To Serve Him With Callused Hands: Homily for the Seventh Sunday Afternoon Pentecost

 

To Serve With Callused Hands:  A Homily for the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost.  

Readings for this Week (Proper 14B): 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Psalm 48; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

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?” And they took offense at him. (Mk 6.6)

Recently Joy and I needed a tradesman.  In a larger town, tradesmen will say they’re too busy, assuming that they even return your call.   However, because Collingwood is small town, and we asked the right person, a prominent and well connected local, we found someone who had a good reputation and who was willing to do the job right away.   In a small town, connections matter.

The fellow came, he was polite and knew his business, and he did the work for a reasonable price.   We were happy.    It would have been weird, though, if he had preached to us, called on us to repent, and said that he was doing God’s will.   That would have been weird and inappropriate, because we just wanted him to be a tradesman.

Something similar happens in our gospel reading today from St. Mark.  Everyone in Nazareth knows  him and his family.   He’s gone off, met some odd friends, and there are wild rumours about miracles and healings.   But really, we all know that he’s the carpenter’s son, and now he’s come back and he’s preaching at us?   Who do you think you are, kid?  Come on, buddy, let’s see some miracles.  Do a trick for us!   Yeah, didn’t think so.   He’s just Jesus, the carpenter’s son.

Mark tells us that Jesus was “amazed at their unbelief” (6.6).  Last Sunday we heard about the power that just seems to flow out of Jesus to heal the sick women (Mk 5.30).  Here in Nazareth, that power seems to be blocked in the face of scorn and disbelief from the people who only see Jesus as one of them.

Often it’s said and preached that the gospels celebrate ordinary folks.  Mary’s song, the Magnificat, imagines a day when the rich are brought low and the hungry are fed.  Jesus called humble fishermen as disciples.   Jesus spoke to crowds, healed outcasts, and preached in folksy parables.   All of this is true, and admirable, because by his choice of associations, Jesus showed us that the Kingdom of God reserves the warmest welcome for the humblest of people.

However, it is also true, and perhaps this is the point of today’s gospel, that it’s not just rich folk, Pharisees, and kings who can be close minded.   One of the themes of country and western music is that small town people can be close minded and even vicious.   It’s as if no one can get past the idea that Jesus is just the son of a tradesman (the Greek word, teknon, meaning worker), which is ironic, because as N.T. Wright notes, Jesus is the only worker who can fix our hearts and fix the world.   

Perhaps because he knows that his time is precious (we are already half way through Mark, Jesus has made enemies, and soon he will go to Jerusalem and to the cross), Jesus doesn’t waste any time in Nazareth.  People have made their choice.    

But Jesus doesn’t give up on small towns.   He sends his disciples out “among the villages”, knowing that some will listen and some won’t (Mk 6.6-12).   The seed of God’s word will fall on good soil and bad.  It’s always up to each of us to hear the message and to decide if we want to learn more and to follow Jesus.  Rich or poor, special or ordinary, Jesus asks a decision of each one of us.

What’s interesting to me about the mission of the disciples is that they don’t go out to start a church, or to raise money, or sell memberships or books.  Yes, they tell people to repent, but repentance can simply mean turning to God and being made whole again.   People are healed and anointed, God’s love is shared, and the world is made a better place for those who want it.  In such ways does the Kingdom of God become a reality on earth and a blessing for those who want it.

I think this idea of the kingdom of God as a blessing to those who want and need it is helpful because it leads us to the real Jesus.   We have a similar problem to those hometown folks in Nazareth.  Our age doesn’t don’t  Jesus as a neighbour but they know Jesus in all sorts of ways, through layers and layers of perceptions.   For some, religion has made Jesus overfamiliar.  Others outside of religion know Jesus through satire and comedy and through internet memes, and through the negative perceptions created by crass TV evangelists and celebrity preachers who turn out to be predators.  There's also the scepticism of our age which says, this guy was an inspirational preacher, but that's all.   Like the villagers in Nazareth, we have our own layers of familiarity and even contempt to cut through before we can say, yes, this is the Son of the living God, and I will follow him and do as he commands.  And all that Jesus really asks of us in return is to love him and to use our hands and hearts to serve the broken world that he loves.

Let me finish by telling you a story about what that service  might look like.   Sometime around the end of the first century, around 90AD, the Roman Emperor Domitian was persecuting the Christian church.  The Christian historian Eusebius wrote that Domitian felt threatened by prophecies about descendants of King David, and so he wanted to kill of any Jew who was a descendent of King David.

The story goes that he had two Jewish men arrested.   They admitted that they were Christians, from a family descended from David, and they confessed that they believed in Jesus and in his return one day to judge the world and start the kingdom of God. The Emperor then asked them if they were wealthy men of property.   They said no, that they were only simple farmers, and they showed Domitian their hands, callused with “incessant labor”.   The story goes that the Emperor decided that such humble men, not even worth his attention, and so he released them.   

We don’t know the names of these two ordinary Christian farmers, but according to the story their great grandfather was there in the synagogue in Nazareth that day.   Their great grandfather was a guy named Judas, and he was one of the brothers of Jesus (he wasn’t the bad Judas).  We don’t know anything about Judas, though there is a tradition that he wrote the Letter of Jude, the penultimate book of the bible.  Jude is a very short letter, mostly an attack on “scoffers” and unbelievers (Jude 1.18), which may recall how he felt that day in the synagogue.    What we can say though is that he chose to believe in his brother, and that he must have been an influence on his two grandsons who would one day show their callused hands to an emperor and say that they too had chosen to follow Jesus.

Jesus called his twelve disciples to go and serve the world that he loves, and that call echoes across the generations.  Judas’ grandsons, those two simple farmers, made their choice to follow Jesus and served the world God loved with their calloused hands.   The same goes for us.  We’re called to decide who Jesus is and whether we want to follow him.  Jesus doesn’t care if we’re rich or poor, special or humble.  Jesus doesn’t mind if the hands we reach out are callused or smooth.  Jesus just asks that our hearts aren’t callused.