Shaking off the Dust
So
after traveling around Galilee, preaching and healing, making a little bit of a
name for himself, Jesus returns to his hometown. And he gets up to preach in
the synagogue, and people are amazed at how wise they suddenly find him. They
praise his wisdom, and wonder where it came from all of a sudden. But then, in
nearly the same breath, they start cutting him down.
This
seems a little bit weird. I mean, if they are amazed at how wise he is, why are
they so upset? Shouldn’t they be happy that he’s brought some of his wisdom to
this synagogue? Doesn’t it make sense that they would be happy about his new
place, delighted to hear his wisdom, and excited that he has come back, rather
than moving on to bigger, better things?
In
order to understand their reaction, we have to learn a little bit more about
how the society worked in antiquity. Theirs was not a meritocracy like the
United States. People weren’t judged by their achievements, but by their family
honor and reputation. You could call it an honorocracy.
Depending
on who your family was, you were born with a certain amount of honor. Well-born
people had more honor to work with, and poorly-born people, (such as the bastard
son of Mary) did not have much honor to work with. And everyone was expected to
stay in their place. By behaving appropriate to your station, you could improve
your family’s honor, and perhaps slowly raise your status in the community.
Honor, was sort of like a credit score. Easy to damage it, slow to build it up,
and everyone has one. Except that honor was public, and it was considered a
limited resource. If your status went up, it was always at the expense of
someone else.
So
now it makes a little bit more sense that the people were scandalized by Jesus’
newfound wisdom. He was clearly acting way above his station. Wisdom and power
were the domain of other, more important people, and Jesus was just getting
uppity trying to talk like he was something special. They knew where he came
from. The bastard son of Mary who did some carpentry work a few towns over and
now thinks he’s a combination between Ezekiel and Gandhi? And he wants them to
stop listening to the priests and the Pharisees and give money to the poor and
expect that to make God happy and the crops come in? And so they attacked his reputation and his family, his
sources of honor, reminding themselves and each other that he didn’t have any
powerful patrons who allowed him to speak this way, no protection if he
offended someone.
But
Jesus was having none of it. He had no interest in the family and kinship
system that forced people to stay in their place. Everyone had to stay in line
or else the whole family was punished.
The last time he came to town, some well-meaning friends and members of
his family tried to get him to stop. You’re embarrassing us, they said, “don’t
you realize that all your rebelliousness has an effect on all of us?” But Jesus
would have none of it. He declared that there was something more important than
protecting your family’s reputation. In fact, he went so far as to repudiate
his own family. He responded to their concern with perhaps the most
revolutionary statement yet at that point. “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does the will of God is my
mother and my brother and my sister.”
He
wasn’t just rejecting the family and kinship system that ensured that people
stay in their place. He was declaring that there was a power bigger and more
important than status and influence. That God demanded justice more than
purity, generosity before retribution, and righteousness more than social
status. He declared that he could forgive sins, and that people profiting from
the cleansing business were parasites on the people. He ate with tax collectors
and sinners, and showed how those who thought they were righteous because they
avoided the unrighteous were hypocrites. He refused to fast when people went
hungry elsewhere. He was insulting everyone in their name, upsetting people
they depended on, soiling what honor the family had.
And
when you bite the system, the system bites back. Jesus was rejected in his
hometown. He was, in his own words, without honor, even among his own kin. This
is what happens when you rock the boat. It’s what happens when you challenge
the system. Wherever you go, someone benefits from the system, and the ones who
benefit usually have the most power and the most interest in keeping that
system the same. It’s like in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, when the idealistic country bumpkin arrives in D.C.
hoping to make the world a better place, and the other legislators try to feel
him out to figure out who’s pocket he’s in. When they discover that he doesn’t
have any interest in the big bankers, the steel conglomerates, or the shipping
magnates, they plot to get rid of him because he makes them all look bad. Or
when Billy Beane threw out all the conventional wisdom in baseball, everyone
who was conventionally wise tripped all over himself to declare Beane a
lunatic.
When
it comes down to it, if you have a message that is revolutionary, you are going
to catch a lot of flak if you tell anyone about it. You can’t make an omelet
without breaking a few eggs. Now of course the corollary is true as well. If
you are preaching what you think is a revolutionary message, and everyone
around you is nodding their heads in agreement, then you might be missing
something. You can’t put three uncracked eggs on a plate and call it brunch.
The word of God is wild, scary, and
awesome. It is rarely what we expect it to be. It is jarring, frustrating, and
if you spend any time in a room with it, it will leave marks. It demands of us
more than we’d like to give, promises us more than we’d feel comfortable
receiving, and challenges us to leave our comfort zone and take risks that will
lead us in new directions. It asks us to give up climbing the ladder of success
and judge ourselves by our devotion to the reign of God. But we have sought to
tame it. To make it a little less wild, a little simpler to follow, a little
easier to control. And in doing so we’ve drifted a long way from the mark.
We’ve tamed it, restrained it, so that it makes a little more sense and a
little less change. What we end up preaching, is a sort of Christianity Light
™. One that gives us all the benefits of feeling like a good person without
ever having to push ourselves or each other for something better. One that
promises eternal life without asking for more than a couple of hours on Sunday
and a few dollars in the offering plate.
Jesus gave us a revolutionary
message. He gave us a message that by itself intends to change the world. This
message involved leaving the places in which we are comfortable, reaching out
to people we’d rather not touch, and giving up privileges we’ve never lived
without. It involves rejecting would-be powerbrokers of his world to declare
that God is the only power in the universe that matters. It involves denying
our selfishness and our sinfulness, taking up our crosses, and following
Christ.
What Jesus demonstrates when he
returns home, is that we should expect rejection. While the Word we preach will
sometimes fall on good soil, and bear fruit, speaking truth to power is a
dangerous occupation. Our passage concludes with Jesus sending his disciples
out into the world, to preach his message. And he warns them, that if they do
it right, they should expect to be rejected. That if we really preach the
kingdom of God, a revolutionary, demanding idea that challenges us to create a
more just society, a more welcoming community, a more heavenly earth, then we
should expect that the rest of the world will put all sorts of pressure on us
to slow us down, wear us out, and restrain us.
But there is good news. In spite of
Jesus rejection in his hometown, his ministry does not end. Immediately
following his rejection Jesus moves on and increases his ministry, refusing to
be silenced. And his disciples go out and cast out the demons that oppress us,
that lead us to selfishness, violence, and hatred. And they bring healing hands
and loving hearts to people who desperately need them.
We have been given the authority to
change the world in the name of Christ. We have been blessed with a wild, crazy
message that challenges the social structures that oppress and demonize, and
bringing healing and hope to a broken world. We cannot do it without
experiencing rejection. But nevertheless, we must move on, because our message
is so important, so crazy, so powerful, that with God’s help we will be able to
move past the bitterness and divisiveness of our world into a world of justice,
mercy, and peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment