Pentecost 7 07/23/06 Text: Mark 6:1-6 Title: Will the real Jesus please stand up!
Pentecost 7
07/23/06
Title: Will the real Jesus please stand up!
Text: Mark 6:1-6
Let us Pray, O God, creator and sustainer of all things, we humbly come before you this morning asking you to stir up your Holy Spirit within each of us so that we might let your Holy Word work in our hearts as it reveals Jesus and his will for us. Speak O Lord, for your servants are listening. Amen
A long time ago, way before some of you were born, there was a television show called, “To Tell the Truth”. For those that do not know of it, the show was about trying to find the one person out of three that was telling the truth. The celebrity panel would ask each of them a series of questions as they tried to figure out who was lying and who was telling the truth.
It was great fun, and I really enjoyed watching it. I cannot begin to tell you the number of times that I was fooled by the people who were not telling the truth. They looked like the real thing, they talked like the real thing, but in the end, when the real person stood up, it was shown that they were frauds, that the panel did not know them at all.
In a sense, that is what our Gospel reading is about today. The people of Jesus’ hometown could not see the real Jesus when he stood there among them because they could only see the Jesus they knew in the past. You see, at the time of Jesus’ life a person’s worth was tied to their hometown or as the Greek puts it “father land” and what their family did to earn a living.
Jesus had two strikes against him, right from the get go. Nazareth was a town of little worth and he was the son of a carpenter. In our society today to be a carpenter is an honorable profession, but back in Jesus’ day, carpenters were almost at the bottom of society. The only people that were lower than workers of stone and wood, were those who considered unclean and expendable.
Everyone in town knows who Jesus is, and for him to come back to his fatherland as a Rabbi, miracle worker, and healer is not right. They just could not accept him, as you can tell by the language that they used. There is even a hint of scandal when they say that he is the son of Mary, for the normal way of describing Jesus parentage would have been to say that he is the son of Joseph, not Mary, even if Joseph had already died. It was definitely a put down.
Quite often when this particular text is used as a sermon text the emphases is on how a prophet is without honor in his hometown. Examples would be given to show how true that statement is even today, like a young person living in a small town where everybody knows everything about everybody else. The young man or woman leaves the community, for say, New York. They come back some time later a successful businessperson.
They are surprised when the townspeople and many times their own family will not fully accept them because they think that beneath all that success is the same kid they knew back when. In other words, they do not give him or her the honor they deserve.
The lesson to be learned is that one should not be surprised when they are rejected for doing the work of God, for even Jesus was rejected in his hometown, and could not do the work he wanted to do.
Then there is usually given some great advice out of the latest religious self help book on how to deal with those situations, usually ending with, “If they do not listen to you, do as Jesus told his disciples, ‘Shake the dust off your shoes and move on.’”
That is all good stuff, except that in saying that is what this text is about they have missed the heart of it. For, they have shifted the focus from being on Jesus to being on the people there that day.
As Lutherans, we believe that the entire Word of God is about Jesus Christ. Even those long and boring census numbers and begats found in the Old Testament are about him, for they have been written down by the inspired writers to show us that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, our Savior.
There are many people in the world today who consider themselves Christians, but in fact do not know the real Jesus. They have these preconceived ideas of who he was, notice I said was, for they are not sure that he actually rose from the dead.
They admire him, but only as a great man who lived long ago in the Mid-east. They believe that he was a great person who gave his life for the cause he believed in and that we should model our lives after his; but a Savior that saved us from the wrath of God, no way.
We who believe that we know the true Jesus shake our heads in disgust, but I wonder if we too actually know the true Jesus, for I think that if we did we would be living our lives in an entirely different way.
We would be working together trying to figure out ways to tell others about Jesus, instead of sticking to our own ideas. We would be sacrificially giving for the support of the church’s work, instead of holding back the money our Lord has blessed us with. We would be doing more than just coming together on Sunday morning to give God his due and then going back to our lives.
You might be surprised and maybe even hurt that I would even suggest that we really do not know the true Jesus, but the proof of what I am saying is shown in our lives, for we all know that we do not always live the lives Jesus wants us to live.
I firmly believe that a big part of our problem comes from where we get our information about Jesus. Instead of reading the Bible, God’s Word to us, too many Christians prefer to read other books about Jesus. They read books written by those that claim to have the straight scoop on Jesus, authors like Bishop Sprong, and those who are part of the “Jesus Seminar group”, plus all the other authors out there who have come up with their own special insight into Jesus.
I am not saying that all authors that write about Jesus are bad, for there are many good ones. But, I am saying that the only way you can tell the bad from the good is to know God’s Word yourself. And the only way to know God’s Word is to read and study it. That way you do not have to rely on what others say about Jesus.
The people in Nazareth the day Jesus came to visit relied on who they had heard about Jesus to form their view of him rather than rely on Jesus’ word. In doing so they cheated themselves out of the blessings that Jesus wanted to give them. Jesus could not do miracles there that day, not because their faith somehow weakened him, but because they did not come to him for help.
Jesus was willing and able to bless them, but because they thought they knew him, they rejected him and thus lost out on what he came to give them. It was not Jesus’ fault, but theirs.
We are no different, for we are a sinful people, wanting Jesus to leave us alone when we are strong and life is good, and clinging to him when we are weak and life is bad, yet God still loves us. He accepts us as we are with all our warts and blemishes, in all our wishy-washiness, reaching out to us through his Word and Sacraments.
We must live our lives knowing that the Gospel of Jesus is not about our ability to be self-sufficient, but our complete dependence upon the grace of God. We are lost when left on our own. Luther got it right in a wonderful little prayer he wrote, “Use me as your instrument. Lord, do not forsake me, for if I am left alone I would ruin everything.”
How wonderful it is to live under God’s grace! For it means you live in the full freedom of forgiveness. The motivating power in your life is God’s love in Christ. It is in his love that you happily live a God-pleasing life. Living victoriously under God’s grace, you will find that sin loses its power and attraction. In God’s grace you turn away from sin and self-reliance to complete dependence on Jesus’ righteousness and in doing so you will know the true Jesus. Amen
07/23/06
Title: Will the real Jesus please stand up!
Text: Mark 6:1-6
Let us Pray, O God, creator and sustainer of all things, we humbly come before you this morning asking you to stir up your Holy Spirit within each of us so that we might let your Holy Word work in our hearts as it reveals Jesus and his will for us. Speak O Lord, for your servants are listening. Amen
A long time ago, way before some of you were born, there was a television show called, “To Tell the Truth”. For those that do not know of it, the show was about trying to find the one person out of three that was telling the truth. The celebrity panel would ask each of them a series of questions as they tried to figure out who was lying and who was telling the truth.
It was great fun, and I really enjoyed watching it. I cannot begin to tell you the number of times that I was fooled by the people who were not telling the truth. They looked like the real thing, they talked like the real thing, but in the end, when the real person stood up, it was shown that they were frauds, that the panel did not know them at all.
In a sense, that is what our Gospel reading is about today. The people of Jesus’ hometown could not see the real Jesus when he stood there among them because they could only see the Jesus they knew in the past. You see, at the time of Jesus’ life a person’s worth was tied to their hometown or as the Greek puts it “father land” and what their family did to earn a living.
Jesus had two strikes against him, right from the get go. Nazareth was a town of little worth and he was the son of a carpenter. In our society today to be a carpenter is an honorable profession, but back in Jesus’ day, carpenters were almost at the bottom of society. The only people that were lower than workers of stone and wood, were those who considered unclean and expendable.
Everyone in town knows who Jesus is, and for him to come back to his fatherland as a Rabbi, miracle worker, and healer is not right. They just could not accept him, as you can tell by the language that they used. There is even a hint of scandal when they say that he is the son of Mary, for the normal way of describing Jesus parentage would have been to say that he is the son of Joseph, not Mary, even if Joseph had already died. It was definitely a put down.
Quite often when this particular text is used as a sermon text the emphases is on how a prophet is without honor in his hometown. Examples would be given to show how true that statement is even today, like a young person living in a small town where everybody knows everything about everybody else. The young man or woman leaves the community, for say, New York. They come back some time later a successful businessperson.
They are surprised when the townspeople and many times their own family will not fully accept them because they think that beneath all that success is the same kid they knew back when. In other words, they do not give him or her the honor they deserve.
The lesson to be learned is that one should not be surprised when they are rejected for doing the work of God, for even Jesus was rejected in his hometown, and could not do the work he wanted to do.
Then there is usually given some great advice out of the latest religious self help book on how to deal with those situations, usually ending with, “If they do not listen to you, do as Jesus told his disciples, ‘Shake the dust off your shoes and move on.’”
That is all good stuff, except that in saying that is what this text is about they have missed the heart of it. For, they have shifted the focus from being on Jesus to being on the people there that day.
As Lutherans, we believe that the entire Word of God is about Jesus Christ. Even those long and boring census numbers and begats found in the Old Testament are about him, for they have been written down by the inspired writers to show us that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, our Savior.
There are many people in the world today who consider themselves Christians, but in fact do not know the real Jesus. They have these preconceived ideas of who he was, notice I said was, for they are not sure that he actually rose from the dead.
They admire him, but only as a great man who lived long ago in the Mid-east. They believe that he was a great person who gave his life for the cause he believed in and that we should model our lives after his; but a Savior that saved us from the wrath of God, no way.
We who believe that we know the true Jesus shake our heads in disgust, but I wonder if we too actually know the true Jesus, for I think that if we did we would be living our lives in an entirely different way.
We would be working together trying to figure out ways to tell others about Jesus, instead of sticking to our own ideas. We would be sacrificially giving for the support of the church’s work, instead of holding back the money our Lord has blessed us with. We would be doing more than just coming together on Sunday morning to give God his due and then going back to our lives.
You might be surprised and maybe even hurt that I would even suggest that we really do not know the true Jesus, but the proof of what I am saying is shown in our lives, for we all know that we do not always live the lives Jesus wants us to live.
I firmly believe that a big part of our problem comes from where we get our information about Jesus. Instead of reading the Bible, God’s Word to us, too many Christians prefer to read other books about Jesus. They read books written by those that claim to have the straight scoop on Jesus, authors like Bishop Sprong, and those who are part of the “Jesus Seminar group”, plus all the other authors out there who have come up with their own special insight into Jesus.
I am not saying that all authors that write about Jesus are bad, for there are many good ones. But, I am saying that the only way you can tell the bad from the good is to know God’s Word yourself. And the only way to know God’s Word is to read and study it. That way you do not have to rely on what others say about Jesus.
The people in Nazareth the day Jesus came to visit relied on who they had heard about Jesus to form their view of him rather than rely on Jesus’ word. In doing so they cheated themselves out of the blessings that Jesus wanted to give them. Jesus could not do miracles there that day, not because their faith somehow weakened him, but because they did not come to him for help.
Jesus was willing and able to bless them, but because they thought they knew him, they rejected him and thus lost out on what he came to give them. It was not Jesus’ fault, but theirs.
We are no different, for we are a sinful people, wanting Jesus to leave us alone when we are strong and life is good, and clinging to him when we are weak and life is bad, yet God still loves us. He accepts us as we are with all our warts and blemishes, in all our wishy-washiness, reaching out to us through his Word and Sacraments.
We must live our lives knowing that the Gospel of Jesus is not about our ability to be self-sufficient, but our complete dependence upon the grace of God. We are lost when left on our own. Luther got it right in a wonderful little prayer he wrote, “Use me as your instrument. Lord, do not forsake me, for if I am left alone I would ruin everything.”
How wonderful it is to live under God’s grace! For it means you live in the full freedom of forgiveness. The motivating power in your life is God’s love in Christ. It is in his love that you happily live a God-pleasing life. Living victoriously under God’s grace, you will find that sin loses its power and attraction. In God’s grace you turn away from sin and self-reliance to complete dependence on Jesus’ righteousness and in doing so you will know the true Jesus. Amen
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 6:38 PM
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