet Jesus again. First, though, we have to get ourselves out of the way.
That’s why I brought this image with me. It’s called the “Magic Eye.” Hold it close. Let you eyes cross a little. Relax and breath. Look again! Don’t quit until things come to life, until what used to seem flat becomes multi-dimensional, until what comes from learning to tolerate being uncomfortable is a whole new way of seeing things.