Tuesdays with Mark

Mark 6: 1-6a

I am going to get back into the blog business. I am going to title this series “Tuesdays with Mark,” which is a take off of the book, Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Alborn.
I am going to use the reflections from Tuesday’s Bible study group because I believe that the way these men go about reading scripture is extraordinary (this is not to say that the Wednesday group is not also the same) and I want to invite more of you into our conversation about the gospel according to Mark. I start this week knowing that I will be missing the next two weeks, but I will resume when I return.
So, we begin: “[Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.” (v.1) This is the first time that Jesus returned home after he had been baptized by John the Baptist and after he had begun his preaching, teaching, healing, and exorcizing mission. The home town folks must have heard good things about him, and one might guess that they may have even felt some pride about his ministry.
Verse two reads: “On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded.” I asked the men how this spoke to them and what came out of that discussion is that Jesus is in the synagogue on the Lord’s day, that he was faithful to being in the worshipping community. I then asked the men if they were familiar with any of the studies that show a correlation between the amount of time people spend in worship and in prayer and the difference such activities make to a person’s mental and physical health. Well, be careful what you ask for. At this moment a physician and a hospital chaplain began to reinforce my comments with data and reports and verifications. It is all true: our worship life and prayer life impacts our overall health in many and profound ways.
Everything seemed to have initially gone pretty well with Jesus coming back to teach in his “home church,” but then the people began to question his background and his credentials. They ask, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being 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?” (v. 3)
I asked the men what they made of this and one of them said, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” And that is a good way to interpret this piece of scripture. They knew him. They watched him grow up. He didn’t seem to be anything special, nor did any of his brothers or sisters. So, just who does he think that he is? By calling him a “son of Mary” they were intending a slur or slight, if not a downright piece of slander. Boys and men were designated the sons of their fathers. I know that this is not fair, but this is how this culture worked. By calling him a son of Mary they might very well have been casting aspersions on the legitimacy of his birth.
I then asked the men how familiarity has bred contempt in their own lives, especially at home. Now, that is a painful question. Do not treat your spouse like a roommate or like one of the guys. Do not let your comfort with someone lead to being less than a gentleman. To make my point sink in, I asked them to recall when Adam woke up from his nap and Eve was there, standing before him in all of her beauty and
wonder. This is a sacred moment. If we lose this sense of awe and sacredness in our daily relationships something vital and important and precious will be missing. How can we be both comfortable and hold onto the sacredness at the same time?
Proceeding to verse five: “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” Now I find this to be a frightening and disturbing piece of scripture. One guy said, “You mean I have to do something? I cannot just show up and get fed?” The spiritual climate of this synagogue damped down what Jesus was able to do there. I am not saying that Jesus could not perform any miracles there—he did; but I am saying that the expectations of their hearts and souls did make a difference in what Jesus was able to do.
What was true then is true now. This is where I really started to lean into the men. What kind of climate were they helping to create in their own faith communities? (You need to know that we have men from many churches.) I told them that they were called to be thermostats and not thermometers; that they needed to set the temperature and not just gauge it. One man said that he had been in a church where the people expected the Holy Spirit to show up every time they did something from coffee hour to vestry meetings, from Sunday morning worship to an ECW meeting, from a hospital visit to a bible study. I was very moved to hear his testimony. I also felt very convicted by it. How can we have that kind of community? How can we have that kind of expectation? Churches can get so comfortable with each other, so comfortable with our rituals, that we lose our sense of desire and expectation that something great and stupendous and miraculous is about to happen. Let us not be like the synagogue in Jesus’ hometown.
Welcome to “Tuesdays with Mark.”