Mark 6: 1-29
February 9, 2020

Today’s passage begins with Jesus back in Nazareth.
He is teaching in the synagogue. It’s such a key moment in Jesus’s ministry that the story appears in three of the gospels.
In all three versions of the story, the crowd is astounded … they are amazed … at first.
And then … things go sideways.
People begin to question … why is this guy teaching in the synagogue?
They think they know who this Jesus guy is … they know his family … or his profession … they feel a sense of familiarity … and with that familiarity the power behind the message … behind the acts of ministry … are diminished.
The words are lost … falling on deaf ears.
As scholar Rolf Jacobson said about this portion of today’s passage … partial knowledge can be a hindrance to faith.
The people might even have been offended by Jesus’ contradiction of their notions of who they are and what they can be.
After all … how can a carpenter speak with such authority when we have perfectly good Pharisees sitting right here?
To the people in the crowd … and to people today … a person’s identity is defined in terms of their family and their occupation.
And as the crowd turns on him … you can hear the doors begin to close … both literally and figuratively … hearts become hardened … faith in this renowned teacher is gone.
With the loss of faith in Nazareth, Jesus can’t perform any miracles … it’s easy to focus on the negative aspect of this portion of the story … but it’s not wholly negative … Mark tells us that Jesus is still able to perform a few healings … the people’s rejection doesn’t stop him from continuing his call to serve.
Despite the rejection, the ministry must continue. In fact, after the rejection in Nazareth, the ministry even expands.
So, he and the disciples leave town.

I’ve been thinking about the portion of today’s gospel reading that comes next É the part that deals with the sending out of the disciples … viewing it through the lens of last week’s service when we installed members of the congregational council.
Last week’s liturgy, called on each of us to support the nine council members during the coming months. It called on each of us to ensure God remained at the centre of what they … and what we … do in ministry.
The liturgy quoted Saint Paul and served to remind the council members that there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, different abilities and different ways of serving.
Basically, we commissioned them to be the leaders among the disciples who form this faith community.
It’s easy to interpret Paul’s words as meaning that each councillor … and each member of the congregation … each disciple … should focus on what they’re good at … to play to their particular strength and let others play to their’s.
Perhaps, that might have been Paul’s intention … but in today’s gospel lesson … Jesus seems to advocate for a more general approach to ministry than the one it appears Paul is advocating.
After they leave Nazareth, Jesus gives them the authority to minister to others across the region.
He tells the disciples to travel in groups of two … taking just a staff and the clothes on their backs … and not even a change of tunics.
You can imagine that after hours of walking in the hot sun, that one tunic could be carrying a pretty potent and uninviting aroma.
The twelve are to rely on the generosity of the people with whom they meet and with whom they stay … allowing God to work through these people.
And once they are welcomed into a home … they are told to remain there until they leave the community. They aren’t to hop between homes looking for better accommodations upgrading along the way.
Despite the specific travelling instructions, Jesus doesn’t place restrictions on the disciples’ ministry. They heal, share the Word, drive out demons and anoint people with oil … which, by the way, is one thing Jesus didn’t do in his ministry as presented in Mark’s gospel.
Theology scholar Dawn Wilhelm said that in his instructions to the disciples, Jesus offers a vision of ministry that addresses the breadth of human need and longing.
… that addresses the breadth of human need and longing.
Jesus doesn’t give specific ministry tasks to the disciples … each of the six groups are expected to do it all … there are no boundaries that they are not expected to cross.
Their work and team-building … community-building … is at the centre of their life and of their actions.
The disciples’ comfort becomes secondary to ministry.
The entire focus of his instructions is on the manner of how their ministry is conducted.
Jesus, in commissioning the twelve to go out and minister across the region, makes establishing relationships … fostering a sense of belonging a priority.
Travelling in pairs … provides a measure of safety for the disciples … it meets the Jewish requirement for witnesses … and it also fosters a sense of community amongst the pair and with the strangers who welcome them into their home.
When they are not welcome – Jesus tells them – don’t bring the dust of the unfaithful or the closed-hearted with them.
They aren’t to allow the closed doors … the unwelcoming attitudes … to affect … or to infect … their ministry.
Shaking off the dust when someone leaves a village or a home was a symbol of judgement and exclusion for the people of Jesus’ time.
In those days, travellers were expected to shake the dust off their sandals when the returned to the Holy Land so that they wouldn’t contaminate the land with contents from unsanctified ground.
Like the dust, the disciples are warned that they will be rejected at some locales … just as Jesus was in Nazareth.
To those who will bring them into their homes, the disciples will be strangers … they will be the ‘others’.
They won’t have any preconceptions to deal with.
The disciples will be unfamiliar entities. And … perhaps because they are unfamiliar … there won’t the same expectations or assumptions that Jesus faced in Nazareth.
The slate will be blank.

Because when there is too much familiarity … when there is the idea that we know Jesus … we aren’t able to see him for who he is … we can only see what fits our image … our idea.
There is no room for growth or change.

So, there are a couple of possible takeaways from this part of the story.
Does what we think we know about Jesus and the promise of the gospel hinder us in truly knowing and sharing God’s love? Does it keep us from offering hope or a sense of belonging to people who have been marginalized or to comfort those who are suffering because it doesn’t our idea or preferences for ministry?
Are we willing to travel with others to minister to those in need … to grow in our ministry to do what is unfamiliar and develop even more in discipleship? Or are we content to do what we know and let others fill in the gaps?
In church’s call to discipleship … the call to serve … there can be a tendency to do what is comfortable or what we believe fits our skill set. But today’s story shows what can happen when the conditions are right.
When people are willing to connect and to look for new ways to make those connections.
Moments when doors are open … when hearts are open … when we don’t place restrictions upon ourselves and when faith is in play … that is when ministry is effective and God’s love is shared and shown.
Maybe this passage offers a transformative lesson for modern churches.
It’s a lesson that calls for a transformation in how churches conduct their mission in the world … that rather than simply be hospitable to the stranger … sitting and waiting for them to arrive at our door … that disciples go out into the community … to live and eat and listen to the people.
It’s when we live into our call fully and deeply leaning into it and perhaps, just perhaps, see a door or two fling open.
May it ever be so.

AMEN