The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
July 6, 2003

Local Boy Does Good
Mark 6:1-6

Driving along Backroads the welcome signs into a town are often complemented by little markers of local boys and girls who did their town proud. You’ll see “Home of the 1986 National Little League Champions” or “Home of the 1997 Miss Georgia.” All sorts of sons and daughters of the town are honored along roadsides. Olympic medal winners and other sports stars are common. But towns are given to honoring all sorts of accomplishments. It shows the town in a good light to see what the place has produced.

This morning’s Gospel reading presents a very different scene. Jesus is not welcomed in his own hometown. How could Jesus not be welcomed in Nazareth. He is known throughout the ages as “Jesus of Nazareth.” It is the ultimate story of a local boy doing good. The carpenter’s son from a small town in the rural backwater province of Galilee turns out to be the Son of God through whom redemption comes for the whole world. Now if any town should throw a parade to welcome the hometown hero, it ought to be Nazareth. The mayor should be out standing on a platform decked with flags to present Jesus with the key to the city. The local newspaper reporter should be out interviewing the family and friends for the front-page story. But that’s not the way it went down.

What happened is this: Jesus began his ministry on the road. He left Nazareth and went out to his cousin John who was baptizing in the Jordan River. There, the Holy Spirit came upon him and his ministry began. After retreating to the desert for 40 days and overcoming temptation, Jesus returned to Galilee with the Good News that the Kingdom of God had come near. Jesus called his first disciples on his return to Galilee. Then Jesus set up a base of operations in Capernaum, the hometown of those first disciples: Simon Peter, his brother Andrew, and the sons of Zebedee, James and John.

Jesus began to travel around the region of Galilee preaching and healing. Three chapters earlier in his Gospel Mark recalled that as Jesus’ family got word of his new line of work, they were worried. Jesus’ family tried to restrain him for people are worried that he has gone out of his mind. Jesus’ mother and brothers wanted him to come home to Nazareth and give up his ministry.

On that day, Jesus proclaimed that all who do the will of God are his brothers and sisters. You can be sure that news of this encounter soon reached Nazareth. This was not a story of a local boy making it in the wider world. They feared that Jesus of Nazareth had gone off the religious deep end and would soon disgrace their town.

Jesus continued his ministry of preaching and healing. He cast the demons out of the man among the tombs who called himself legion for the demons that plagued him were so numerous. Then Jesus raised a synagogue leader’s daughter from the dead. Immediately after her resuscitation, Jesus returned to Nazareth.

Jesus was no stranger. Jesus grew up among them. Jesus’ life was an open book for the other people in this small town. The people of Nazareth knew that Joseph was called Jesus’ father, but that Jesus was conceived out of wedlock. They also knew about Jesus’ early years. Sure he was a model citizen, a respected carpenter, but Jesus was no Rabbi. With all the talk that had filtered in from the surrounding towns about the things Jesus had taught and the miracles he performed, the people must have been ready to see this new Jesus for themselves. This was no carpenter returning to work, but a traveling miracle worker come to town.

It was the Sabbath and all the faithful Jews of Nazareth went to the synagogue. Jesus asked to read and comment on the scripture for the day and was given the go ahead. Can you imagine the buzz around the synagogue that morning as everyone realized that Jesus was going to speak.

As Jesus taught, the people listened to his words about the Kingdom of God come near. He called them to repent and believe in the Good News. But the Good News Jesus offered was too much for the people of Nazareth to swallow. He might have gotten straight As at Nazareth Elementary, but that didn’t qualify him for “Son of God.” The crowd asked, “Where did this man get all this?” You see they were familiar his whole life, it was among these very people that Jesus was raised and then worked as a carpenter until the age of 30. Now he was the “Son of God?”

Then, to make the problem crystal clear, someone spoke up and said, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” Now that might not sound like a put-down to me and you, but to someone in Nazareth in Jesus’ time, that was quite a slam. You see carpenter’s worked with their hands; honest work, yes, but it didn’t qualify one to speak on matters of religion. Then, worst of all, they referred to him as the son of Mary. Calling Jesus the son of Mary and not mentioning Joseph made it plain that everyone knew that no one knew who Jesus’ father really was.

If that was not enough to put the upstart prophet in his place, someone else reminded the crowd that Jesus was the brother of “James and Joses, and Judas and Simon” and that his sisters all lived among them as well. The crowd, who needed no reminders, was reminded that Jesus was one of them. Jesus was a simple man from Galilee. Jesus had no business traveling around the country preaching and healing. Jesus was the first born of all things. With Joseph now dead, Jesus needed to be home taking care of his Mama instead of gallivanting around Galilee proclaiming the Good News that he was the Good News.

Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. In the midst of the doubts and fears, Jesus could only cure a few of the sick people of Nazareth. He continued on his mission around Galilee, leaving his hometown behind. Jesus of Nazareth was no longer welcome in Nazareth.

Where is the Good News for us in this story? If Jesus wasn’t seen to be the Son of God by those who knew him best, what does that mean to you and me? I always like to ask myself as I am preparing a sermon, “What difference does this scripture make in the coming week?” This week, the Gospel reading confronts us with the scandal of the Incarnation, the scandal of God becoming a human, the scandal of God living with us, the scandal of God living as one of us.

The people of Nazareth could not grasp the possibility of Jesus’ divinity. And this very problem, the problem of the people of Nazareth not being able to accept Jesus as the Son of God, can be Good News for you. In fact, this Gospel reading can have a profound impact on the week ahead.

We have the gift of hindsight, which the people of Nazareth did not yet have. We can look back on all that Jesus did in his own lifetime. We can read Jesus’ teachings and study his miracles. Then we can look to all that his followers did after his death. Just a dozen men from Galilee turned the whole Roman world around. Christianity would go from persecution to the official religion of the Roman Empire in a few hundred years. The Roman Emperor Constantine would build a Christian Church in Nazareth. Now, 2,000 years later, not a person on the planet who thinks of the village of Nazareth does so without thinking of the name of Jesus. Jesus’ story is the ultimate story of a small town boy who done good.

We can see the great miracles that occurred in Jesus’ lifetime, in the lives of his followers and in our own lives today. We can see the power of God transforming lives here in Camden County in the name of Jesus Christ. So, we can be more certain of Jesus’ divinity than the people of Nazareth were. We know Jesus as the Son of God.

To our own assurance of Jesus being God’s son, we add the experience of the people of Nazareth. They remind us of how very human Jesus was. Living with Jesus for most of the first 30 years of his life convinced the people of Nazareth that Jesus was a regular guy.

It was as a plain old Joe that Jesus experienced life in Nazareth, with all its joys and sorrows, just like everybody else. And that is the Good News from this morning’s Gospel. Jesus, the Son of God, knows our joys and our sorrows better than a distant God ever could.
We do not worship a distant God. We do not worship a God who can’t understand us. We worship a God who has lived among us. We worship a God who knows our joys. We worship a God who knows our pain. We worship a living God who has lived among us.

After all, it was there in Nazareth that Jesus mourned as his adopted father Joseph died. So Jesus understands when we mourn for our family and friends who die. It was in Nazareth, that Jesus first felt the temptation to sin and came to understand the temptations. So Jesus understands the various temptations we will all face this coming week. Jesus knows the pain of a family torn apart, as his own family was torn by his calling to live as God among us. Jesus knows all the broken parts of our human lives and loves us anyway. And it is to that Jesus that we pray and through him that we receive the forgiveness of his loving father, our God and creator.

No matter how broken your life has become, no matter what pain or grief you have to bear, Jesus understands. On the cross, Jesus experienced all the pain of the world and loved us all anyway. Not because he couldn’t understand us, but because he did.

Jesus is still present to us in a form that seems all too common. In just a few minutes, we will come forward to partake of bread and wine. These products of human hands are just the common stuff of life, yet God still comes to us in and through them. Jesus is present in the bread and wine and we partake of that very real presence in communion. Jesus still encounters us in a very real way. Then as we go out from this service, we remember how the Jesus we encounter in the bread and wine wants to go with us through all our week, to experience our joys and sorrows with us.

Amen.