July 6, 2003

Ezekiel 2:2-5 + 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 + Mark 6:1-6

We have to push through this Gospel today and not get snagged on any of the little sidetracks that are there. They are all dead ends. This Gospel is not about them. It is about us. It is not about the people back in the town where Jesus seemed to make his “home.” It is not about the Markan community, who preserved this memory either, even though they were asking the same question we are left ponder.

It is about us.

Whatever their trouble was, the people in that town where Jesus was had a good excuse for their attitude or “disbelief.” They lived with the historical Jesus who was at that moment in time a prophetic, wonder/worker, rabbi/preacher who had a somewhat political message and challenged the status quo with a new interpretation of the Law that offered everything for the poor and helpless but nothing for those who had security and some control over their lives. It isn’t hard to figure out why they were not interested in this Jesus. We don’t choose leaders for this country nor contribute to their campaign funds if they are going to take what we have and give it to someone else. We give our attention, our money, and our votes to those who preserve what we have and get us more. The people in His “native” place lived with Jesus before the resurrection. They were dealing with one of their own as far as they knew.

Had this encounter happened after they witnessed his death and resurrection, it would have been a different issue entirely, and when we read it and look at ourselves, it is a different issue entirely. There is more going on here than peer envy. The people of His native place had no problem about a wise man teaching them about God, and I doubt that they cared if he wanted to call himself God’s Son. What they had trouble with is the other way around: that God would be one of them. Jesus as God and God as Jesus are not the same thing.  In their favor, until the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, it was not all that clear that God wanted to be one with them. That is why it is different for us. We cannot use their excuse or their innocence. Yet we still try to do so.

The very first heresy was not denying the divinity of Jesus. It took awhile for that to happen. The first heresy was denying that God became human – the thinking that God was just “appearing” on earth as Jesus while remaining the old divine self in heaven. Jesus Christ is not an “appearance” of God for Christian believers. Jesus Christ is God. Jesus Christ is not Lord of Heaven – He is Lord of Heaven and Earth. It is this issue that the Gospel confronts. Lord of Earth is the issue, not Lord of Heaven. Jesus can be God in heaven without us, and he was, but come the Incarnation, for God to be Jesus on earth, our participation is needed. That is the problem in that town, his “native” place. They did not participate, and it is still the problem. We have to make Jesus Lord of Earth – without that, flood and fire control nature; without us, evil people determine history. With us, it is not so.

Jesus can work through God without us, but God cannot work through Jesus without us. That’s the point. That is the incarnation: that God actually became flesh and entered our world. The rest is up to us. We make Jesus Christ the Lord of creation when we steward nature instead of wasting it. When we take care of the earth because we believe that it is God’s creation and it is good and it is a gift to us. We make Jesus Lord of Earth. When we protect the earth, water, and the air everyone must breathe, we are believers in God present among us. We make Jesus Christ Lord of History when we oppose evil structures and create those that further the kingdom of God – because we are believers – not in Jesus in Heaven, but of Christ on earth. We make Jesus Christ Lord of our lives when we let him command what we eat, what we wear, and drive and say and do every day of our earthly lives.

If we are believers, He is Lord of our lives here and now, today;

not in heaven or at the end of time.

See, that was the problem in his native place. He was Lord everywhere by there. We can call him Lord until we’re out breath. We can sing our hymns as loudly as we can crank the volume and build our churches as big as we want,

but until we make him Lord of our lives it’s all a waist, and until we do, I suspect that he will work no wonders here either other than maybe cure a few sick people.