By Seminarian: Ryan Ogrodowicz
Date: 6/5/09
Preached at: Zion Lutheran Church
Text: Mark 6: 1-13

 

When Reason Meets God

In the name of Jesus.

One would have expected Jesus to receive a warm welcome when He arrived at His hometown. Before His arrival, He had been busy in His ministry casting out chain-breaking demons, teaching His parables to the people, healing the sick and raising the dead.  In last week’s text we heard how a ruler of the local synagogue went to Jesus requesting that our Lord heal his dying daughter.  You may remember the story: by the time Jesus arrived on the scene, the girl was dead, but after speaking the words “little girl, I say to you, arise”, she rose from the dead and began walking around.

Our Lord certainly had the credentials to be a teacher worth listening to, and when He arrives in Nazareth, the people are at first astonished at what they hear; only this astonishment quickly fades, because it’s not long into our Lord’s sermon that questions begin to arise regarding His identity, questions that end with an unbelieving crowd not interested in the miracles or the Word of God. This unbelief by the people causes Jesus to marvel. All the evidence man could want was right there in front of their face.  His Word was true, He had done numerous exorcisms and healings; people talk, word gets around, the citizens Nazareth knew all about the mighty works done by His hands and yet He was rejected and ran out of town by the very people he had grown up with.

Some of you may be wondering what was it Jesus said because whatever it was, it obviously didn’t sit too well with His congregation. This account also appears in the gospel of Luke. There, once in the synagogue, Jesus unrolls a scroll of Isaiah and reads the passage that says:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight of the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

“Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

These are big words from the hometown guy. And when the people hear it, they begin to question this claim by Jesus to be the one true God. Our Lord doesn’t beat around the bush, but accuses them of unbelief and they are offended by it to say the least. To them, Jesus is just a regular guy from small town Nazareth, how could He possibly be the savior of the world?

On one level this text shows the difficulties of witnessing the Christian faith to close friends and family members. They know you well, and what could you possibly tell them that they don’t already know or is worth listening to?  Talking to those who you’ve grown up with is a challenge for any Christian, and one that didn’t pan out too well even for Jesus of Nazareth.  What an eye-opener this must’ve been for the disciples, newcomers to the ministry watching their theology professor get rejected in the very place He had grown up in.  It would be only a short time later that they themselves would be sent out two by two to preach repentance to the people. Seeing that their departure came shortly after this episode in Nazareth, one could say they didn’t exactly go out on a high note, but then again no one ever said the ministry is easy.  On a different level, however, we see in the crowd mankind’s sinful rebellion when he encounters the living God, an encounter that in the Gospel of Mark reveals people opting for their own intellect rather than clinging with blind faith to the Word’s of Jesus.  This is a case where instead of having faith like a child, man thinks, rationalizes and questions what God says.

1.) Where did this man get these things?
2.) What is the wisdom given to him?
3.) How are such mighty works done by His hands?
4.) 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?

He’s a man, flesh and blood, one of us.  What is so special about that?

These questions are a great representation of how the 21st century man thinks.  It’s easy to question God, to question who He is, what He says and what He is doing. Think about God’s Word for a second.  Whenever we read a passage in scripture that just doesn’t sit too well with us, it is ever so easy to shove it under the rug and move on to a passage we do like; as if we have the right to pick and choose from God’s Word what we think applies to us and that which doesn’t.  Or think about a minister or a theological teacher of sorts that teaches us something we do not like to hear. The natural response of all of us is to run him out of town, and flee to the guy who we like, without taking the time to determine what’s really true and what isn’t.

When the crowd saw Jesus, they saw nothing but a common man amongst them, one from there very own place of residence and were offended at His audacious claim to be God, even though it was true and salvation was still there’s for the taking; they only refused that gift. This attitude is not confined to just this text.  All over the world, people reject the true God revealed to us in scripture, and the Word of God can still be offensive when it reaches the ears of a sinner. It can be that double edged sword at times, one killing the old Adam in us all and this can be a painful process. Rather than listen and embrace what God says to us through His pure teaching as revealed to us in Holy Scripture, it has been man’s forte from the beginning to define God on his own terms, to pick and choose what He says and does not say, and to determine on his own how God comes to us.

The idea of God coming to us in mortal flesh to die on the cross to save us is absurd when seen through the lens of human reasoning. St. Paul even says in his letter to the Corinthian church that the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and an offense to the Gentiles.  Granted, there is not a whole lot of rational sense to it all, but the scriptures are crystal clear on the matters of salvation- Jesus is God with us, who came in the flesh to die so that all who believe may have eternal life.

Does the cross offend you, the idea of God coming in the flesh to die for the helpless sinner, a death he willingly took on so that through faith we obtain our heavenly reward? What about the sacraments?  These are precious gifts in which we receive the promised forgiveness of sins.  The scriptures tell us Christ is in the waters of Holy Baptism and it is His body and blood we eat and drink when we partake in the Lord’s Supper. When discussing these things, it is ever so easy to take the role of the crowd in today’s Gospel and question how the simple elements of bread, wine, and water could offer the forgiveness of sins, and the deceitful heart of man always tries to lead one way from the healthy teaching of God’s Word which says all of this. When you suffer and feel as if the devil has you by the tail, the tendency is to question things. But rather, we are to trust.  We are to believe in the blessed hope we have been given, a hope that nothing can strip away from the believer in Jesus Christ.

When the disciples were sent out, their message was very simple.  They preached repentance.  In faith, we can repent knowing indeed, Jesus has freed us from sin, and today, we have the promise of forgiveness when we confess before God knowing He sent His Son to die so that we may live. It’s always easy to question what’s going on, no one is exempt from that temptation, especially those days when we feel as if sin is really taking its toll on us.  But remember where our hope is because it does not have to make sense. God does not lie and He Himself has told us that through Jesus Christ His Son we have been set free from the bonds of sin, and have nothing but an eternal life to look forward to.

To God be the glory. Amen.