The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
In ancient Greek theater, actors often played more than one character — hence the still familiar mask of the comedy and the mask of the tragedy. By wearing the mask, they let the audience know whether the actor was playing the hero or the villain. The masks were a help for the audience, so that they would know whether it was time to laugh or time to cry. In last week’s Gospel lesson, we read about Jesus going to Jairus’ home, where a crowd had that mask all wrong. Jairus’ 12-year-old daughter had just died, and the mourners correctly recognized death as the villain. But they don’t see Jesus as a hero. So they cry when they need not, and laugh when they should not. Although the text doesn’t tell us, it was the custom of the day, of Jewish culture, that those weeping outside and inside the house were usually hired help, paid mourners — not really feeling the understandable grief of those who had lost their daughter, in this case, but folks making money by pretending to share in the pain. No wonder they laughed at Jesus when He told them the truth: the child isn’t dead, but sleeping. Not only was it obvious to them that Jesus was missing the fundamental point, but Jesus was also, for them, pretty bad for business. In reality, they need not have wept, for the villain, death, would soon be conquered by the hero, Jesus, who Himself would die and rise from the dead. Christians can make light of death, even at times weeping over the death of a loved one, because we know it’s a momentary, temporary situation, that in fact the one who is a Christian, who has died, will be raised up again on the last day, in both body and soul, and live eternally with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in heaven.
We are in Series B of the three-year series. That means the Gospel lesson for the entire year comes predominantly out of the Gospel of Mark. And one of the distinguishing marks of the Gospel of Mark is that it repeatedly raises the question in regard to Jesus: “Who is this?” Or a version of that: “Who is this?” In this morning’s Gospel lesson, it’s more accurately asked this way: Who does Jesus the Nazarene think He is? That’s what the people of His hometown were wondering when Jesus made His second trip, well into His earthly ministry, back to His hometown of Nazareth — this time with a company of His twelve disciples, namely apostles. Verse 1: “Jesus went out from there” — from where? Capernaum, His adopted hometown — “and came into His hometown,” namely Nazareth, “and the disciples followed Him. And when the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue, and the many listeners were astonished, saying, ‘Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to Him? How are such mighty works done by His hands?'” They understood that something was quite different about Jesus, this boy who had grown up as their neighbor, who played with their own kids. If we read the Gospel lesson in the way in which Gospels are supposed to be read — as a continuity of one set of happenings and circumstances after another — and if we pay attention to the immediate context of the reading on any given morning, and this morning, we see Mark is using the events in Jesus’ ministry to draw a contrast between two groups of people. It’s the contrast between faith and unbelief, and the kind of response faith produces versus the kind of response unbelief produces. In this case, it’s the faith of the woman who suffered twelve years from a bleeding disorder, and the faith of a father, Jairus, who lost his daughter to death, and then the contrast: the relatives who do not believe. Jesus was back in His hometown. His custom was, He went to the synagogue, and He began to preach and to teach. And many people acknowledged that He taught some kind of wisdom, something they hadn’t heard before. They heard about, and even witnessed, some of His miracles. The text tells us that the people were astonished, but not in a good or positive sense. In this usage, the Greek word means that they were offended. That is: Who is this? Who does He think He is? We know His brothers and His mother, and who His father was. We know who He grew up with. Who does He think He is, walking into our synagogue and preaching that He, in fact, is the promised Messiah? “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?” They, the people in Nazareth, took offense at Him. They were scandalized. And they were embarrassed that the hometown kid all of a sudden had a messiah complex. He was being rejected by His own hometown. And Jesus knew that was going to be the response to His preaching, His teaching, and even His miracles. But the depth of it even surprised Him. So Jesus reminded them: “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” So Jesus could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. A prophet is not honored in his own hometown. It’s one of the reasons why church bodies don’t send the homegrown kid back to the congregation that he grew up in, because many folks don’t ever get the point that he grew up, and he now holds a divine office with specific duties and responsibilities. He’s no longer the hometown kid. He’s the pastor.
Jesus came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. That’s how John put it in John 1:11. Paul wrote: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” The Word of God is never so despised as when it is purely and richly preached and taught. Those who don’t want it, or don’t have it, want the right doctrine. And those who have the right doctrine in preaching, they despise it. The people of Nazareth could only see Jesus as the carpenter, Joseph and Mary’s son. And they despised any claim Jesus was making to the contrary. The people of Nazareth weren’t the only ones that were astonished. Jesus was also astonished. And His astonishment also carried with it a negative connotation. He wondered, or marveled, at their unbelief. They acknowledged Jesus’ wisdom and His miracles, but they stopped short of believing that He was who He claimed to be: the promised Messiah. Their unbelief was like that of the scribes and Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, and Levites in the previous chapters of the Gospel of St. Mark. Verse 5 tells us that Jesus could do no mighty work there, except He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. People think that somehow Jesus was bound, He was limited, He couldn’t do this. I tend to think that what happened here is that the people didn’t bring their sick relatives, or themselves, to Jesus to be healed. They didn’t want to be seen indulging Jesus. So even the crowd wasn’t a crowd anymore, in His own hometown. They only brought a few to be healed of their various illnesses. So it was time to move on. Jesus then went around to other villages in the area, preaching and teaching and healing. So the first part of the Gospel reading told us of Jesus’ second homecoming, which, like the first, ended with unbelief, rejection, and limited works. In the second half of the Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus goes about the business of preaching and teaching, performing miracles, all in the answer to the question: Who is this man from the town of Nazareth? In order to make known the right answer, Jesus sends off the twelve. Verse 7: “He summoned the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.” And they went out, and they preached that men should repent. When you hear that, that means they preached the Gospel. They preached trust in Christ. Turn from your sin, and trust in the promised Messiah. That’s what it means to preach repentance. And that’s what they did. They went out and preached that men should repent. And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them. Which is in contrast to what happened in Nazareth, His own hometown, where He only healed a few. They heal many, cast out many, anoint many. Jesus’ response to the rejection of His hometown is to go and to send the apostles to the other towns and villages where His Gospel will be received. Jesus had previously selected His principal twelve apostles. They were now to become His associates, so to speak, and to work independently of Christ — that is, to go out two by two to preach the Gospel, and exercise good and sound judgments in their dealing with the people.
The first part of the lesson was about Jesus and the unbelief of those He had grown up with in His hometown, and the limited number of works that He did, in contrast to the second part of the reading, in which many received the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The disciples preached repentance: sorrow over sin, faith in the Messiah. In contrast to Jesus in Nazareth, they were very busy healing, preaching, casting out demons, because their work was met, and their message was met, in true Christian faith. See, if you judged it by today’s standards, of the 20th and 21st century, Jesus is the failure. The disciples and apostles are the successful pastors. Jesus failed in His hometown, but the apostles greatly exceeded. See how backwards we are in our thinking? A big, giant church, full to the brim, with great shows and sound equipment and special effects — why, they can bring the hordes in. But those who preach the faithful Word, sometimes we aren’t as blessed as those apostles’ first work. But I’ll remind you: all but one were martyred in the end.
Now, the story of Jesus’ rejection in His own hometown was but a foreshadowing of what would take place in Jerusalem during Holy Week — a small, tiny taste of that which was to come. The unbelief Jesus found among the people in His own hometown and relatives foreshadowed the reaction He would have in Jerusalem, where so many seemed to hate Jesus, cry out for His crucifixion, and aid in His murder. Jesus lamented over Jerusalem as He was entering the holy city during Holy Week: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” You see, it is true: history repeats itself, on a small scale and on a grand scale. It’s true. Think of Nazareth, and then Jerusalem, and then all the way to little Wittenberg, to the city of Wittenberg, where the Gospel was restored. Those are places where Jesus ministered, suffered, accomplished our salvation, where the Gospel was recovered and the Scripture is open for all to read. How many baptized Christians and confessional Lutherans remain in those once great cities: Jerusalem and Wittenberg? The congregation in which the Word of the Lord dwells richly today has become a rare event, because tomorrow it can also be utterly despised, with the advent of a new pastor or a new council in a church. The story of the Gospel, the story of the apostles, the pastors of the Christian Church, the story of church bodies and congregations, and even the story of our very own families, have an element of sadness to it, wherein pastors, congregations, church bodies, and members of our own family fall away, turn away, and collect unto themselves the kind of doctrines they want to hear. How many of Immanuel’s own baptized children grew up to be confirmed, and being confirmed, made weekly attendance a way of life, a number one priority for their own families? I suspect that number now is in the single digits. The world of Christendom, those churches that still adhere to Scripture, without taking away from the Word of God, or without adding to it, are an absolute minority. This is why we pray, and why we sing: Lord, keep us steadfast in Thy Word. Churches that are faithful, pastors that are faithful, are faithful because God has bestowed His grace upon them.
Jesus came to bear the sins of the whole world. And by bearing all sins, He reconciled us to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The same Jesus who reconciled us, and who paid for the sins of the whole world, continues to serve us in small, little local congregations, through the Word and Sacrament ministry that was instituted through and by the apostles, that is, the Office of the Public Ministry, the pastor. That’s why Mark focuses on the work of the twelve in verses 7–13. Jesus began the program of preaching, teaching, healing, casting out, all by His Word. And He sends the apostles with the very same duty, and the very same kind of authority, that is, the authority given in the Word of God itself. That’s what faithful pastors and congregations do. They simply pass on that which they have received from the biblical text. It’s not their job to create new and innovative ideas or doctrines and practices. It is through them that Jesus continues to reach out to those who reject Him, as He Himself had visited a second time to His hometown, to reach out once again to them with His Gospel. Notice Jesus didn’t retaliate, either against those who killed Him in Jerusalem, or those who rejected Him twice in His own hometown. Jesus does not retaliate, but instead sends His apostles to proclaim His atoning, sacrificial death, and to tell those people that God has already actually reconciled them to Him, His Father. Thus Jesus’ ministry continues in an unbroken line, from one generation to another, from one congregation to another, from one pastor to another. Faithful pastors preach the Word of God to you. That’s their job. They’re to put into your mouth the body and blood of Jesus, in the form of the bread and wine, to eat and to drink, to deliver to you the forgiveness of all your sins. We know a prophet is not honored in his hometown. But here in this congregation, our Lord has been kind and gracious to us, unmerited though it be, that we receive Him each and every week in confession and absolution, and making use of our Baptism each and every day, in the call to repentance, and coming each Sunday to the Divine Service to receive the Lord’s Supper. And perhaps on a rare occasion a miracle of healing is worked in our lives, or in the lives of someone we know. But His common and everyday work is to cure your soul of sin, so that you might rise up in body and soul and mind on the last day, to live eternally in your heavenly mansion with your Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord says to you what He said to St. Paul in the Epistle lesson this morning: that His grace is sufficient for you, and His power is made perfect in your weakness. How is that? Because in your weakness, He forgives your sins. So we can laugh even in the midst of mourning, and we mourn even in the midst of our laughter. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.