Proper 9 Year B

Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house. . . And he could do no deed of power there.

Mark 6:1-13

Many a high school senior who graduated recently are feverishly finalizing plans to go off to college.  They will be entering that phase of life where they will begin to mature and develop intellectually and socially, and for many of them this development will take place in quantum leaps and bounds.

Then one day, the inevitable will happen: They will return home to find out that both they and their hometown family and friends are somehow different.

People can be easily prejudiced by impressions of others that very well might not apply any more.  Johnny may have graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard Medical School, but Johnny ran around with some real losers in high school and even spent a night in Juvenile Hall.  No way I’m letting him operate on me. 

I don’t think anybody has it tougher in this regard than priests.  After all, priests are supposed to set the ethical and moral standard; we’re supposed to be as pure and white as the albs we wear on Sunday, right? My recurring nightmare is one where I enter through the double doors in the back of the church and find my entire High School Senior Class staring at me as I walk up the aisle during the opening hymn.  These would be the people who would know that I had a slight problem getting homework in on time.  These would be the people who would know how much time I spent in detention after school. How could they help but be prejudiced by those past impressions, aside from the fact that familiarity alone breeds contempt as we’ve all heard more than once? To understand this is to begin to understand what Jesus faced when he finally returned to his hometown of Nazareth.

Nazareth is a fairly large, bustling town today, but in Jesus’ day, it was about the size of a football field with about 200 residents.  Talk about a small-town boy with a reputation! And Mark tells us, he could do no deed of power there.

What would have happened in Nazareth that day if they had accepted Jesus fully. . . in love. . . without any misleading presuppositions?  What would have happened if those kinsfolk in Nazareth had bothered to adjust their attitudes just before Jesus arrived?  We’ll never know for certain, but I sure would have enjoyed reading about it in Mark’s Gospel. The fact is that prejudice, whether racial, social, economic, intellectual or religious can prevent miracles from taking place in our own hometowns, in our own back yards.

There was a time when I thought we had a pretty good hold on racism, but after watching some of the outrageous disrespect for our former Black President, and seeing churches burning in the South, and overhearing conversations where everything from the drought to global warming is blamed on non-white immigrants into this country, I realize we aren’t even close, and all of us are guilty!

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary. . .?  They asked.

Those Nazarenes reminded Jesus that he was a Carpenter, and they weren’t about to let a member of the working poor tell them how to live their lives.  Does that ring a bell with anyone today? 

 And he could do no deed of power there. . .

Christians should be walking miracles, not people who prevent miracles. I was fortunate because I became a father for the first time in an era when it was acceptable for men to be invited into the delivery rooms to watch their children be born.  I had the privilege of watching all three of my children be delivered into this world.  Each time, the only word that kept coming into my mind was the word, Miracle.  I saw each one of my children as a miracle.

But as time went on, how often would the pressures of a hectic day cause me to see them as a bother, or as another untimely interruption. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?  Momentary prejudices can cause one to miss a miracle in the moment.

Did you ever hear of the time when two apples up in a tree were looking down on the world.  The first apple said, Look at all those people fighting and hurting each other all the time.  No one seems willing to get along with anyone else.  Someday we apples will be the only ones left, and then we will rule the world.

To which the second apple asks, Which of us – the ‘Reds’ or the ‘Greens’?

The great Socrates was written off as an immoral corrupter of youth.

Albert Einstein was once described by his schoolmaster as mentally slow and adrift in foolish dreams. Walt Disney was once fired by a newspaper editor who complained that he was lacking in creative ideas. And after Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director read, Can’t act.  Slightly bald. Can dance a little though.

If we Christians, who live and move and have our being in the world of Resurrection, can’t begin to shed presuppositions and prejudices and see all the miracles around us, then who will? How do we do this?  Well, at the risk of sounding incredibly simplistic, I think we just do it!  We begin by practicing the fine art of looking for miracles before we even leave church, and then continue as soon as we plant our feet on the floor Monday morning. Look for miracles in the eyes of people who don’t look like us or live like us. 

There is an old rabbinic phrase that says every time human beings walk down the street, they are preceded by hosts of angels who are shouting, Make way, make way for the image of God.

Those angels don’t limit it to only special human beings who meet certain economic standards and social standings, and they don’t say they only walk down Wall Street or Easy Street.  No, It’s any human being on any street, anywhere.

So, here’s a little homework for this week. Let’s begin the practice of blocking out all those creepy crawly prejudices and presuppositions. Let’s try to look at every person wherever we are, no matter their appearance, as an image of God, a walking miracle.

Because you know what?  They really are!