“THE SENDING PLAN”

5TH Sunday after Pentecost    July 9, 2006

United Lutheran---Red Wing, MN

Mark 6:1-13

Grace and Peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.   Amen.

              Garrison Keillor has popularized images of our Midwestern culture with his fictional community of Lake Woebegone.  He never seems to shy away from describing a small community’s darker side.   Likewise, Mark is not bothered by revealing the small town’s soft underbelly. 

              Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown seems a bit tepid, lukewarm to Jesus.  Not at first, for they were astounded after his teaching in the synagogue.  They wondered where he got the wisdom and wondered at his deeds of power which he performed.  But it wasn’t long before they were filled with questions about him.  Wouldn’t you think if a local celebrity makes good they would be proud?  Maybe they would plan a parade, serve lamb on a stick, fill the time with lots of events and attractions, unfurl a banner or two and go con-gratulate the favorite son.

              But that’s not what we read.  Family and friends reject him.  Others had rejoiced over his wonderful deeds but not so in his own home town.  It’s consistent to the witness of other New Testament books.   In the Gospel of John, the 1st chapter we read, “He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.”  Paul wrestles with a similar theme of rejection in Romans 9-11 where Jesus was rejected by the people.  Jesus’ own people are not the Jews as a whole, but friends and relatives, and the dominant emotion on their part and his, was astonishment.  “Who is this?  Who does he think he is?  Isn’t he a member of our own family?

              The astonishment had turned when they reflected on the fact that he was a carpenter, Mary’s son, brothers to the neighbors and more.  Maybe familiarity does breed contempt!   Literally, the various translations says things like, “they stumbled”, “they were scandalized”, “they fell foul of him”, or “found him too much for them”.  Basically, “they rejected him”.  A prophet is not welcomed in his hometown. (I told a rather lengthy story of returning to my home congregation at a time when a critical decision was being made and how that made me feel-wondering if my words would be accepted or rejected).

              The result is the rejection of a prophet by his own people and the hindrance of over familiarity to his healing.  It ends with Jesus being amazed.  “He marveled because of their unbelief”.

              The point is NOT that Jesus is impotent without our faith. Rather, the unbelief of Jesus’ own people had a restrictive and a dampening effect on his work in their midst. It also marks the end of his work in Nazareth.  Rather than stay to argue with his own people or to try convince them by further mighty works, Jesus moved on.  Mark records, “And he went on among the villages teaching.”

              The bad news is that Jesus’ accepts his own family’s verdict of rejection and leaves.  The good news is their rejection does not discourage or stop him and he sets out to do his work elsewhere which will be a model for his disciples to emulate.  Jesus is on a mission of mercy for the world.  Henri Nouwen has described how people can become closed to the new and strange in their religious experience.  In his book, Reaching Out,

He writes, “When our heart is filled with prejudices, worries, jealousies, there is little room for the stranger or the stranger’s message.  God is not only greater than our mind, God is also greater than our heart, and just as we have to avoid the temptation of adapting God to our small concepts, we also have to avoid adapting him to our small feelings.”

              Jesus continues the ministry of teaching, continues to offer the Good News he comes to bring to whoever has ears to hear. That has a word of truth for us as well today. For we as the church see ourselves as the family of Christ.   Jesus rejection by his own people addresses the community of faith today, as a warning and a challenge.  IN the context of the story, “his own people” refers to those he grew up with in Nazareth.  In our context today, “his own people” is best understood as the group that formally claims Jesus as its own, claims to be his, and feels some special right to him, namely, as His church/body. We identify ourselves as brothers and sisters in Christ(The family of God.)

As we seek to follow and understand the will of God and the coming of the Kingdom.

              The spiritual climate of a congregation, its sense of expectancy, its openness to the power of God at work through Christ, will in fact have a great deal to do with how much God’s power can accomplish in a particular community of faith.  Our unbelief doesn’t render God important, but when it’s dominant in a congregation its dampening effect can be evident and a hindrance to mission.

              The God we meet in this story is one we know well in our worship, in our common disciplines of the Christian life, and in the lives of ordinary people around us. This “common one”(Jesus) is no less than the Holy One in whom the Kingdom of God draws near. His rejection becomes a foretaste of what is to come in his final rejection, suffering, and death.

              We as the church are often tempted to preach the attractiveness of Jesus.  We might think that after rejection Jesus would have had enough.  If your hometown folks don’t back you, why bother?  There’s popular wisdom saying that says, “Never let success go to your heart; never let failure go to your heart!” His rejection doesn’t go to the heart of Jesus but rather motivates him to be the sender of his disciples. It motivates

the disciples to teach and heal in His name.

              What ensues is a plan for sending out his disciples but to begin with he speaks of the cost of discipleship and what they will need.  As badly as the world needs to hear about God’s coming Kingdom, it may not want to hear about it.  Those whom he first called, then set apart, had not yet fully understood him either.  Even less do they share his way of obedience to the will of God.  But they are on the way to understanding.  Always vowing, always trying to follow.  Jesus doesn’t wait for them to fully understand before sending them. 

              They could not afford to be weighed down by rejection or anything, including their possessions. Take only what you absolutely need, not one thing more. TRAVEL LIGHT!  No bread, no bad, no money, no pictorial brochures, no Visa Gold card. None of those things we consider essential but to rely on those who hear them. Take only one staff, one pair of sandals, one tunic…AND ONE COMPANION.

              Jesus sent them out in pairs.  He could have sent them alone, but he didn’t. He knew that to do the work before them, they would need each other.  They could leave all else behind, but they could not leave home without each other.  They needed each other for support, to face rejection, and to remain faithful.  So do we!  We can do all kinds of things alone; we can pray, we can talk to God alone, contemplate God’s wonderful creation; but we cannot work for the mission of Christ alone.  We cannot spread the good news alone, give healing to this broken world alone, for we need the Lord and one another.   We don’t always see eye to eye.  We may get on each other’s nerves from time to time. We may not always be the best traveling companions.  If not literally, then figuratively/symbolically, we need each other.

              To do the work for which God sends us, we still need each other.  To bear one another’s burdens, to keep each other faithful, to believe for one another when faith becomes difficult for us, to hold firm to one another in moments of failure.  We are God’s gift to one another.  Because Christ binds us together.

              The world remains in need of healing and in need of the promise.  God has given us each other and sent us as companions for the sake of Christ.  For the sake of the world.

The good news we share is about salvation which has to do with wholeness in body, mind, and spirit.  Healing means restoration of unity, to regain one’s life as a whole. Healing is reuniting all dimensions of our lives.  To stand in front of a starving mother who is holding a malnourished child and proclaim the love of Christ but offering no food does not bring healing.  Healing means reuniting all dimensions of life.

              While we are broken vessals, nevertheless, nevertheless we are bearers of Christ and with Christ for one another and the world.  This is our abiding and sending call.  Our resources in the end don’t accomplish the work, nor does the quality of our lives.  What counts is the power of God conferred upon us by Christ.  That’s why he dares to send us, and why we dare to be used, and why remarkable things still happened in the name of Christ even through the obedience of inadequate messengers.

              I believe Christ still gives us everything we need to be his disciples; his promise, his word, his presence, and each other. This week a good number of our youth and their adult counselors are heading to San Antonio to the National Youth Gathering.  The theme this year is “CRUZENDO—TO JOURNEY WITH JESUS”!   CRUZ means “Cross”.  It will be a journey that crosses barriers that divine and separate us from one another.  Even as they will journey for these days together, so do we every day.  They will experience new people from around the country and nations of the world.  They will hear speakers

who will seek to inspire them.  They will sing and worship with the multitudes.  And when Sunday comes, they will be sent out into the world(which even means coming home) to be people of God now. We all journey as the people of God together.