"IT CAN BE HARD WHEN
EVERYBODY KNOWS YOU"
(Mark 6:1-6)
Introduction
There is an unwritten "rule" that exists in ministry. It’s a "rule" most ministers recognize. The rule: "Never return as pastor to your childhood church." So often going back home just won’t work, because folk in your childhood church often know you too well to ever accept you as their pastor.
In the 17th century, a writer, Matthew Henry, commented: "...ministers are seldom so acceptable and successful in their own country as among strangers; familiarity in the younger years breeds a contempt, and the advancement of one felt an inferior begets envy."
My return to my childhood church was greeted by many ministry friends with skepticism and doubt. I must confess I had some concern myself. It had been a number of years since I left home for college, but that thought was in me, "will be I accepted, or will I be that little Haun kid who ran around in the sanctuary and generally caused a bunch of trouble?" I know that sometimes it doesn’t work, but in my experience it did, and we spent 18 wonderful years as pastor of my boyhood church.
In the scripture this morning, however, Jesus seems to have had a different experience. Let’s share together from the 6th chapter of the Gospel of Mark
1 Soon afterwards he left that section of the country and returned with his disciples to Nazareth, his hometown. 2 The next Sabbath he went to the synagogue to teach, and the people were astonished at his wisdom and his miracles because he was just a local man like themselves.
3 "He’s no better than we are," they said. "He’s just a carpenter, Mary’s boy, and a brother of James and Joseph, Judas and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us." And they were offended!
4 Then Jesus told them, "A prophet is honored everywhere except in his hometown and among his relatives and by his own family." 5 And because of their unbelief he couldn’t do any mighty miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he could hardly accept the fact that they wouldn’t believe in him.
Mark 6:1-6 (TLB)
I.
THERE ARE ISSUES WE’D DO WELL TO CONSIDER
FROM THAT SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF JESUS’ RETURN TO NAZARETH.
A. Why go back home?
It had been about a year since he left. Some months earlier, before his reputation spread, his home town acquaintances tried to explain away his claim of being God and to protect the reputation of his family and the community by saying "He is beside himself." Not too long before, Jesus had stirred up such controversy that his friends and family came to take him home because they feared he was out of his mind Mark 3:21 (TLB)
Can you picture it. Jesus went home last year, and his neighbors and friends decided he was crazy. "Maybe now," he might of thought, "time has passed. "Things have happened. Maybe now they will believe." So he went home again. He went back because he wouldn’t give up on the people he loved. Jesus never gave up. Even hanging on a cross, he wouldn’t say "no."
B. Why take his disciples with him?
Jesus didn’t need the disciples to go with him. That was his home town. He could go there alone. Why take the disciples?
He took the disciples for the sake of the disciples. They needed to see how Jesus acted in times of denial. They had been part of his successes. They had witnessed miracles at wedding feasts, seen a bleeding woman healed, and the miracle of a dead daughter given life. Now the disciples needed to witness how Jesus reacted to rejection, so they would know how to react when they faced rejection.
On the Sabbath, Jesus preached in the synagogue, and the Scripture says the people were amazed. They "knew" Jesus. They knew his background and his family. They knew that his claims for himself couldn’t be true. It’s been said that an expert is anyone who has come from out of town. There’s truth in that. People so often hard a hard time looking beyond what they "know" from the past to see the truth of the present.
An article in US News and World Report on August 1991 tells of an experience with Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas. When Thomas was judge of the Appeals Court in Washington, he drove his car one morning from the courthouse parking lot. Waiting for an opening in the traffic, Judge Thomas was shocked to have a man open the back door of the car and climb in. He gave the judge an address and asked him to hurry.
Seeing a black driver in a luxury automobile, the stranger assumed the car to be a limousine available for hire. The man "knew" what the driver and the car was, but he was wrong. The people in Nazareth "knew" Jesus. They knew him as a school boy. They knew him as a teen age neighbor. And even the people who knew him turned their back.
That’s why the disciples were included. In the years to come when they faced rejection, harassment, even death, they needed to remember that Jesus from the very beginning was also rejected by the people he loved.
C. What happened when the people turned Him down?
Look at verse 5. Jesus couldn’t accomplish much in Nazareth. He healed a few. But there was so much more he would have done, if the people’s belief would have allowed it. Only a few believed. Only a few came and only a few were healed. By any human criteria, Jesus failed in his effort. That Saturday afternoon when he left Nazareth, those with him no doubt thought the trip a waste of time. But do you know what? God had a reason for Nazareth! He has a message for us.
II.
WHAT’S THE MESSAGE FOR OUR LIVES?
A. God says, don’t let the limited faith in others limit your faithfulness to God.
A prophet may never be honored in his hometown. ’but that doesn’t make his or her work any less important. You and I do not have to be honored or respected to useful to God. We, as well as those first disciples need to remember that if friends, neighbors, or even family doesn’t respect your Christian work, don’t let their rejection keep you from serving God. If there is anything for you and me to recognize as we stand by those disciples in Nazareth, it is that sometimes rejection is the cost of discipleship. Don’t let it discourage you. Stand firm, for God stands with you and keeps you strong. (1)
Leonard Bernstein was an amazing musician. Early in his life his father gave him little encouragement in his efforts. Later, after Leonard had become famous, someone asked his father why he had been so unwilling to encourage his son’s musical talents. The father replied, "How was I to know that he would grow up to become Leonard Bernstein?" (2)
B. God says, don’t give up on others.
We may feel we have failed in our effort. However, many successes begin as failure. All of us fell down the first time as babies we tried to walk. I almost drowned the first time I tried to swim. My first sermon, preached when I was a young man just out of high school, was concluded in only six minutes. I knew that was too short, so I started over and preached it again.
To hit 714 home runs, Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times.
Sometimes our expectations of what others should be can blind our recognition of what they are.
Do you remember the movie that came out a few years back called "Oh God?" Its star, John Denver was a store manager who meets God, played by George Burns. Denver received a letter telling him he has been called to meet with God. He thinks it a joke by some friend, but he went to keep the appointment. The meeting place was an empty room with only a voice saying "I am God." Denver demands for God to show himself, so reluctantly God appears, looking quite a bit like George Burns. God stands there, an old man in baggy pants, tennis shoes, a golf cap and glasses. Denver stands with his mouth open in shock. God cocked his head a bit and says, "Well, what did you expect?"
The disciples, and you and I need to remember that Jesus never gave up. His own family had rejected him and tried to get him to stop. But he never gave up on them, and one half brother, James, became a strong Christian leader in Jerusalem. Another half brother, Judas, wrote the next to the last book in the New Testament.
Remember the example of Jesus, he didn’t give up...
C. God says, stay close to and learn from others in the faith.
Jesus took his disciples with him. He allowed them to share in his experiences so they could learn. They learned while they were with him. Standing together they saw the reaction of the people and the love of their teacher. In the book of Acts, when people accepted Jesus as Lord, the first thing they would do is bond together in a church. Suffering would come, and they needed each other’s support and help. So do we.
People who come to Hope come because they are looking for something. And what many times we are looking for is warmth, friendship, and acceptance. Our goal must be that each person who enters that door sees here the acceptance and love they are longing to find. That takes time and effort on our part. Jesus took his friends with him when he went back home. Nazareth reminds us that we have an obligation in friendship too.
D, The final message of Nazareth for us never to allow what others do or say to deter us.
Rejection and ridicule didn’t stop Jesus. The reaction and the words of other people must never obstruct our walk with Christ. God longs so much for each one of us to be with Him. Remember Jesus’ story of the shepherd who lost a lamb? He left the 99 alone and went to look for the one which was lost. Don’t let what anyone does rob you of that relationship that God wants for you.
The Scriptures don’t indicate that Jesus ever went back to Nazareth. But that day on Calvary, it was for the people of Nazareth that Jesus died. It was for the crowd who cried "Crucify him!" He died that day for the people of Tamarac and Pompano and Fort Lauderdale. Christ Jesus suffered Calvary for the men and women who today turn him away and ignore him. And nothing they or anyone else could say or do to him would ever make him turn away from God’s mercy.
That’s the Savior we follow! Amen.
(1)The Life Application Commentary Series (Tyndale House Publishers) 2000.
(2) Robert Rust. SermonCentral.com.
