The Journey Ahead Requires Some Foot Dust

July 7, 2024

Rev. Mary Erickson

2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

The Journey Ahead Requires Some Foot Dust

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

The bishop was interviewing a senior seminarian, assigned to his district. He asked the seminary student where he would like to be assigned to his first call. The seminarian said, “Oh, Bishop, anywhere but New Canaan!”

“Why not there?” the bishop asked.

“Well,” the seminarian answered, “that’s my hometown -- and we all know that a prophet cannot be honored in his homeland.”

The bishop consoled the seminarian by assuring him, “Don’t worry my friend, nobody is going to confuse you with a prophet.”

Ouch!

In our gospel reading today, Jesus’ ministry hits an impasse. Prior to this, his ministry in the northern region of Galilee had gotten off to an explosive start. He’d healed many sick people. People sought him out wherever he went. He taught to huge crowds.

Now he was returning to his hometown of Nazareth. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue. He began to preach with the same astounding wisdom he’d been sharing throughout Galilee. But the effect in his hometown was much different than he’d received elsewhere.

Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase translation of the Bible in The Message captures the fickle views of the hometown crowd:

He left there and returned to his hometown. His disciples came along. On the Sabbath, he gave a lecture in the meeting place. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. “We had no idea he was this good!” they said. “How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?” But in the next breath they were cutting him down: “He's just a carpenter – Mary’s boy. We’ve known him since he was a kid. We know his brothers, James, Justus, Jude, and Simon, and his sisters. Who does he think he is?” They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further.

These people had known Jesus since he as an infant. They knew his family. They knew his extended clan. We can hear their indignant tone when they dismiss him as a lowly carpenter who works with his hands. They know full well his level of education and his socioeconomic status. And by calling him “Mary’s boy,” with no mention of a father, it sounds as if their long memories might still recall the questionable origins of his birth.

Jesus marvels at their lack of faith in him. But what he does next is most telling: he leaves! Jesus doesn’t get bogged down in his failure at Nazareth. He simply moves on to the neighboring villages and continues his ministry.

We hear a similar refrain in his instructions to his disciples. Jesus expands his mission by sending his disciples out in groups of two. Before they leave, he gives them instructions. And his instructions include directions for what to do when things go wrong. “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that’s on your feet.”

His advice to them is the same thing he’as done at Nazareth. Just move on! Jesus remarks that shaking off the foot dust is a testimony against the people of that community. But there’s another purpose to ridding oneself of foot dust.

In getting rid of the foot dust, the disciples aren’t taking any of that old baggage with them. They’re leaving the failure behind them and moving forward. Jesus is saying, “Don’t carry it with you. Let it go. Get rid of the irritating pebble in your sandal.”

Failure can bog us down. When our hopes and plans go awry, it can have a paralyzing effect. We get stuck on that past failure, and we can’t move on. Alexander Graham Bell remarked, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Being stuck in the past was the same difficulty the people of Nazareth were having. They couldn’t see past the Jesus they knew. They couldn’t see him in the present because of all their preconceived notions of who he was. They’d labeled him, and that was that.

When we get stuck in past failure and can’t move on, the same words could well be written of us: “Jesus could do no deed of power there.” Our regret for the past and fear that the future will be filled with more of the same prevents us from believing in the new future God has in store for us.

The promise of God’s abundant forgiveness is how we are invited to shake the dust off our feet. The transgressions of yesterday are swept away by God’s grace. Let us be assured of this! We don’t need to carry with us the guilt of yesterday’s regrets and shortcomings.