Going Home [Proper 9, Year b]

[Our lessons were Ezekiel 2:1-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; and Mark 6:1-13.]

Going home can be the cause of mixed emotions. It can be pleasant to see people and places that once were familiar, but now are parts of our past. But it is important for us to remember that we aren’t the same people we were then and that the places and people we knew have changed as well. I remember as a teenager returning after only a year to Cocoa Beach, Florida, where I had spent the previous seven years. We stopped by to visit with the people who had bought our house. I was shocked to see unfamiliar furniture in the familiar rooms and that even the kitchen counters seemed lower than I remembered them! The house had changed with its new owners and I had changed as well—after all, I was a growing teenager. I’m sure you can recall examples of your own.

But we have trouble accepting change and growth. Just like us, the people of Nazareth in today’s Gospel had trouble seeing beyond their memories of the youthful Jesus to recognize the power in him. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”

The people of Nazareth were unable to see beyond the familiar person to understand what they were hearing and seeing. (What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!) As Jesus said, prophets were without honor in the home towns.

It’s actually hard to truly honor a prophet. In the Jewish tradition (and thus ours), a prophet’s role was to speak for God, to speak God’s words. Often, those are words that people don’t want to hear. We don’t want to really hear them because God’s truth is hard for us to accept. It requires sacrifices of self and a radical obedience to God that can be costly, unpleasant, and unpopular.

Today’s reading calls on us to listen for the true prophets of God, even when they are familiar to us or when they are not who we would think of as “prophets” or when their message isn’t what we want to hear. May we be courageous enough and open enough to listen to the prophets among us and to heed the word of God that they reveal.

Our Gospel readings the last three Sundays have given us insights into the nature of Jesus’ kingship. He has sovereignty over the created order, so he is co-equal with the Creator. He has authority over life and law; he is one with the giver of life, the source of healing, and the author of law. He has power over evil spirits, so he shares equally in authority with the God of heaven.
Jesus’ authority derives from his absolute obedience and ultimate openness to the will of God.

His authority is exercised by being in relationship with those who come to him in faith, unlike earthly rulers who impose remoteness from those over whom they rule. His rule looks first to the powerless and those on the margins, the celebrated and privileged have no special status with him. Finally, Jesus exercises his kingly power by sharing it freely with those who come to him in faith.