Mark 6:1-6
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives, and in his own home.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
In the parallel text this morning from 1 Corinthians 6:1,
And how dare you take each other to court! When you think you have been wronged, does it make any sense to go before a court that knows nothing of God’s ways instead of a family of Christians?
Ugh, Jesus has experienced rejection. He shows up at his family’s home after quite some time, grown-up and ready to change the world (quite literally in his case) and with his band of posies. They probably look like a bunch of misfits. Everyone is startled; they ask questions like what happened to him? Has he lost his mind? Who does he think he is, showing up with this crazy idea? We’ve been jews for generations; it works for us. Why would we give up the traditions, rituals, and community for another community? Rejection means; the dismissing or refusing of a proposal, and oh, boy, did Jesus have a proposal, and they were on the journey to spread the good news. Perhaps Nazareth had been an intentional stop, or maybe he was putting it off; nonetheless, it was on the list of visits, so he accompanies the disciples.
We have many ideas of rejection, and it is so painful. In this story, I wonder if it went both ways? Jesus felt rejected by his family, and I bet the family felt rejected by Jesus. I mean, where has he been all of these years?
To be clear, rejection for tribes and communities in the first century came out of evolution and our need to survive. They depended on each other to live. Being rejected from your community and tribe was a death sentence. More times than not, individuals would change their behavior before being rejected from the tribe. In this case, Jesus simply left because he knew that the world was developing and evolving. The way of life, divided between the powerful and lowly. He was on to something and wanted to be a part of the change, even if it meant death. Jesus has wisdom, and these ideas, challenged. Who has the wisdom?
Where ever there is rejection, there is judgment, and that is the worst part. Rejection is a form of enormous loss and almost always impacts all parties involved in rejecting. Rejection often means asking questions: am I okay? Do I fit in here? Are these my people? Was it alright to say I can’t do this right now, our relationship isn’t working, or why am I not getting signs from God? Where is God? Rejection and judgment go hand in hand. For most of us, it’s a form of survival. We will not grow as individuals or communities unless we create clear boundaries that often cause rejection and judgment. In other words, rejection and then judgment is our way of protecting ourselves.
In the second text from 1 Corinthians, the Apostal Paul teaches the well-established Christian community about judgment. This community gathered and created years after Jesus made that stop in Nazareth. Paul has a bad rap for being overly judgy. Paul is a misogynist, a homophobe, an anti-semite, and a xenophobe; the judgments go on. We use this word judgy in our modern world as a form of rejection, but what if this judgment that Paul is talking about with the early Christian community was simply a survival technique. Remember, the first text was a story of a Jewish community. This 1 Corinthians story is a message about the early Christians led by a Jew, Paul. Like Jesus, Paul thought he was living in or on the cusp of massive change in the world and religious communities. It was a critical time for Paul when God prepared to intervene and make a radical way forward. Just to be clear, Paul did not take issue with the Jewish community and their religious rights. He was out to protect the gentiles that desperately needed a loving community. So, who has the wisdom?
Anyone here taken the Meyers-Briggs Indicator personality test? I have taken it many times. The last indicator is you either judge or perceive. It is the attitude in which a person orients to the outer world. I always get a 100% J. Meaning, my orientation to the external world is judging. And, that’s when my family says, of course--you are so judgy. That’s not actually what it means. These functions determine how we make decisions; based on values, ethics, and the emotional needs of others. Judging refers to the decision-making process to protect ourselves and our family, and our community. When someone says, “that’s judgmental,” we might respond with, let me clarify, my boundaries, and I have a fear that something is not safe right now. Think of your biases. Then think, why do you have those biases? Are you scared? Does it make you worried that they might hurt you in some way? Discerning is what Paul was teaching the people of Corinth- to have that type of eye to protect themselves and their community.
Perhaps Jesus was not being rejected, but his family was simply protecting what they loved. And, maybe Jesus was not being judgy but merely offering an alternative that he believed would provide a community for those people not finding comfort in the current religious system. What if the rejection and the judgment had nothing to do with the other? What if this was all a part of God’s plan to allow each of us to cultivate our faith journeys with more than one way to get to salvation.
One of my professors at Iliff, an expert on the Apostle Paul, points out that when people argue that Jews will not be “saved,” he replies with “the covenants God made with Isreal in the Bible and stood on the principle that God does not break covenants. Humans might violate covenants, but if God was in the business of breaking covenants, we were all in a lot of trouble.” Perhaps the question we should be asking isn’t, ‘who is being saved or not?’ but “How many ways to salvation and how will God help me get there? It is not our job to judge who will or will not go to hell or who is or is not worthy—this work is a personal and inside job.”
For both of these communities, in Nazareth and Corinth, there is a new and what I would call a radical approach- of open dialogue and story-telling. What if we talked about our judgments freely and our fears that come out of those judgments? What if we honored the boundary of the other and said, you be you- but that’s not really for me. What if we articulated, God is speaking something different to me right now, and I have got to have faith. Each of us is complicated, like Jesus and Paul, but in this regard, it is simple: we are all God’s children who have many paths to salvation, and who each hold God’s wisdom in our hearts and minds.
Wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures, chokmah, means “heart and hand” and is often synonymous with skill. The root word of wisdom is feminine, and the Greek translation is Sophia and conflated with Spirit and ultimately, Christ, marking an expansion of its gender. God is with you. Each of you. God is walking alongside you. May the Holy Spirit, Jew or Greek, male or female or nonbinary, give you the personal agency and power to find your path to God, to salvation to love. Jesus and his people, Paul, and the emerging Christian community- the promise is that no matter what all of us who have felt rejection, will be embraced by God’s love.