July 5, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK
Ezekiel 2: 2-5 + Psalm 123 + 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 + Mark 6: 1-6
This short little story starts with astonishment and concludes with amazement. The hometown folks are astonished at what the local boy can do. He is amazed at their failure see what it’s all about. They think in terms of “ordinary” and “extraordinary”. They think that God only works through special people, learned people, important or official people. The local boy is a carpenter’s son. The comment is probably not a compliment. To them he is not eligible. He ought to know his place. “Who does he think he is?” they wonder.
He is amazed that they remain so ignorant and fail to see what is going on. He thinks if God can work through him, one of them; God can work through all of them.”
Mark explores for us with this simple story the plan of God for us. He touches on an attitude and confronts a way of thinking that is a serious obstacle to the fulfillment of God’s plan and the coming of God’s Kingdom.
There is probably not anyone in this church who has not suffered from and had to overcome the burden of other people’s expectations and negative comments. A bitter and angry high school teacher once told me that I was a “C” student and ought to quit wasting my time with thoughts of college. It took me a long time to get over that. An unskilled perhaps well-meaning coach once told a thirteen-year-old with size twelve shoes he was too clumsy to play basketball. Fifteen years later with even bigger skies clamped to those size twelve feet he could ski most any mountain in the west and smile all the way down black diamond trails.
Young people look at their parents, shake their heads and think “what do they know?”
And with it, a whole life of wisdom and love is refused and maybe lost for a time. Parents forget that in the simple openness and curiosity of their children there is fresh face on the future and new opportunities for excitement and curiosity. All of us live with limitations we place on each other, and those boxes into which we force others do not so much restrain the other as stifle the work of God who continues to work and be revealed in people just like us.
I stand here week after week and share with you a lifetime of study, prayer, and reflection on the Word of God knowing that the most Spirit-packed words can fall lifeless to the earth because it is up to believers to create and bring into the present the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of Justice, Love, and Peace. I never assume that it is going to happen because I talk about it. I believe that what is spoken here is less than half the sermon. What you do is the greater half and far more. In an atmosphere that welcomes the Word, the poorest effort can ignite a great flame. I believe that this place would packed wall to wall with people singing the praise of God and bringing their gifts for the mission of the church if the whole sermon was preached and lived. It isn’t up to me to bring people to Christ, to communion and celebrate the forgiveness of sins. It is up to you; and that starts when all of us begin to recognize and realize what it is we are all called to become.
The people of Nazareth couldn’t believe that they were capable of great signs and wonders, capable of revealing the presence of and doing the work of God. Their problem with Jesus was really a problem with themselves. They had been put down by others who said that “nothing good come from Nazareth”. Living with limitations and expectations that they were inferior, incompetent, and insignificant led to their loss of Jesus who refused to think that of himself, not because he thought he was God; but because he knew he was called and chosen.
So are we all called and chosen, blessed, enlightened, empowered by God to do great things in the name of the Lord. The more that truth dawns upon us and awakens us to the new day that has begun in Jesus Christ, the nearer will be the Kingdom of God not because of a carpenter’s son in a tiny insignificant town in the corner of the Roman Empire; but because that carpenter’s son awakened in us the power of the Spirit, the Love of God, and a passionate desire to live together in Joy. What an amazing and astonishing day that will be. When that happens, come early because there will not be room in here – the crowd will be greater than in that stadium on Jenkins Street not because there is a good sermon or good music, but because there are good people living in the Kingdom of God.