How does it feel to be rejected? When you go
for an interview and are not appointed, when at school they picked the football
teams and no one wanted you because you were rubbish, when because of the
colour of your skin, or where you live in the town, or because of your sexual
orientation you aren’t wanted. They do it in football if you lose. Reject you
and sack you. I will be honest with you, I wrote this with my tablet on to my
left with the match. At this point in the sermon Harry Maguire made it 1 -0 !
Rejection because we are just not good enough –
like that Tommy Cooper joke. I went to see a man dressed up as Tommy Cooper on
Friday night and we had the classic Cooper joke: I went up into the attic and
found a Stradivarius and a Rembrandt.
Unfortunately Stradivarius was a terrible
painter and Rembrandt made lousy violins. So the painting and the violin would
be rejected.
Imagine growing up in Rye – many of you did –
and leaving and coming back to preach in this church that you grew up in. You
were known in the Sunday School, as a young person and part of the community
until your early 30’s, you go away and then return to your home church as
visiting preacher. It was never easy for me to return to my home church The
Folly in Wheathampstead to lead worship. Most of the congregation were related
to me. My Mum would say after the service “why did you say that? Why did you
pick that hymn? You went on a bit!” Imagine Jesus returning to his home
synagogue in Nazareth after a period of good ministry away.
By the time Jesus returned to his home town of
Nazareth, the stories of his healings and miracles had spread far and wide.
Even the people in his home town had heard of
his popularity, so you would expect that he would have been accepted by the
hometown crowd and welcomed with open arms. Unfortunately, that was not the
case.
Jesus was surprised by the unbelief of the
crowd. He is rejected. And we might ask why. For starters, most of the people
were poorly educated if they had any education at all. They could not read the
precious scrolls in the synagogue, so the only way they could learn their
religious heritage was to listen to the rabbis, who were educated. Jesus did
not have the formal training required for rabbis, so in the eyes of the people,
he was just a local boy who was “putting on airs”. To make matters worse, the
scribes in Jerusalem had been spreading rumours about Jesus—rumours which had
also reached Nazareth. For example, he had been accused of working with the
devil.
Their rejection hurt him. Mark tells us “he could do no deed of power
there” and “was amazed at their unbelief.”
Their blatant rejection hindered his ability to do deeds of power among
them; at the most, he could only “lay his hands on a few sick people and cure
them.” How beautifully this passage
illustrates Jesus’ humanity.
Like us, he felt the pain of rejection, not
only with his homecoming but increasingly through the rest of his ministry and
ultimately on the cross. The Gospel
today points out how the participation of the people through the exercise of
their faith was strategic to Jesus’ effectiveness to transform lives; they were
not simply observers, but participants in Jesus’ work. The same is true of us
today. And their rejection of Jesus
resulted in their own rejection of what he was capable of doing for them.
There is a relationship between what we give
and what we receive. Twentieth century theologian and writer, Frederick Buechner,
was right I believe, in asserting that miracles do not evoke faith so much as
faith evokes miracles.
Mark
tells us in this chapter that Jesus recognized that he was a disowned
"prophet without honour,” and as a result, he withdrew from the close
familial and neighbourhood ties of the past and began in earnest the creation
of a new community, a new family in God, and a new political-economic-religious
order, which we call the “kingdom of God.” It’s never easy to go back. We’re
trying to sell my mother’s house in the town I grew up in. It’s hard to know I
have no reason to go back now once the house has gone. People in the town have
moved on and so have I. I went back to
the church I did youth work in the other month for the first time in over 20
years. It was a large family place then, it is now tiny and elderly and
struggling.
Jesus recognized on that day he went back that God’s
work could only be built by going beyond his own immediate community. Sadly. He
hit the seven last words of a church that will die. We have always done it this
way.
So, we get the second part of the Gospel story
for today.
He sent forth his disciples two-by-two to
discover that potential community among those whom they met or healed or taught
or stayed with in their homes across all of Galilee.
And among those former strangers, Jesus build
an alternative community to the one that struggled to understand and embrace
the mission to which Jesus called it and therefore rejected all of it.
We are members of that new community. We are
participants in God’s plan. Through our open hearts and acceptance of others we
welcome the stranger and the loved one to the Kingdom of God. We become
partners with God in the transformation of lives.
He sent them out with only the barest of
essentials- one cloak and a staff. He wanted them to trust God to provide for
their needs. They were to concentrate on their mission. Plus, Jewish custom at
that time was to offer hospitality to travellers. Jesus wanted the disciples to
stay at the first house that offered them a place to stay in each city or town
that they visited, rather than moving from house to house.
Jesus wanted the disciples to know that they
would travel the open roads of Palestine penniless and expecting to be welcomed
with open arms, especially in their own home towns. He also wanted them to know
that the Gospel message was a hard one to preach and a hard one to hear-not
popular, not easy, and not automatically earning respect, especially at home.
Those who refused to show proper hospitality,
or those who refused to listen to the disciples’ message, were to be treated as
pagans. As such, the disciples were to do what the Jews did after they walked
through Gentile lands-namely, shake the dust off of their feet as they left.
Not only did this warn the offenders, it freed the disciples to move to more
fertile territory-just like Jesus did after the people of Nazareth rejected
him. And it reminds us that authentic ministry is hard. Sharing the Gospel to
the comfortable is hard and sharing it to those who know nothing of it is hard.
Letting go of things that aren’t working in churches is hard, and even more so
leaving behind awkward people who hamper the future. We need to be bold when we
discern a direction and not let the negative voices put us off.
What does this episode say to us as Christians
working together in this town?
Here we see one of the few failures in Jesus’
ministry, but it also shows his human side. Like Jesus, we will all face
failure at some point in our lives. We’ll feel like Frank Spencer – remember
that classic episode “I am a failure.” Failure is hard because society has
conditioned us for success, but it has not adequately prepared us for failure. Sometimes
things just don’t work. We’ve done our best.
Those who accept God’s call to follow him will
face rejection in its many forms-persecutions, insults, hostility, contempt, and
scorn. They are the common situation for those who accept the call. Just like
Christ rejected the way of glory and found glory in obedience and death, we
must also reject the way of the world and accept the way of the cross.
Christianity is not a religion for those who want success or power in the
traditional worldly sense. It is about presenting the good news of Jesus,
keeping going after rejection, and rejoicing when people listen and respond.
It was Longfellow who said a long time ago, “Perseverance
is a great element of success, if you only knock long enough and loud enough at
the gate, you’re sure to wake up somebody.”
Dele Ali makes it 2 – 0 at this point in the
sermon writing!
I looked at what you said about yourself on
your church website:
“Our gathering together is not a sign of our
rejection of the world but of our need for grace before we re-enter society 'to
live and work to God's praise and glory'.
For us, Jesus is Lord and through Him, God's
Kingdom came on earth. We pray and strive for the fulfilment of that Kingdom of
justice, peace, truth and selfless love.”
Together in this place we listen for the
challenge of Jesus and think seriously about what he says, talk, pray, and
consider it.
Then we become those sent into the world, and
to see what happens. It will not be easy, but for Christianity to flourish long
term we have to truly live and believe Jesus message again.
