Mark 6:1-6          Neighbors and Missed Opportunities      Dec 13, 2009

     What are your earliest memories of church?  Who are the people you remember?  Can you picture in your mind where those older folks used to sit?  Do you remember the man who snored?  The lady who taught Sunday School?  The man with the wonderful singing voice?  The people who always brought the best food to the lunches?

 It must have been this way for Jesus as he entered the synagogue of Nazareth where he was raised as a child.  As he unrolled the scroll to read from Isaiah, he surely thought of so many people.  These were his neighbors who had known him since he was a boy.  Surely, Jesus felt a special love for them.  But on this day, they would reject him.  The people of Nazareth would miss an opportunity to encounter God and bring renewal to their lives and to their town.  How often do we miss the opportunities of God?  The knock comes at our door and we sit without answering. 

To set the stage for this story in Mark 6, we should look back at Mark 4-5.  Jesus had begun his life work with an awesome display of the power of the Kingdom of God.   He calms a storm.  He frees a man from demonic emotional and psychological problems.  He brings healing to a woman who had been sick for many years.   As Jesus travels across the countryside, he again and again reveals a great power at work so that more and more people ask, “Who is this man?”

  And then Jesus comes home to Nazareth.  It was the Sabbath and he came to the synagogue.  The Rabbi asked him to read the scripture during the worship.  Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah….I am sure everyone was smiling and nodding their heads as he read.  “What a nice boy.  I’ve known him all my life.”  Until Jesus finished reading and made a final personal comment.  “Today this scripture has come true in front of you.”  

  “What did he say?” thought the man in the second pew on the right.  “Did he say all this prophecy had come true today?” thought the lady on the third pew to the left.  Then someone asked out loud, “Where did this man get this?”   “Another asked, “What is this teaching?”  And another shouted, “What about these miracles we’ve been hearing about?” 

  You see, what Jesus was saying was that he was the one toward which all these ancient prophecies pointed.  He did not claim to be merely another good teacher.  He was claiming that God’s moment of liberation had come.  Now was the time.  God was knocking and Jesus was the doorway.  

 Now this was hard for these neighbors to swallow.  “Isn’t this the son of Mary?”  It is odd they do not call him the son of Joseph. Maybe this is still an old piece of gossip from those who remember Mary’s pregnancy and the uncertainly of Jesus’ fatherhood.  The words fly faster around the sanctuary.  “Who does he think he is?   He’s just the carpenter who built my camel stall.  We know all his brothers and sisters.  When he was a boy, he played ball on the road in front of my house.  He was the teenager who went to school with my son.  My daughter Rachel once had a crush on him.  Glad she didn’t marry him now that he’s run off on some religious fanaticism.” 

  Then Jesus speaks these words—a prophet is not without honor except in his own house.   What does Jesus mean?  Listen.  The people of Nazareth could not see Jesus for who he was because they already thought they knew who he was.   We often do not see what is right in front of us because we are so sure that we have already seen it.  I sometimes feel that people do not really see who I am or hear what I am teaching as a pastor because they have already decided who I am and what they think I am saying.  Maybe they have known another pastor and they assume I am like him.  Or they have known me now for ten years and do not see where I have changed and grown.  They cannot see what I am offering now because they do not see me.   Artists say that most people cannot draw well, not because of a lack of drawing skill, but due to a lack of seeing skills.  We most often do not draw the tree that is really in front of us.  We draw the tree that is in our mind.  We draw what we think we know a tree to look like.  We just do not see.  And when God comes knocking on our door, we so often do not see and do not hear because we are so sure about what we already know.

  So verse 3 says, “They took offense at him.”  The word in Greek is Skandalon.  We get our English work Scandal from it.  It means a stone that causes one to stumble.  It is a stumbling block.  Something we do not see that causes us to trip and fall.  What is it in your life that is blinding you? What do you not see or do not want to see?  Sooner or later, it will trip you and cause you to fall.

  Jesus comes to these people as Jesus comes to all people and he offers them an opportunity.  But the people of Nazareth turn him down.  In the days before modern harbors, ships often had to wait outside the harbor until the tide came in order to make port.  The Latin term for this waiting was ob portu which means a ship waiting over against the port.  We get our English word opportunity from this Latin root.   Captains waited for the right moment when the tide shifted to make port and if they missed it, they would have to wait another 12 hours for the next tide.   The next opportunity.  You and I also have opportunities in life when the tide moves, when God is at work.  And we must go.  We must move at that moment.  We cannot wait for we do not know when the next opportunity will come. Shakespeare wrote of ships and tides and opportunity—

        “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at flood will lead them on to fortune.  But if missed, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.  On such a full sea are we now afloat,  And we must take the current when it comes or lose our ventures forever.”   

   You know, second chances do not always come.  Often we must strike while the iron is hot.  Too many people go along thinking, I will do that tomorrow.  I will study harder next time.  I will love my spouse better next year.  I will be a better mother someday.  I will answer the call of God on another Sunday.  But for all of us, there is a time of opportunity when the tide is right and we can never be sure if that same tide will ever come again.

  But the people of Nazareth turned him away and the Gospel of Mark has a disturbing statement in verse 5.  It says, “Jesus could do not mighty works or miracles there among them.”   Mark says it bluntly.  Jesus could not.  Matthew softens it a little and says, “Jesus would not.”  Either way, Jesus did not.  Does our lack of faith, our lack of response, tie the hands of God in some way?   Yes.  God has tied his own hands and given us freedom.  God will not break that freedom.  God’s grace does not coerce. Does not beat us into submission.  Does not make us love God.  God honors us and honors our right to say, “No.”  Hell is the monument to that freedom to say, “No.”   God will not break down the door of your life or the door of this church.  God knocks and brings opportunity.  We must answer.

  In the movie “Sounder”, two black sharecroppers are talking as they walk across a field and they come to a beautiful church that belongs to the wealthy white people of the town.  One man says to the other, “You reckon we’ll ever get welcomed inside that church?”  The other laughs and says, “No way.  I was talking to the Lord this morning and He said He’s been trying to get inside that church for years

    Just as individuals, church congregations have moments or opportunity.   There are times when the Spirit moves in a church and the tide is rising.  And we must move.  New opportunities come.  New times for serving and giving arise.  And we must step forward.  Why do some churches seem to move forward in the work of God while others remain behind?  Is it because that church has better pastoral leadership?  Maybe but not necessarily.  Is it because they have better music?  Maybe but I’ve seen otherwise happen also.  No.  Most often churches move forward because the people of that church have said, “Yes” to God.  They knew their moment and they jumped at it.  They knew they were in a special moment of tide when some things were just right—maybe the right music, the right pastoral leadership, the right Sunday School teachers, or the right youth leaders—whatever the case, they just know the moment is right and tide has come and they cannot miss this opportunity because it may not come again, and they said, “Yes.”  “Yes, God.  This is our time.”  And the rising tide carries them to new opportunities.

  The story of Nazareth is a sad story of lost opportunity.  Those neighbors who knew Jesus all his life would not see what he was offering.  Vs. 6 says that Jesus marveled at their lack of faith.  Jesus was just amazed.  He was so saddened that the people he had known and loved so long were now missing the greatest opportunity of their lives.  This Christmas season comes again with opportunity.  Again we can see Jesus.  The tide is rising.  Many ships are heading toward port.  What about you?  What about us?  Will you move?  Will you go?  In your moment of opportunity, will you say Yes?    Amen.