The 7th Sunday after Pentecost 2024
Texts: Mark 6:1-13
The Gospel lesson for today is another tough one. It’s about the rejection of Jesus Christ by his own people. He could not heal or cast out any demons in his hometown because of their unbelief. Just last week, in the story of the healing of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage, we saw the relationship between belief and Jesus’ power to heal.
So what’s the connection between the two stories? What’s essential for us to learn from them?
We must be willing to accept what Jesus is offering us, otherwise we cannot be saved, we cannot be forgiven, we cannot be healed or restored to wholeness. Jesus is not going to force us to believe in him. When we accept what he is offering us we develop trust, belief in him.
In the collect we asked for the grace of the Holy Spirit that we would be devoted to God with our whole heart. Well, history shows we have a tendency to not do that. We have a tendency to follow God with a divided heart.
Throughout history God has consistently come to his people, in one way or another—in a burning bush, in sheer silence, or in a vision. And his people have consistently rejected him, in one way or another—crying for a king, making alliances with the Assyrians, or worshipping a golden calf. Most of the time God is rejected in part—not totally. The people did not worship Him with their whole heart.
God sent the prophets to the Jewish people to warn them of the consequences of turning away from him. And the people rejected the prophets, but in the end the prophets were always right.
Yet, when the people suffered as they did in Egypt under slavery, or when they were defeated and taken into exile, or when they were hopelessly lost and about to die of hunger and thirst, in their need, they returned to God, and they were sorry for their lack of faith. But it didn’t last long.
When the people were restored, as when the entered the Promised Land and defeated the Philistines, as when Solomon built the Temple, and Israel was united under King David, for a time they honored God and worshipped sincerely. But then they became complacent and they drifted away, worshipping insincerely. They became immoral and their hearts became hardened against God, and against one another. They would come to neglect the widow and the orphan, and engage in immoral sexuality and political corruption. History is full of the rise and fall of empires. When they fell it was mostly self-inflicted, at its root—the consequences of turning away from God.
Jesus was rejected by his own people, the people who knew him best. He warned the disciples that they too would be rejected on his behalf. “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”
Many Christians all over the world have experienced rejection because they follow Jesus Christ. In some places they are suffering and dying—in Sudan, China, and Afghanistan. Even though there is cultural pressure against Christian belief in our time, we are blessed to live in a country where we are still free to believe and to follow Christ peacefully. The collect is a reminder that in every generation we are challenged to worship God with our whole heart, with our heart and mind focused on the love of Christ.
I once met a man in a hospital in Milwaukee where I was a student chaplain. He was dying of some long-term disease. He had been very mean to the nurses and they needed someone to go in to talk to him. I had been the chaplain on call all night. It was very early in the morning and I was exhausted. The nurses warned me he was an atheist. As a student chaplain I thought “oh boy I’m going to convert an atheist!”
So, I went in to meet him. He appeared agitated and angry, and I just sat there, waiting for him to talk. He complained about his wife dying suddenly of a heart attack, and that there was no one to care for him. I wanted to suggest that God cared for him, but he was an atheist. It occurred to me that the man was angry at God for taking away his beloved wife. Over the years I’ve seen this often with atheists. They are angry at someone they claim they do not believe in. Does that make real sense to you?
There is something deep within our broken human nature that still desires the very thing we reject—divine revelation and love. God is speaking to us deep in our hearts, and when we are at our best, we listen. We intend to be devoted to God with our whole heart, and sometimes we are.
God has come to us in person, and he has spoken, and acted with great power and mercy. Many people in that time were drawn by the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus, to believe in him, and their lives and the world was transformed. As to those who refused to accept Jesus in his own hometown, perhaps what they knew about him blinded them from the fuller truth. Familiarity does sometimes breed contempt.
So, Jesus sent out the twelve, two by two, and he gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast out demons in Jesus’ name and to heal the sick. He warned the disciples that some people would refuse to listen to them, and they would not be healed. They were to go to those who would accept what they had to say, to accept Jesus’ offer of salvation from sin and death.
We are blessed to be here this morning because the disciples did go into the world to preach the Gospel, and to save souls through their ministry. The early Christians accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. Generations of faithful Christians through 2,000 years in the Church have kept teaching what the disciples taught, what Jesus taught them about the Kingdom of God. I am so grateful to them to be here with you.
I’d like to end with a question for each one of us this morning. “What would it look like for me to devote my whole heart to Jesus Christ?” Amen.
