Proper 9 -- Ezekiel 2: 1-5; Psalm 123; II
Corinthians 12: 2-10; Mark 6: 1-13
A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker given
at St. John’s Church, Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, on Sunday, July 5, 2015.
“AN
EXTRAORDINARY HUMAN BEING,
OR SOMETHING MORE?”
OR SOMETHING MORE?”
(Homily text:
Mark 6: 1 - 13)
“Where did this man get all
this? What deeds of power are being done
by his hand! Is not this the carpenter,
the son of Mary….?
One of the joys of getting older is
to be able to see children grow to be teenagers, and then to become young
adults. Along the way, we encourage and expect
them to discover what their talents are, and to develop those skills and
abilities through education and training.
Imagine seeing a person who’s been
known to us as a child, as a teenager, and then as an adult, return to his/her
hometown after a period of time away, bearing new skills and abilities. When the process of acquiring those skills
and abilities is known to us, we rejoice in the process that has brought the
person to the place where they are today.
But imagine, conversely, that the individual returns, claiming new
skills and abilities, but without the attendant training and education. We might wonder where those abilities
actually came from, and if those new aspects of the person’s identity are
genuine or not.
Jesus’ newly acquired skills, which
seem to come out of nowhere, seem to prompt the expressions of disbelief that
the residents of Nazareth voiced as Jesus returns to town.
Those who knew Him as a boy, as a
young man, and then as an adult can’t get past what they have known about Him up
to this point to see beyond that experience to see what God has been doing
through the works and teachings He has been doing. They acknowledge the great things He has been
doing, saying, “What deeds of power are being done by his hand.” But they preface that remark by asking,
“Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary?”
The norms of society which were in
place 2,000 years ago might shed some light on the residents of Nazareth as
they deride Jesus.
For one thing, the oldest son of the
family[1]
was expected to assume the role of leadership if the father in the family
died. It’s possible that Joseph has now
died by the time that Jesus returns to Nazareth. If so, perhaps Jesus’ family has suffered
some degree of shame because it seems as though that oldest son (Jesus) has
abandoned his proper role to go off engaging in an itinerant preaching ministry.
For another, it was customary (and
expected) that a rabbi in Jesus’ day would have a practical skill, in addition
to his teaching ministry. Consider the
situation that St. Paul was in: He was a
tent maker, in addition to having studied under the great rabbi Gamaliel in
Jerusalem. Jesus had a practical skill,
that of being a carpenter[2]. But so far as the residents of His hometown
knew, He hadn’t gone off to become a disciple of any famous rabbi. This may be the reason that they question His
credentials.
The incident we are considering
today serves the purpose of telling us something about Jesus, in much the same
way a character in a play, a movie or a book would become known to us by the
interactions with other people, and by the responses that situations prompt in
that character.
Jesus’ character is made known to us
as we discover that those who knew Him best in His earlier life with them in
Nazareth find it hard to get past what they already know about Him in order to
come to a fuller and newer understanding about His character and purpose.
Applying that concern to ourselves,
the task we are faced with is to assess what we already know about Jesus, and
then to come to a fuller understanding of who He is. We are called to move beyond thinking of
Jesus as simply a great and fascinating human being who did great works of
mercy, who did great acts of loving kindness, and who left us with a legacy of
great teachings, in order that we might come to see that, in Jesus, God is
revealing His very self to us, for Jesus is the “image of the invisible God,”
as we read in Colossians 1: 15.
Such a quest, to come to know the
Lord more fully, more deeply and more closely is a lifelong pursuit. May the Holy Spirit empower and enable us in
this quest.
AMEN.
[1] Mark uses the words brother and sister to
describe Jesus’ family. In common usage
in the first century, such terms could refer to a wide range of familial relationships. Brother, for example, could indicate a
sibling, a step brother, or even a cousin.
The same is true of the term sister, which could indicate a similar
range of relationships. Scholars have
pondered the exact nature of the relationships between Jesus and those brothers
who are named in today’s passage. Some
have posited the idea that Joseph was older than Mary, and that he was a
widower prior to marrying Mary, having had children by that first marriage. About the details of all this we cannot be
sure this side of heaven.
[2] The Greek word (tekton) which is usually translated as “carpenter” refers to anyone
who worked with hard materials. So it’s
possible that Jesus was either a carpenter, or a stone mason.
