Rejection
Readings: Mark 6. 1-13
Our Gospel reading today builds on a theme which we picked up a few weeks ago, the failure to recognise who Jesus is. Because a few chapters earlier Mark had already dropped the hint this would happen, when he describes alongside the opposition of the religious leaders that Jesus’ family also arrive, coming to take him away because they think he’s gone mad. And I said back on that week that is seems that ‘Neither proximity to Jesus, nor great religious learning are sure fire ways to faith’ and here we see the former demonstrated starkly.
Jesus is heading home. He’s been out and about teaching, healing, performing miraculous signs. And now he’s headed up into the hill country, headed home. Nazareth is a small town, it’s unimportant, practically no-one writes about it outside of the Gospels. Some even doubted its existence until we did some digging around the churches built on the site. And so now we know that it was a small town, in the hills, carved out of the rock, with around 500 inhabitants. It’s about the size of St Ishamel’s if that helps.
And in places like that, everyone knows everyone don’t they. Everyone is related somehow, everyone knows everyone else’s business before they do. These close knit communities are special aren’t they. But they can also be challenging.
Jesus is coming home, his reputation no doubt precedes him, his great gifts as a preacher, his miracles, they’ve heard about what he’s been doing. And so he’s invited to speak at the synagogue.
And what happens? They reject him. Not just reject him, they’re offended by him, scandalized by him. Why? What has he done? Well, nothing. He’s done the same as he has in every other place and yet whilst everywhere else people are amazed at his preaching and miracles, here it is Jesus who is amazed at their lack of faith.
Jesus points out what’s happening, seeming to quote a saying from his day that a prophet is honoured everywhere but at home, amongst his people. As we say in our day ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. They’re listening to Jesus and as they’re amazed at his words they start to think, and say, who does this guy think he is?
As Mark told us last week, Rabbi’s were trained by other Rabbi’s they were selected after numerous tests, the best of the best of the best. Jesus hasn’t trained under a Rabbi, he’s the local carpenter, he took up his Father’s trade. The field he’s chosen to work in, a preacher, is a highly competitive one, a crowded field, and he has no qualifications.
And so his people don’t take him seriously do they. He’s not a miracle worker, he’s Mary’s boy. He’s no prophet, his brothers and sisters live next door to us and they’re not remarkable, why should he be?
You’d think wouldn’t you that the depth of his preaching, the very fact that he can teach so well having not been trained, would be a sign to those that knew him that something was different here. You’d think that the healings and other miracles would be a sign to those closest that here’s someone special, someone worth listening to. But it’s the exact opposite. In the face of pretty overwhelming evidence that this Jesus is someone important, something special, they can’t get past seeing him as the boy who grew up in their village. And so they’re response isn’t belief, it’s offense. Who does he think he is, who is he to tell us this stuff.
There’s this sense that they know Jesus too well, they’ve spent so much time with him they think they know everything about him. And so they’re no longer looking at him, they’re looking at what they expect of him. Perhaps all they can see is the boy who scraped his knee one day. Perhaps they can only see the carpenter who worked on their home a few years ago.
Do you ever rehearse conversations in your head? You think about what you want to say to someone, and then think about what they’d say, and what you’d say to that. And before you know it you’ve had the conversation, resolved the matter without ever opening your mouth or saying anything to the other person, because you know how the conversation is going to go. We assume we know them well enough that we can say their bits too.
It’s a real problem when you become so familiar with someone that you stop seeing them, you see straight past them, assume there’s nothing left to discover. Because there’s always more to discover, we just stopped looking. And we can do that with Jesus. We read through the Bible once and think we’ve got it sussed. We’re familiar with the often read bits of the Gospels and our picture of Jesus is drawn from that. And we stop looking at Jesus and instead see only what we assume about Jesus.
We’re not looking at him and who he is, we’re looking at our own caricature of him. We need to be constantly back in the Scriptures, looking at Jesus, looking at him in all of the Bible. And not skipping over the things he says or does that don’t fit, that make us uncomfortable, but leaning into those, sticking with those. We want to be looking to the real Jesus, not the one we assume we know.
Jesus is rejected because they assume they know all about him and this doesn’t fit. Rejection, it hurts doesn’t it. It hurts when we’re rejected by others. But how much more does it hurt when it’s by those closest to us. Jesus goes to his home town and his neighbours and relatives, whom he’d have known his whole life, they reject him. His own family reject him. That must hurt. That can’t be easy.
So what does Jesus do? He keeps going, he goes on to the other villages around Nazareth, preaching and teaching there. Healing and performing miracles there instead. Where we might be tempted to pack it in, give up. Where we might decide that actually it’s too much, Jesus moves on, proclaiming and showing the Kingdom of God in the places which will receive him.
And it’s only then that he sends his disciples out to expand his work. It’s only now, once he’s been rejected in his own town, derided, practically laughed out of the room, only now does he send his disciples out. Why? Because he wants them to see it not go well, he wants them to see that they’ll face rejection. If Jesus gets rejected for his message, those who go out proclaiming his message in his name will surely face the same.
And his advice for them about rejection as they go out is the same as he has just demonstrated, to move on when they’re rejected, to leave and go somewhere else.
When we share our faith it can be scary, we’re worried we’ll be rejected, made fun of. That people will lose their respect for us. We don’t want to risk it. And the risk is real right; I read a tweet earlier this week that said Evangelism feels like hit and miss. Mainly miss. And yet for 2000 years that’s how the Kingdom has grown.
Jesus wants his disciples then, and us as his disciples now to see him get rejected by his family and friends and neighbours. Because he wants us to see that when that happens it’s not that we’ve failed in some way. It’s not that we’ve made a mess of things, it’s how sharing the Gospel goes.
And rejection is hard isn’t it. Especially when our family don’t get our faith, when our siblings or children don’t really get all this Jesus stuff. When perhaps those relationships become difficult because we’re a Christian. And in those times Jesus is near us, because he gets it, he’s been there too.
And so we share our faith, gently and sensitively, as much as they’ll allow us. Notice how Jesus doesn’t force himself on them, he preaches and he heals as much as they’ll allow and no further. But we’re not to allow the fact that we’re not seeing conversions at the end of every conversation stop us. We’re to keep going, keep sharing with all we meet the wonderful news that God has joined us in our mess, come to fix our mess and bring us home.
As we share our faith, let us not fear rejection, for Jesus gets it, even tells us to expect it. And let us also keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, day by day discovering more of who he is.
As Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians; ‘Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.’
Amen.