Sermon 07-07-24
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, You have come among us in the person of Your Son. Through the power of Your Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds to receive Jesus as Lord. Please pour out Your redeeming grace upon each person here today and enable us to call upon You for our salvation. This we ask, thru Jesus Christ our savior and redeemer. Amen.
The Gospel of Mark gives us two accounts that might seem unrelated to each other. First, we hear about Jesus returning to Nazareth and meeting some resistance. We might think Jesus should have had a home field advantage, but he didn’t. When Jesus started teaching with authority in the synagogue, people thought this hometown boy had gotten too big for his britches.
There is even a hint of scandal as the people of Nazareth questioned His lineage. We all accept Jesus’ virgin birth, but in that time and place it bordered on an insult to skip over naming the father as head of the household. The implication was: Jesus was an illegitimate child, bringing shame to his family and the whole community.
When Jesus had the audacity to claim the honor of a prophet someone needed to put Him in his place. He was a common builder, nothing more.
Prior to all this, Jesus had been busy healing people in Capernaum and across the Sea of Galilee, but now Jesus was amazed by the lack of faith He saw in His hometown. Mark writes, “and he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”
But the question is not about whether Jesus chose to do miracles or was He prevented from doing them? Many theologians have been caught up in arguments about God’s omnipotence and grace. ’s focus on what happened in Nazareth.
Jesus did heal a few people. There were some who sought him out in faith, just as Jairus did on behalf of his dying daughter, or the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years.
It’s quite interesting that Jesus responded when Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman fell at His feet and asked for His mercy. Jesus’ limited ability to do great things in Nazareth was because nobody bothered to ask – except for a few, and they were healed. So how does our faith affect the way God works?
Mark is simply pointing out that we have an important role to play in the manifestation of the kingdom. This isn’t just about salvation, it’s about the role each one of us has in making God known in the world.”
How intentional are we when it comes to God working in our lives?
If we continue to nurture some hurt –typically stemming from the lack of forgiveness, or if there is a regret or maybe it’s a grudge or anger that continues to burn inside you, we prevent God from working in and through us.
We all know people who have allowed addiction to define their identity. Others hang on to a problem so they get more attention. They really don’t want God to solve their problem. So how many of us prevent God from doing the work He wants to perform in us?
Or maybe God is calling you to some commitment that you want to ignore, some ministry opportunity you are afraid to accept, some challenge to grow but you think it’s too difficult.
This isn’t only about accepting God’s grace to save us it’s inviting Jesus into our hearts. It’s about our willingness to be true disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. It’s about trusting God enough to ask Him to change us and really mean it.
The disciples who followed Jesus to Nazareth didn’t abandon Him when the town rejected His message. As Jesus kept on with his ministry of preaching good news and healing the sick, casting out demons and giving hope to the poor, the disciples were learning what it meant to be a true follower of Christ.
And that brings us to the second part of this Gospel.
Sometimes rejection and persecution are the springboard for further ministry. Jesus commissioned his disciples just moments before He ascended into heaven. He said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus gave some very specific directions to His disciples as they went out in His name. He told them what to take, and what not to take. He wanted the disciples then and now to depend on God to provide for their needs. Jesus knew that they would face rejection at some point.
They saw the way He left Nazareth and went into the nearby villages to keep preaching and healing. Now He told them to shake the dust off their feet as they left any place that did not receive them or their message.
So they went – and their ministry was fruitful. No doubt they ran into some opposition from time to time. We know that Jesus faced growing resistance from those who felt threatened by His message. But that didn’t stop Him from seeing it through, from dying on the cross for you and for me, from rising on the third day to defeat death and sin once and for all.
Sometimes I wonder if we fear rejection so much that it prevents us from experiencing God’s power at work in our lives. When we shrink back from stepping out on faith, we shortchange ourselves, and Christ can do no work in us.
Following Jesus means putting it all on the line. We may find that some don’t want to hear our message of hope. That doesn’t mean we should stop sharing it. Some may ridicule us or walk away. There are others who will respond to the good news that God loves them. When we put our full faith in Christ, living in the assurance that He will act, He can change our brokenness into fruitfulness. Amen.
