“Hometown Hero”

Mark 6:1-13

July 9, 2006

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Andrew Fleming

Most preachers can remember the first time that they stood up and preached in front of their parents. I know I can. It happened at the First United Methodist Church in Trenton, Tennessee during a Sunday evening worship service. At the time, I was the youth minister there and a senior at Lambuth College.

Looking back at it now, I am not sure if the pastor was more interested in giving me a chance to preach my first ever sermon, or if he just wanted the evening off from his preaching duties. It is hard, I think, to preach both Sunday morning and Sunday evening worship services.

My parents drove the forty-five minutes from Jackson to Trenton and took a seat near the pastor in the Sunday School room where the worship service was held. You see, I didn’t get to preach my first sermon in a sanctuary. What I remember most about that evening was that my sermon was horrible. I remember being in the middle of the sermon and thinking that I should go ahead and sit down and count my losses. That is what I wanted to do. Actually what I wanted to do was to run away.

After it was all over, what I recall is that my boss, the pastor, and my parents came up to me, shook my hand, and told me what a great job I did. I looked at them with a you have got to be kidding look. It is a small miracle I ever stood behind another pulpit. It was that bad!

Standing in front of your parents to preach is different than standing in front of them to do other things. It is different than the dance or the piano recital. When it comes time for the piano recital, your parents have heard the piece that you are going to play no less than a thousand times. In fact, they have insisted that you practice the piece. When it comes time for the dance recital, you have sneaked a peek when you have picked up your child. Or, you have been to the dress rehearsal and have seen what her part will entail.

But preaching, well, that is something all together different. Preaching is dangerously public, and it emerges from something intensely private. Parents and brothers and sisters who have known you during your growing up years, have every reason to be afraid, to be very afraid. Some story might come to light, some embarrassing moment might be shared all in the name of making a point. The story or the embarrassing moment will be like a flag waved around for everyone to see and hear. Everyone is vulnerable at a moment like that!

Yes, most preachers remember that first sermon in front of their parents. We also remember the first time that we preached at our home church. For me it happened at the First United Methodist Church in Jackson, Tennessee on what preachers now jokingly call National Associate Pastor Sunday. That is the Sunday after Christmas, the Sunday that traditionally has the lowest attendance of the year. This time I was a semester shy of finishing up my seminary work.

I wonder what I was thinking when I said yes to the invitation to preach at home. I knew that I could not preach to the hometown crowd. I knew that I couldn’t preach to the hometown crowd. Verlene Humphreys would be in the congregation. She is the woman who came home with me from the hospital to help my mother with two children who were thirteen months apart in their ages. Usually Verlene was in the nursery, but when I preached, she would be out there, maybe front and center, in the Sanctuary. When I stood up to preach, would she hear the sermon, or would she think about all of the diapers that she changed? I couldn’t preach to the hometown crowd. Jim Freeman would be in the congregation. He was the one who walked into Mister Donut that Sunday morning. I should have been in Sunday School. I wasn’t. My parents thought that that is where I was. Would Jim remember the sermon, or would he remember that one Sunday I chose donuts over learning. My real fear was that the people in my home church would remember my growing up year instead of the sermon that I literally worked weeks on. Well, multiply all of that a bit and you have the setting for our scripture lesson for this morning, taken from the sixth chapter of Mark’s gospel. Jesus continues on his journey toward the cross. His next stop is filled with disappointment!

We pick the lesson up exactly where we left Jesus and the disciples last Sunday. Jesus has just accomplished some of his most amazing miracles. He stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee. He healed the frightened man at Gersaene. He healed the woman with the issue of blood. He brought back to life Jarius’ little girl. Maybe now he is looking for a little rest and a comforting closeness. Jesus comes home, to Nazareth. What he experiences there is anything but comfort. It’s anything but a rejuvenating moment in his ministry.

It is a Sabbath day in Nazareth. The crowd is bigger than usual, not just because Jesus and the disciples are there. The crowd is bigger because there is buzz. People are wondering what Jesus might do. Nazareth is usually a quiet place, an out of the way village in the Galilee hill country; it’s off the beaten path and away from all of the roadways that run to the east and to the west. Seldom does something significant happen in Nazareth. So the congregation that Sabbath day was expecting something significant.

Jesus stands up, reads the scripture lesson, a word from a prophet. Then he begins to preach. It is his sermon that gets him in trouble. Jesus was not just another guest preacher at the Synagogue. He is not just up there telling people how to obey God’s laws, offering God’s hope for the future, explaining the prophet’s words. Jesus is more than that. Jesus stands up and says the kinds of things that he has been saying in the nearby villages. He has strange ideas about how God loves sinners, how new wine cannot fit in old wine skins, and that his real family consists of those who follow him. There are no gimmicks in Nazareth. There are no signs in the Synagogue. There are no wonders there. There are just words. And those who worship can put up with words for only so long, right? The people in Nazareth want to know where the special effects are. They are more than a little disappointed. And pretty soon, I suspect, they start to lean in towards one another. They whisper at first, maybe they write notes to each other on their worship bulletins. Then they get louder. Perhaps someone stand up, interrupts Jesus, and asks, “Where did you get all of this? What wisdom can you give us? We taught you everything you know! What mighty acts can you perform when we taught you the way the world works?” Then someone remembers rocking Jesus to sleep in the nursery. Someone else remembers Jesus running through the streets of their town. Perhaps someone mentions Jesus’ family. Nazareth is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. Jesus’ brothers and sisters grew up with their kids. And as far as they can tell, there is nothing all that special about Jesus.

Mark tells us that the people took offense at him. While they took offense, Jesus took the defense. He said, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Mark also tells us that Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. Nazareth is not impressed with the carpenter’s kid. And not surprisingly, the carpenter’s kid cannot do any of his famed miracles there. Every where else Jesus goes, people are impressed with his teachings and astonished by his signs and wonders. But not in Nazareth. In Nazareth, the people know who Jesus is, so they will not let him be different.

This is the story of Jesus in a smaller scale. John puts it this way at the beginning of his gospel, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” The very people who hunger and thirst for God sometimes reject God in their midst. The very people who pray for the Messiah miss him when he comes. Jesus is not welcome there.

That leads us to the second part of the lesson, where Jesus sends out the disciples, two by two. At first I thought that there was no connection between the first part of our lesson and the second. Now I am sure that there is a connection. Jesus gives the disciples authority over unclean spirits. Then he gives them instructions. These are emergency instructions for a swift and dangerous mission. These are not instruction on what to do after Easter Sunday.

First, Jesus tells them to travel light. There is no need for an overnight bag. There is no need for money. All they need is a pair of sandals and one tunic. Next he tells them that when they come to a town, they aren’t to move from house to house. When people come to look for them, they need to know where to go. And finally, Jesus tells the disciples if they are unsuccessful in a town, if the town does not welcome them or the message they proclaim, they are to shake the dust off of their sandals and move on.

Jesus knew about rejection. In fact he knew it first hand. He had experienced it. He knew that success would not always greet the disciples. He knew that some people prefer to stay sick rather than face the challenge of a new way of life. Mark’s gospel is quick. The Jesus of this gospel says there is no time to lose. If people won’t listen to the gospel, if they can’t accept it, then the disciples must move on. And woe to those who missed their chance.

Now, how does this speak to us? I think that we live in a time where we want to be successful and in a time when we are afraid of failure. And here is Jesus, a failure at home. Along with the giving of power and the advice to travel light, Jesus tells us what we are to do when failure happens. Following Jesus, you see, doesn’t insulate us from failure. No one likes to hear that they are going to face failure.

It is a particular fear for pastors. There is a little seed of doubt in all of us who wonder if we will make a difference. We wonder if this is the church where we won’t be accepted, where they will ask us to leave. We wonder if what worked in a previous church will work in this one. It is a real fear.

So I leave you with the advice that Knute Larson gave in an article in a magazine whose name is Leadership. Knute speaks about pastoral leadership, but I think that his words are appropriate for all of us. First, he says, get back on your feet. The example that he gives is a linebacker from the past, a player for the Chicago Bears. Mike Singletary had a knack for making tackles after he had been knocked down. He would get back up and make the play. Second, Knute advises, take a break. Most of our defeats are not earth shattering, so it makes sense to do something fun for a while. Take a walk. Watch a movie. Do what energizes you. Then hit it again. Third, Knute advises, find someone you can talk to. That is hard in the ministry. It is hard in life.

It is good to be reminded that God is still God and people will still do what they want to do. You cannot do anything about those things. It is good to be reminded that nothing is accomplished without some risk. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

Remember God has not called us to be successful. God has called us to be significant. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to the writers of Homiletics magazine for the quotes from Knute Larson’s article).