The church was plagued with two bad boys, or maybe it was three. The two really bad boys offended nearly everybody in that church. They ran through the hails, rudely bumping those who were in the way. Elderly ladies cringed when they saw them coming. Small children screamed and hid behind their mothers’ legs. Deacons got aggressive, wishing they could turn these hooligans over their knees and give them the good stout board of education. But it was hard to get hold of the problem of those two bad boys, or maybe it was three.
One of the bad boys was the pastor’s son, and out of deference to his father, nobody did much of anything about him. His thing was to explore the church building, from top to bottom. While Sunday School was going on, he was in and out of all the rooms, mugging and giggling. During worship service he was in the closets, down in the boiler room, raiding the refrigerator in the kitchen, and making phone calls from his father’s desk. They let him have his run of the place, and muttered under their breath about how no good would ever come of this boy. This one was not going to amount to anything. Preacher’s kids never do. Every heart stood still that Sunday the pastor actually interrupted his sermon to scold his son, who was lobbing those little golf pencils churches use off the balcony rail and into the light fixtures.
I see you, balcony! Don’t even think about it!
As for the other bad boy, well, he wasn’t the pastor’s son, but he was the rich man’s son. His father and mother swung a lot of weight around the church, because they put in lots of cold cash every Sunday, so nobody could afford to offend them. They were carrying a large part of the church program on their own shoulders. And so, again, everyone gritted his teeth and grumbled that this other bad boy, this other arrogant, loud, boisterous clown, he also was doomed to a bad end. This one played football with his brothers right in the middle of the crowd trying to leave the worship service, He ran off with the pastor’s Bible just before preaching was to begin. He loosened all the saltshaker lids, so that everybody’s Wednesday night dinner was ruined when they dumped too much salt on their parsley potatoes. They said he was incorrigible. No good could be expected from him.
After all, they reasoned, if they come from bad families, or at least families that will not manage them, then you cannot expect anything but bad boys. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, right?
Two bad boys, and maybe a third, who often got drawn into following the other two. Who secretly and quietly enjoyed the pranks the others played, who wanted badly to be liked, and who therefore joined in the fun when he could get away with it. They probably didn’t think anything positive would come from him either. Two bad boys in that church, and maybe a third.
The problem is, however, that when we focus only on certain behavior, and don’t see anything else, we may miss the things that really matter. If we see a person only for what he does right now, and not for what he might become, we may miss out on what God is going to do in his life. And if we think we have explained somebody just because of where he came from and who his family is, we have missed out on God’s greatest miracle.
I’ve had some comments this week about my sermon title. "Dissin’ the Homeboy". Some have wanted to know what "dissin’’" means. Where have you been? Others have asked what a homeboy is. You haven’t been listening, have you? Still others have wondered if the pastor’s been out in the streets and not buried away behind the stained glass, like pastors are supposed to be. And one of you even suggested that my syntax was off and my language politically incorrect, that I should call the sermon, "Dissinggg the Domestic Person." Whatever the words are, do you have a feeling for what "Dissin’ the Homeboy" means? "Dissin’ the Homeboy" means disrespecting our own. It means devaluing those who are part of us, part of our family, part of our community. It means putting down and disregarding our own children. “Dissin’ the Homeboy” means not seeing that the so-called bad boys and bad girls have potential. To diss’ is to disrespect, disregard, and write off our very own.
The best bad boy story I know is found in Mark, chapter 6, where Jesus comes home. Back in his home community, among his own family, he speaks at his home synagogue. Kind of like Youth Sunday or Graduate Recognition Sunday at Takoma Park, Jesus comes to speak at the synagogue. The response was swift, decisive, and caustic. Listen to how those people dissed their homeboy:
Mark 6:1-6
I
Isn’t it fascinating? You might have thought that the people among whom Jesus grew up would have been his most ardent fans. You might have supposed that they would have been proud of Him. But no! Not at all. They were astounded at Him, but they were not pleased. They were offended at Him. They took exception to Him. They snarled at Him. And, in the end, they disempowered Him. I want you to see that dissin’ the homeboy means disempowering him. If you do not respect the child, you actually reduce his potential.
Many who heard Jesus teach were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? ... And Jesus could do no deed of power there."
We should have learned by now that disrespect disempowers. When you believe in someone, you actually help him do what he is supposed to do. But when you do not believe in him, and you show it, you help create the very thing you are afraid of.
Do you know that many of us live in response to the way we were treated by others? Do you know that not just children, not just youth, but even adults live out of needing to please significant others?
My father grew up in a very small town in northeastern Indiana. Cromwell, which never had more than 400 people in it, was one of those places where everybody knew everybody else’s business. There were no secrets. And, of course, every child was known and judged by who his parents were. And so, when my father achieved something as a boy, he would hear about it on the street, but only on the street. His father, my grandfather, would never give a word of encouragement face-to-face. He would go to town and sit around the general store and the post office and brag on his boy to the other men, but he would not say one word to his son directly. Not one scrap of encouragement; only criticism, only, "You’re not good enough." And I want you to know that my father, I think almost to his dying day, was still trying to prove to his long-deceased father that he could do something right.
Does that sound crazy to you? Does that seem unbelievable? It is not. It is not. Many of us, even as adults, are living out of an emotional and spiritual deficit. We are still trying to please significant people who never really encouraged us.
When we disrespect a child, we disempower him. When we diss’ our homeboys, we set them up for a lifetime of trying to prove themselves. And a whole lot of them will try to prove themselves to be the bad boys we’ve told them they are.
A pastor friend of mine tells how he was trying to get his church to grow, and so he was out there attending committee meetings or visiting people every night. No matter how tired he was or how late it was, he would stay out there trying to get in one more visit, make one more phone call, write one more letter. And he was exhausted; it didn’t fulfill him at all. Success notwithstanding, he just didn’t feel happy. He says that one night he got home after midnight; he slipped into the house, where his wife and children had already gone to bed, and he flung himself down and tried to pray, wondering again why all this work, all this effort was so unsatisfying. All of a sudden, Larry says, it hit him. He sat straight up in bed, and shouted out, "I’m doing this for my mother!" "I’m doing this for my mother!" Trying to get the attention and the love and the approval of a harsh, demanding, unpleasant mother, who had never found anything right in what young Larry did! And he had come to see that his drivenness, his unhappiness, even while he was doing perfectly good things, all of it came from being disrespected, disregarded, and disempowered as a child.
Men and women, we hold in our very hands the lives of our children. If even Jesus was limited by the low expectations and the disrespect of his hometown, how much more are our children disempowered if we do not encourage them! Dissin’ the homeboy is a very serious mistake!
II
But, you know, it was not only that the people of Jesus’ hometown wrote Him off and refused to believe in Him. It was not only that they refused to see His personal potential and therefore limited what He could do. It was also that they put themselves down. It was also that they wrote off their own community. I want you to see that dissin’ the homeboy means dissin’ your own community. Kids who don’t make it come out of communities that aren’t working. So if you do not believe in your own community you will not build its children.
Did you know that there is such a thing as a sick community? A whole place can be infected with an inferiority complex, and it becomes a breeding ground for crime and trouble, just because its people no longer believe in themselves.
The people of Nazareth just couldn’t believe that Jesus could be anybody, because look where he came from. He came from a sick situation. He came from a single-parent home, and most commentators think that the fact that they called him the son of Mary and didn’t mention Joseph means that they were still making sly remarks about the question of Jesus’ paternity. He came from what they considered an incomplete home, what they thought of as a sick situation.
And he came from a sick community. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary ... we have his brothers and his sisters right here in Nazareth." Now do you remember that in John’s Gospel, when a man named Nathaniel was asked to come follow Jesus, he said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Nazareth was known as a dusty, nondescript, nowhere kind of place. It was a sick community.
"Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." And if that hometown and own kin and own house think of themselves as depressed, deprived, and criminal, then they will be just that. And they will diss’ their homeboys.
There are sick communities. That’s why it’s so important that the church be an alternative community. The church can exist in a sick community and be a model of health. The church can plant its presence in the heart of the combat zone and be an outpost of peace. The church can be a healthy community right in the middle of the sick community, so that people can catch a glimpse of what ought to be, what can be.
We have heard it said that it takes a whole village to raise a child. But what if the village itself is sick? Then the church needs to be another kind of village.
Have you noticed that sometimes, right in the middle of a depressed community, where the streets are Iittered and the houses are tumbledown, there are church buildings that present a completely different picture? Church buildings which are beautiful, well-kept, attractive? Why is that?
Well, I know that sometimes it is the ego of a pastor who just milks the people to build a monument to himself. I know that that can happen. But I will also tell you that there are beautiful, well-kept, attractive churches in poor communities because those churches are smart enough to know that there has to be somebody there who will look healthy. Somebody there who will show them what success looks like. Somebody, the church, has to present health and wholeness in sick communities, because sick communities tell young people that they are sick, and pretty soon they really are sick.
I wonder. I wonder. Is there also such a thing as a sick church? Sick families, sick neighborhoods, and maybe also sick churches? That’s worth wondering about.
Jesus came from an incomplete family in a sick community, and the evidence suggests that He was nurtured in a sick faith community too. This was not the first time Jesus had spoken in his hometown synagogue. A year before they had just about gone wild and his family had wanted to put him away, out of sight and out of mind. There was something about this synagogue that just didn’t work. Yes, there are sick faith communities, too.
Did you know that after this incident, Jesus, so far as the record shows, never went back to his home town, and never went back to teach in a synagogue again! Sick faith communities drive people out, and they never come back! Sick churches are more a part of the problem than they are a part of the answer. So serious a thing it is to diss’ the homeboy and to diss’ the community!
III
But there is a bottom line here, friends. There is a rock bottom issue. And that is that dissin’ the homebody not only disempowers young people; and not only that dissin’ the homebody is a sign of a sick community. It is also that dissin’ the homeboy means dissin’ God. Writing off any person is the same thing as writing off God. It is saying that we don’t think God can do it. It is saying that we don’t believe that God can reach down and pick up anybody from out of the miry clay and set their feet upon a rock.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, that if we do not believe that people can be changed by the power of God, then we deserve to shut up our mouths and shutter our doors and go join the bowling league or the country club or something where at least we can have fun and not pretend to make a difference! Because our God is in the business, I tell you, of using the least and the lowest to do build the Kingdom.
Jesus astounded the people of Nazareth, but they amazed Him too. The text says that He was amazed at their unbelief. He was incredulous that they could deliberately write off what God was doing, right in front of their eyes. Truth was taught, the sick were healed, the troubled were comforted, and they said, "ho-hum". Wisdom was pronounced, people found joy, relationships were reconciled, and they found fault with it, and said it’s not as good as it used to be. And Jesus was amazed at their unbelief.
Friends, the Gospel is all about the presence and the power of God. It’s all about what the redeeming Christ can do in your life. Neither you nor I nor anyone else has to sit out here and feel that we cannot be changed. We can be changed. Otherwise, God is powerless, God is a toothless tiger. To think that we cannot be changed is to diss’ God. Not just ourselves, not just our community, not just our church, but God Himself. And the Lord is astounded at that kind of unbelief! Have we not seen, right here in this room, what He can do?!
Jesus Christ can do few works among us unless and until our faith believes He can. Otherwise we just diss’ God whenever we diss’ our homeboys. Oh, but what He can do when we believe Him and trust Him! What a difference He can make!
Those two bad boys, and maybe a third? I’m so glad that that church was not a sick church. I’m so glad that that church did its best to encourage their homeboys. One of those two bad boys, the pastor’s son, no longer lobs pencils into church lighting fixtures. Today he teaches the New Testament in a major seminary. The other of those two bad boys, the rich family’s son, no longer turns saltshakers over into people’s dinners. Today he turns over the earth as an archaeologist, and has used his family’s money to endow a museum of archaeology to teach others about the Bible.
Two bad boys, but somebody didn’t stop with dissin’ the homeboys. Somebody encouraged them and allowed them to be something for the Lord.
Oh, and the third, maybe another bad boy? I’m so glad they didn’t diss’ their homeboys. They encouraged the third, almost bad boy, too, and today he stands up and tries to preach the Gospel to you every Sunday. I’m so glad they didn’t diss’ the homeboy!
