Wisdom Beyond the Familiar
Text: Mark 6:1-13
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It’s a well-documented phenomenon that familiarity all too often breeds contempt. Philosophers of every age knew it—a youth goes away to study and begins to ask questions, only to be met with mocking when he returns home: “Who does this kid think he is now?” People who see each other all the time know how easy it can be for those little foibles each person has to become aggravating annoyances. Even the prophets, those sent to speak God’s Word to His people, knew it. In our Old Testament reading today, the Lord sends the prophet Ezekiel not to a faraway nation or to people who were unfamiliar to him. No, He said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn; I send you to them.” Jesus Himself experienced this phenomenon as He returned to His hometown of Nazareth. As He began to teach in the synagogue there, many who heard Him were astonished at what He was teaching, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at this upstart who had come home not as the young man they remembered, but as a teacher of the Word, speaking with authority and wisdom beyond their expectations. So Jesus said, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.”
Why does this happen, particularly with Jesus or those sent to their own people, like the twelve Apostles sent out two by two through the land of Judea, or the prophets, sent to their own rebellious house of Israel? The answer is hardwired into our fallen nature. We don’t like being corrected. We don’t like having our mistakes pointed out, let alone our sins and need for forgiveness. We don’t like hearing that things aren’t just fine between us and God, that something is needed to set things right, that our focus has been off, that we’ve been chasing down things that won’t really save us in the end when we should have been looking in faith to the One who made everything. So Israel refused to hear the prophets, driving them out of their towns, causing them to live in caves and ravines and run for their lives. So the world rejects what the Lord’s Apostles have been speaking since the beginning; martyring some, imprisoning others, mocking, laughing, disregarding, and ignoring. So the people in Nazareth took offense at Jesus, whom they had known growing up, when He returned to them to show them the only Way and Truth and Life. And so it is with us when we become defensive about something we hear from God’s Word, or when we flat out refuse to believe it, or when we continue to live our lives as if none of it really had any bearing on who we are, what our condition is before God, and how we should treat our neighbors, even the ones we don’t particularly like.
But when we can’t offer a real defense, when God’s Word speaks clearly and powerfully about something—and we wish it didn’t—instead of going deeper and considering it, instead of thinking that we might be wrong, instead we pick apart the messenger. That’s what they did in Nazareth that day: “Where did this man get these things? Isn’t this Jesus, the carpenter, who we’ve known since he came home with Mary and Joseph as a baby? Isn’t this James and Joses and Judas and Simon’s brother? Aren’t those women His sisters? Who does He think He is, coming in here and preaching like that, acting like He’s God’s gift to us, speaking like He knows better than us?” Rather than regarding Jesus by the holy, heavenly, godly wisdom they admit He speaks; rather than seeing the miracles He performs as signs that there’s more to Him than meets the eye, they regard him by human measures. They judge Him by what their eyes see and their memories recall, by what makes sense to them, by their own limited imaginations about this hometown kid.
We do the same thing when Jesus’ words reach us and we don’t like what they have to say. But when His words are clear as day, it’s hard to contradict them. So instead, like the people of Nazareth, we pick apart the messengers: we call them hypocrites, or naïve, or backwards. We try to find flaws with the medium, even if it’s the Bible. Think about the objections people offer to the Scriptures—it’s rarely about the content. Most often it’s about the book itself: “It’s old, outdated, written in a different time, so it doesn’t apply anymore. It was written for different people; so it doesn’t apply to me. They didn’t know better back then; we’re more enlightened now.” Shooting the messenger has always been around, even if the ammunition has changed. But notice what’s not happening: it’s not actually talking about what Jesus is saying. The problem is that no one is able to disprove a message just by criticizing the messengers or the medium. We’re just choosing to not believe what He says—whether it’s about sin, or our natures, or what we need. And that, simply put, is unfaith. “And Jesus could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.” To make the Son of God marvel at something, especially staggering unbelief, is not a good place to be.
But Jesus does not give up as quickly as we do. He keeps speaking wisdom and truth. He keeps sending messengers. He keeps sending the prophets, whether the people hear them or not. He sends His Apostles, two by two, through all the places He’s about to visit Himself. And while the wisdom of God might seem like backwards foolishness to the world, while His messengers may seem weak and worthless by the world’s standards, we know that the so-called foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of the world, even if it takes us hearing that Word of God a thousand times before it sinks in. We know that the seeming weakness of God is more powerful than anything we humans can muster. In fact, it’s in weakness that His power is made perfect. As St. Paul begged the Lord three times to remove the thorn from his flesh, the source of his weakness, God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore Paul—and all God’s people in faith—can boast all the more gladly of weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon us. For the sake of Christ then, we’re content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
And when we look at how our Lord Himself has become powerful through weakness, it all comes into crystal clear focus. Through the weakness of His humiliating cross, a public death penalty meant to shame criminals in those last agonizing moments before their death, in the weakness of that, Jesus has overcome the most powerful enemy of us all: the sin of mankind. In the pitifulness of His cross, He won the greatest victory of life over death. In the message of foolishness spoken by fishermen to kings and emperors, He has toppled empires and established His Church that’s outlasted every nation and kingdom of man. In the hymns taught by parents, in the prayers whispered over sleeping grandchildren, the Lord has preserved for Himself a holy people of all times and places, who will live and reign with Him forever. And this is what He extends to you. Through the Word that surprises you, that doesn’t seem to be as strong as the ultimately empty promises of the world, through the faith that’s refined and purified by crosses and trials, Jesus offers you something that outlasts it all: the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. He makes you His co-heir, His brother, His sister, His household, through faith, through the forgiveness and mercy that’s not understood by the world or its so-called wisdom. And that changes you. It makes you into what He says you are. He gives you peace in His Word, peace that the world cannot comprehend, peace that surpasses even your own understanding. Come now and receive that peace, receive your Lord, not judging by limited mortal standards, but by faith in what He has promised. In the name of Jesus, Wisdom made flesh, Amen.
