MK 6: 1-13
4th / 5th S. after Pentecost
We begin with another of those little word sketches Jesus draws so well! The undercurrents, tittle-tattle & backbiting of 'back home'. The kind of scene Jesus, such a keen observer of everything going on, might tell about someone else's experience 'back home' if it hadn’t actually happened to him! What goes on where we are when someone comes back - into home & family, society, church, & so on? Or are we ourself making that pilgrimage 'back' somewhere, or maybe have already? What about those we live among who grew up with us, knew us when we were 'young & silly', a larrikin, wild, immature, one for the girls or boys, ............? Or those we knew at a time they’d rather we didn’t remember? How good are we at seeing people as they really are, now, as God sees them, through Jesus' eyes? We free up not just ourselves but the other, too, when we see like that. Open up potential rather than stifle it. Bring people in from the margins we’ve set for them.
That Jesus couldn’t do any works of power there apart from a few exceptions is a down to earth if thought provoking comment on the human-end-of-the-scale- Jesus as distinct from the Jesus of the divine God-can-do-anything- end.
Today there's lots of room for allowing God to empower us without going overboard in terms of an interventionist string-pulling God theology. Whichever part of the church we're members of (even if, like so many, we're only hanging in there by the skin of our teeth) most of us don't see much evidence that God really is alive & well, empowered & empowering. Are we empowering LOVE to energise, empower us, rule us, rather than keeping it shut safely away in our ecclesiastical cupboards under lock & key. (Or kept only as a word for use in sermons?)
My observation & experience tell of church leaders & members who allow as little power to God today as the Nazarenes allowed to Jesus back then. I do it / have done it myself!!! With the same result. Nothing much happens. Is this recognizably the story of our denomination, congregation, Home Group, etc.?
If we allow little real power to God (that kind of power is what ‘Kingdom, or Rule of God theology’ ought to be all about!) it stands to reason the kind of mission Jesus sends us out on in our day won't bear much fruit. The real demon needing to be cast out from many of us is making God so much in our image that he's about as useful / useless to us as we are to him!
