josephholubsermons
July 5, 2009
Pentecost 5
Mark 6:1-5
A New Kind of
Community
"He... came to his home town... and they took
offense at him."
- Mark 6:1, 3
If we read Mark's gospel even superficially, we see
that Jesus had conflicts with his family and his home town
friends and neighbors. All
was not necessarily well on the family-front and home-front for Jesus.
There was tension. There were some hard words and hurt feelings.
For example, in Mark chapter 3, Jesus returned home.
Upon arriving his family literally tried to
"restrain him" (κρατέω-to
exert physical power over);
to physically "lay hold" of him because people were saying that he was
mad, insane, crazy, perhaps even possessed by a demon for saying and
doing all the things that he had been saying and doing; things like:
casting out evil spirits,
healing sick people, fellowshipping with sinners and outcasts, traveling
into Gentile territory performing acts of mercy, touching and
embracing the unclean; breaking Sabbath laws - even forgiving sins,
something which the temple aristocracy had claimed an exclusive monopoly
upon for themselves. Jesus
was on thin ice, risking much, even with his family and neighbors -
people who knew him as a child; people who saw him grow up.
A little while later he was teaching in a crowded
house, and his mother and brothers were outside and they sent someone
inside to tell him they were outside and wanted to see him.
Seemingly dismissing them and blowing them off, Jesus replied,
"Who are my mother and my
brothers?" and then looking at the crowd he said,
"These are my mother and my
brothers! Whoever does the
will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother." (Mark
3:35)
In today's gospel, Jesus again returns home.
It was the Sabbath, and he was teaching in the synagogue.
The crowd in the synagogue began to grumble upon hearing
his teaching.
"Is not this the carpenter,
the Son of Mary, brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are
not his sisters here with us?"
In other words,
"Who
does he think he is?" Shocked
and astounded they questioned his audacity and even took
"offense" at him
Mark tells us. In Luke's
version of this same story,
Luke tells us Jesus' friends and neighbors were so filled with rage
at his teaching that they were about to throw him off a cliff when Jesus
"passed through the midst of
them and left town" (Luke 4:30)
whatever that means.
It sounds, to me, like he got out of town just in the nick of time.
Not long after I was ordained I went home and
served my home congregation - a huge church; three pastors, over 3000
members, multiple staff - the works.
I don't recall anybody trying to throw me off a cliff, but, with
some, I know I had credibility problem. The day I was installed
as an associate pastor in that congregation a woman greeted me at the
reception afterwards saying,
"Oh Joey,
(they used to call me Joey as
a kid-don't you all get any ideas)
I remember when you hit a baseball through my front window, and now look
at you!" (That was my first clue that going home might not
have been that great an idea) Other
times I would hear something like,
"Is this the same Joey Holub;
the pimply-face, stuttering, near-sighted little kid that used to run
around here."
THE SAME!
Of course, things like that were only said when I had said
something particularly challenging.
"Who does he think he is?
What does he know?
I
remember when he was just a kid."
No truer words have ever been spoken when
Jesus said,
"Prophets are not without
honor except in their hometown, and among their own kin,
and in their own house."
But, you see, this passage and related passages in
Mark are about far more
than merely Jesus' somewhat strained adult relationships and credibility
problem with his home town family and friends.
If that's all we think this is, then we
miss the point.
The gospels are theological documents.
Written decades after Jesus, they are not, first of all, merely
objective, factual, literal, sequential, historical accounts of Jesus'
life, but they are
testimonies.
Mark wrote and shaped his gospel (and so did Luke, Matthew and
John) as a testimony to what Jesus had come to mean in his
community; a testimony to his communities' ongoing experience
of Jesus decades after he was gone.
Mark's community, as well as Matthew's community and Luke's
community and John's community all
named Jesus as Lord;
meaning they followed Jesus and shaped their lives around Jesus. Jesus
was the dominant authoritative and mentoring figure in their community
life. And their existential
experience, their real experience of Jesus is reflected in the
unique way each gospel writer told and shaped the Jesus story.
When Mark wrote his gospel, he was not merely
rattling off a sequence of events in Jesus life, as if he were
writing a biography, but he was
connecting the dots -
that is assembling the stories and events of Jesus life that were passed
on him to create a picture, a portrait, a testimony
of what it meant for his community to follow Jesus and to shape their
life around Jesus.
Mark's gospel is a manifesto of a Christian
community, a Jesus community, struggling to create and incarnate and
live-out a new way of life - Jesus way of life; a new kind of
community - a community that was in fundamental conflict with the
dominant socio-economic-political order of the first century.
When we were kids, back in Illinois, in the days when
I was known as "Joey," our little community of neighborhood boys built a
clubhouse. We scavenged for
materials and put a lot of effort into it.
Upon completion, of course, our clubhouse had some membership
rules, and rule #1 was "Boys
Only!" Everybody was
fine with that until this one really cool girl moved into the
neighborhood. One of my
friends suggested that we make an exception in her case and allow
her into the club.
"Blasphemy! Sacrilege!
Heresy!" the
rest of us lamented. (We didn't
know the words blasphemy, sacrilege or heresy, but we knew the the
feeling). You
see, my friend's insane inclusive ideas created a
crises in our
little "boys club." How dare our friend suggest that we redraw the
boundaries of membership in our tight little exclusive community.
But you see that's
exactly what
Jesus was doing and exactly why everybody got so upset with him.
He was redrawing boundaries of membership in the communities that
were to form around him; redefining community - family - filial
relationships. The conflict
and tension that Mark portrays between Jesus and his family,
metaphorically was a conflict between old definitions of community and
family and Jesus' definition.
By reading the gospel of Mark closely, there are
three things,
at least, that we can say about characteristics of Mark's faith
community shaped around Jesus.
First,
it was an integrated community,
that is, a more inclusive community than what the social order
considered appropriate, acceptable and normal - and even allowed.
It was a community that
struggled to break down one of the most formidable barriers
of the time - the barrier between Jew and Gentile.
How do we know that? We
know that because Mark's Jesus, as I pointed out in a sermon two weeks
ago, was a boundary crosser.
Mark's Jesus was continually crossing boundaries between Jewish
and Gentile territory and running parallel ministries - doing the same
things: healing and teaching and acts of mercy on both sides of the
border. Mark's Jesus
embodied a God that was for everyone.
Mark's Jesus brought diverse peoples together.
Mark's Jesus did not distinguish in the usual prejudicial ways of
the social order that were considered normal.
Mark's community struggled to embody a more inclusive community
life that departed radically from the what the social order of the
time mandated. In that
sense, Mark's community was
subversive - subverting the accepted standards of the
social order.
Second,
it was a community that strove to characterize itself by "distributive
justice." The dominant
socio-economic order of the time was that a very small percentage of
wealthy elites collaborated with Roman authority to exploit and over-tax
the poor masses, casting them into ever-deepening poverty.
But Mark's community heard a different call from Jesus; to be a
community of "distributive justice."
How do we know that?
At the conclusion of this very chapter, chapter 6, Mark's
recounts the story of the feeding of the masses.
In the context of Mark's gospel this is story about distributive
justice. Jesus told his
disciples to give the crowd something to eat.
They could only find five loaves and two fish.
That didn't discourage Jesus.
After it passed through his hands and received God's blessing, he
put it back into the hands of the disciples to distribute, and everyone
was fed without distinction, with abundance left over.
The metaphorical point of the story is that distributive justice
was to characterize the communities that named Jesus as Lord and mentor.
There was enough for everyone, and obstacles of injustice that
prevented fair distribution were to be removed.
Third,
it was a community that elevated compassion over ritual observance.
In just the first three chapters of Mark, at least six times,
Jesus either broke strict Sabbath laws or departed radically from rigid
religious law in order to perform acts of compassion.
Mark's front-loading of those stories in his gospel testimony
indicate that his community elevated compassion over strict ritual
observance and legalism.
Mark's community embodied a radical departure from
the accepted religious, social, economic and political mandates of the
time. Mark's community,
shaped by their experience of Jesus, looked and lived differently:
integrated, distributive justice, and compassion over ritual observance.
So how do we measure up?
Could the same be said about our community?
What Jesus do we follow and shape our life around - the Jesus of
Mark; or some other Jesus recreated in our own image?
In my mind, there are at least a couple of ways
to evaluate how we measure up to Mark's paradigm of community life
shaped by their ongoing experience of Jesus.
One way is revealed in the quality of our life together
as a faith community? Do we
embody inclusivity? do we reflect generosity and the sharing of
distributive justice? Is
compassion paramount in our relationships with one another?
Another way is revealed in the way we interact with
the wider community: locally and globally.
Do we apply these same qualities in our interaction with the
wider community? These
things we
must think about, have conversation about and struggle to embody.
It is the challenge that rises up and out of
Mark's gospel, and his communities' struggle to embody Jesus in their
life together.