Take the Next Step
Pentecost 7, Proper 9
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
We pick up today’s Gospel right where we left off last week. Jesus has just raised a 12-year-old girl from death to life and healed a woman with a hemorrhage in Capernaum. In each case, faith led to healing.
Now he has made the trek to his home town of Nazareth, about 26 miles to the west and up 1900 feet into the hill country of Galilee. Although today Nazareth is a bustling city of over 83,000 people, back then it was a village of about 500. That’s 1/10th the size of Fort Meade. And it’s about the size of Church of the Good Shepherd.
I don’t expect you all know each other, but imagine if the whole town was this church, and this church was the only church and the only gathering place in town, besides the well. You’d know everyone and they’d know you. And not just who you were. They’d know your personality and character. Many would have watched you grow up. They’d know your stories as well as you do - maybe before you do.
They’d know where you lived and how you lived. They’d know your parents, your family, your family’s history and how it’s interrelated in the community going back for generations.
With all of that in mind, it’s not surprising that the hometown folks have a hard time accepting Jesus as he is. Jesus as he was, was a carpenter (or stone mason, same word) just as his father Joseph had been. They knew he hadn’t gone off to be trained as a rabbi or anything else. We don’t have any record of his departure from Nazareth, how long he’d been away and so forth but apparently not that long.
I remember the first time I preached. It was at my home church in Lakeland and it was before I’d gone to seminary. It was part of an internship they require as part of your preparation and approval process. I don’t know exactly when that was. I don’t recall what the readings were. All I remember about the sermon was that my mouth felt like a desert. I was dying up there in front of people who had watched me grow up and knew a few stories about me. It was on faith and I must have said the word “faith” about 200 times in 15 minutes.
Afterward, people were very kind. When you preach a bad sermon, they will say things like, “We love you.” And I heard a lot of those, along with “You were very brave.” It’s important to have truth-tellers in your life. One woman who was also a neighbor of ours and a friend told me, with surgical precision, “I think it was on faith.” But all of that was on me. No one was saying, “Is this not the CPA?”
When Jesus teaches in the synagogue, it’s the opposite. They are astounded. But they cannot reconcile the Jesus they are encountering with the Jesus they had known before. It says they “took offense” at him, but the word here is skandalizo skandalizw, which is the root for our current word scandalize but which meant literally stumbling over him as you would tripping over a rock. They just can’t get past the fact that it’s him.
Jesus notes that prophets typically have that issue in their hometowns. It’s not so much that familiarity breeds contempt, but people have a hard time seeing and accepting someone whose life has been so radically changed by God, never mind that Jesus actually is God.
When it says “he could do no deed of power there,” that does not mean they somehow short-circuited his power and authority. Remember, faith is the currency of the Kingdom. All through the Gospels, just like in Capernaum, Jesus would heal someone and say, “Your faith has made you well” or that someone’s faith had led to Jesus healing someone else.
Where there is no faith? How can God give us what we truly need, which is himself, or act on our request for someone else, if we are not willing to receive him, to accept him?
Our first lesson this morning is to check ourselves. How willing and ready are we to receive him this morning. Showing up is a start. Tuning in is a start as well. But it’s important for us to check our hearts, check our minds. It’s kind of like an air filter. Life fills it up. We are busy. There’s all this stuff going on in our lives and we get focused on things we cannot control. All of that distracts us which effectively blocks the flow of the spirit.
Identifying such impediments is like changing the filter and the spirit can flow. New life. Refreshed perspective. Calm in the face of the storm.
What happened to Jesus is a fact of ministry. When he sends his disciples out to the villages and cities in the region, he wants them to be fully reliant on God for everything. No food. No money. They are regular folks. They’ve been taught by Jesus but they are also fishermen and tax collectors. Who is going to listen to them?
The people who will listen to them will listen to them. If they don’t, let it go. Don’t carry even the dust from those places with you. That’s also a testimony against them because people do have the choice to listen and if they won’t that is on them. Trust God’s perfect mercy and judgment and let it go.
That’s our second lesson this morning. Part of your walk with Jesus is to represent him wherever you go. Do not be discouraged by your own lack of training and experience in ministry. Ordained people and experienced lay ministers (of which we have many) will tell you we all feel inadequate because we are inadequate except that we know Jesus. Once you get on with it, you’ll see how that fades because you know him. As the Lord told Paul in our passage from 2nd Corinthians this morning, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
People tend to be nervous about taking those first steps in their walk. People more used to it will tell them, “Come on, you can do it!” Once they do, they toddle right along. This is our hope for Alice. She’s blessed with parents and grandparents and her aunt and uncle and sister and cousins who will all encourage her. But she’s got to take her first steps. No one else can do it for her.
It’s no different for all of us. Let the Lord lead in you in where, when and how you reach out to people. It has to be according to his will. Do not be discouraged because people don’t or won’t or can’t listen. They may not be ready, willing or able to listen. You may have not gotten the moment quite right. That doesn’t matter. Let it go and move forward, trusting God’s perfect mercy, judgment and provision for them. Maybe you were just the setup person and God has another coming right behind you. Maybe you planted a seed that will grow in 2-3 years. We often never see how the story unfolds.
Attend to your faith and trust Jesus. Take the step.
AMEN!