Sunday, July 5
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Focus Theme
Sent with Power

Weekly Prayer
God of grace and powerful weakness, at times your prophets were ignored, belittled, and unwelcome. Trusting that we, too, are called to be prophets, fill us with your Spirit, and support us by your gentle hands, that we may persevere in speaking your word and living our faith. Amen.

Focus Reading
Mark 6: 1-13

[Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "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 not this 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 him. Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

All Readings For This Sunday
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 with Psalm 48 or
Ezekiel 2:1-5 with Psalm 123 and
2 Corinthians 12:2-10 and
Mark 6: 1-1

Reflection and Focus Questions
by Kate Huey

Focus Questions 1. When has God spoken to you through the most unlikely of people? 2. How do these two stories shed light for you about leadership and call? 3. What leaders and prophets are you failing to see? What great works of God are we missing? 4. Have you ever thought that you are called to your church, that your leaders and the people of your church are empowered by God? 5. Is the good news something you find and share and proclaim only in church, or do you take it on the road? Do you believe that you have everything that you will need along the way? Text for Meditation Jesus ordered them to take nothing for their journey / except a walking staff. For ideas on how to meditate with the Bible, read our article on Praying With the Bible

Last Sunday, the Old Testament reading (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27) presented one episode in the story of King David and his rise to the throne of Israel, and the story continues in this week's reading from 2 Samuel. This week's Old and New Testament texts both offer us an opportunity to think about leadership and the way God calls and works through individual people. In both readings, we have, in a sense, a "Tale of Two Crowds," the people who accept David as their king, and the folks in Nazareth who couldn't take Jesus seriously as a great spiritual leader.

The Second Samuel reading may suggest that David was the overwhelming, unquestioned choice of all the people, in the North and the South, and his rise to the throne may seem like a straight line from the time of his anointing by Samuel many years before. That would be a misunderstanding caused by our lectionary which by necessity takes small pieces of the grand narrative of the Bible and creates "snapshots" instead of long-running television series or thick novels rich in detail and context. In a lectionary reading, we often miss helpful background material and the larger story.

In fact, the story has not been a pretty one, and blood has been shed repeatedly along the way. There have been division, betrayal, war, and not everyone agrees that there should even be a king over all Israel. In the end, David is acknowledged as God's choice and is remembered as having led Israel effectively even while Saul was still alive. Perhaps the most important line is the last, in which David grows "greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him." Whatever path brought David to power, and whatever mistakes he would make as king, it is the power of God that gave him charisma, intelligence, and grace, and made him the enduring symbol of Israel's deep hopes in every generation.

On the other hand, the power of God at work in Jesus, in the Gospel reading from Mark, is not something the people of his hometown of Nazareth could wrap their minds around. He's just returned from a road trip, a fairly successful tour in the area surrounding his hometown, and they've undoubtedly heard about the spectacular things he's been doing. That sort of news travels fast. We wonder, however, if word of healings, and demons driven out, and the life of a little girl restored, travels better than the Word that Jesus preaches. Of course, everyone wants to see miracles, but does everyone want to hear about the life-changing but perhaps unsettling good news that those miracles illustrate and announce?

An "iPod" theology

And does anyone really want to listen to a hometown boy, especially one whose parentage is questionable ("son of Mary" instead of "son of Joseph"), and "just" an artisan at that? (How could he possibly have the learning needed to preach to us?) And yet he does what men did in those days, in the synagogue on the sabbath, opening the Scriptures and teaching those gathered, and he does so with great authority. Richard Swanson sees their reaction in a slightly different light than pure disapproval, calling their arguments "exactly the sort of faithful response one should expect in a faith that is named 'Israel,' which means 'he wrestles with God.' To refuse to engage the ideas, to refuse to argue, would be a sign of serious disrespect, a failure of faithfulness. The congregants honor Jesus with an argument." Honor or not, the respectful wrestling quickly turns to offended rejection, and this is the last time Mark reports a visit by Jesus to the synagogue. Instead, Jesus takes his ministry of proclamation out on the road, to the people, so it's no surprise that he instructs his disciples to do the same. (The Reverend Otis Moss III, in an interview on ucc.org, calls this "iPod theology"--mobile and more effective than waiting for the people to "come to us.")

Jesus is as offended by the people's lack of faith, their closed minds and hearts, as they are offended by his teachings. While we can look back on their refusal to hear Jesus' message, or on the disciples' painfully slow progress toward understanding it, it might be more helpful to put ourselves in their place. Beverly Link-Sawyer, for example, asks, "What would we think about a neighbor whom we believed to be just an ordinary, hardworking man turning into a miraculous teacher, let alone the reputed Son of God?" Would that be something we could wrap our minds, and hearts, around?

Seeing one another as God sees us

We might spend some time examining our preconceptions about whom we consider "worthy" of leading or teaching us. How do we even begin to look at one another with the eyes of God, to see in the most unexpected of people those whom God has chosen to lead? Would we really have chosen the youngest one, the one out with the flocks, to be anointed as the next king of an entire nation, the king of a people specially chosen by God? Would we really open our hearts and minds to a hometown, homegrown boy, someone we've known all of his life? Could anyone of importance really come from here, from us? Megan McKenna describes Nazareth as "a backwater village where perhaps 120 to 150 people lived at the time of Jesus," with many of them members of Jesus' extended birth family. In the face of this kind of rejection, is it any wonder that Jesus redefines family for his followers? Jesus has now been rejected not only by the high and mighty religious leaders but even by the humblest of his connections, the people who should have known him, and loved him, best.

So the townsfolk of Nazareth fail to acknowledge or recognize God at work in a hometown boy, and recite his family history as proof that he is just one of them, and that his teaching is a sign of over-reaching and perhaps even arrogance. Many writers quote the saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt," which might be a title for this section of Mark's Gospel. This crowd, rather than acclaiming Jesus as their spiritual leader, misses out on the amazing things God is doing in their midst. Matthew Skinner says that "they barricade themselves from the fullness of blessings that God might have poured out in Nazareth." Jesus responds with an observation rooted in conventional wisdom; Skinner, for example, provides a proverb from "the moral philosopher Plutarch: 'The most sensible and wisest people are little cared for in their own hometown.'"

An "un-miracle story"

Reading that Jesus' power was somehow limited by the people's unbelief may raise questions in our minds. Barbara Brown Taylor employs a wonderful metaphor in her sermon on this text to illustrate why Jesus couldn't work the same "deeds of power" in his hometown, where the people refused to respond to him. Jesus was still Jesus, she says, and "still had power to share with them, only he could not do anything with it because they would not let him." She compares it to the experience of trying to light a match to a pile of wet sticks: "It does not matter how strong your flame is: what you need is something that will catch fire. So call this an 'un-miracle' story, in which Jesus held the match until it burned out in his hand, while his family and friends sat shaking their heads a safe distance away." Instead of working great wonders, "He dropped the match when it burned his fingers and absolutely nothing caught fire in the synagogue that day....he left them to go shine his light somewhere else." Taylor then calls us "the religious people, whose religion can get in our way. We are Jesus' hometown kin, who do not always honor him." Her sermon challenges us to consider our discomfort with being challenged, especially by the unexpected, unlikely people sent by God to do just that. Like the United Church of Christ, Taylor believes that God is still speaking: "God is all around us, speaking to us through the most unlikely people. Sometimes it is a mysterious stranger, but more often, I suspect, it is people so familiar to us that we simply overlook them." If we refuse to listen, "then we should not be surprised if Jesus leaves us to go shine his light somewhere else." (Her sermon, "Sapping God's Strength," is found in her book, Bread of Angels.)

Speaking of leaving to go shine one's light somewhere else: Jesus then sends out his disciples to continue and expand his ministry and to be God's agents at work in the world, traveling light and depending on God to provide all that they would need. The followers of Jesus do this not by their own power or authority, but by the authority and power Jesus has placed in them. "They are not invited," Dianne Bergant writes, "they are commissioned. They are sent out as one in authority sends out delegates or envoys. The authority is not theirs, nor is the message. They are merely sent in place of the other. However, it is through their agency that the wonders are performed." The images of a wandering prophet or a spiritual seeker do not fit this sending. "This is no rootless wandering," Richard Swanson writes, and "the disciples do not look like itinerant preachers. They are sent out to attack demons and heal." Like Jesus and John the Baptist before him, the disciples "are sent out to call for change." Our call, as followers of Jesus, as those sent with power and authority (that derive from him) is to do the same: to heal, to attack the demons that plague our society and the world that God loves, to share the good news. Like the disciples, we are sent into the world.

Jesus knows that the journey and the work will be hard, but he sends his "agents" out with very little besides the good news and each other, and a stick, perhaps for safety, perhaps for support. We so often practice evangelism as a ministry to bring people to church that it's an exercise to picture ourselves taking the good news out on the road, out into our lives, out into the world that hungers for it. If we focus too much of our time and energy and resources on the physical plant of our church, for example, then we might grow dependent upon it, a material resource, a possession, in a sense, a security blanket, perhaps. It's what we humans do when we feel insecure, after all: depend on things instead of God. Our intentions are good, but we can depend on the medium more than the message, the right equipment and the most beautiful sacred objects. Jesus knows this about us, understanding that "Provisions for the journey can substitute for faith if we're not careful," Peter W. Marty writes. Jesus "just doesn't want people disappearing beneath the weight of their treasures when they have something as important as the good news to live and share." In The Message, Eugene Peterson's marvelous translation of the Bible, Jesus puts it this way: "Don't think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment."

"SUV spirituality"

Henry G. Brinton provides a delightful contemporary image for the daunting task of evangelism in a world hungry for good news but often hostile to it: "The challenge is to practice some true 'SUV spirituality': to serve Jesus by doing something tough, and by performing the Lord's work in some hard-to-reach regions." For preachers and disciples in any age, it "has never been easy to leave the comfortable road of conventional wisdom and to face the rocks and logs and other barriers that society throws in our way." Are we 21st century Christians willing to suffer the rejection and dangers as much as the joys of preaching the good news?

Mainline Protestants are recovering our passion for evangelism, reclaiming our call to share the gospel in both word and deed, and making sure that neither contradicts the other. Michael Lindvall says that "the church will not be heard if what we do as Christians is incongruous with what we say about our faith." But we're not simply out to get new members (not that there's anything wrong with new church members!) in our ministry of evangelism, "not 'to get them on our side' or even 'to grow the church,' but simply to tell others about the God who has come to mean so much to us."

The work of God, even through gifted and called leaders, happens best, it seems, when the people hear God still speaking to them in their own place and time, in their own situation, and listen for where God is leading them and whom God is sending to lead them. There's an openness called for on the part of the people to listen and accept God's gifts. Of course, leaders also need to be open to God's voice, to be humble and led even as they lead. Is it surprising, then, that the humble image of a shepherd is used to describe both David and Jesus?

For further reflection

Parker Palmer, 20th century (from The Company of Strangers)
In my view, the mission of the church is not to enlarge its membership, not to bring outsiders to accept its terms, but simply to love the world in every possible way--to love the world as God did and does.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 20th century
If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

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Weekly Seeds is a source for meditation and prayer based on the readings of the "Lectionary," a plan for weekly Bible readings used in Protestant, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches throughout the world. When we pray and study the Bible using the Lectionary, we are praying and studying with millions of others. We invite you to continue the conversation on our "Opening the Bible" forum at http://i.ucc.org.

Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Initiative, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission. The Ancient Christian Devotional is © 2007 by Thomas C. Oden and ICCS, and is published by InterVarsity Press. Used by permission.