God’s grace, peace and mercy be with
you. My sermon title is Hometown, Healing
and Hospitality. My focus is Mark 6:1-13. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the
psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they
said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are within your gates, we
rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds
and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most
Holy Trinity. Amen.
Have you done much research into
your hometown? How did your hometown get its name? Who are its most celebrated
citizens? Where I grew up in Pennsylvania, the township is named in honor of
the Potter Brothers, James and Robert.[1]
Most people know that Naperville is named in honor of Joseph Naper, an early
Illinois pioneer, businessman, soldier and politician. In 1831, Naper was
credited with founding one of the oldest Illinois communities west of Chicago. Thirty
miles southeast of here is the city of Hometown, Illinois. Bordered by 87th
Street on the north, and 91st on the south, Cicero to the west and
Pulaski to the east, fewer than 4,400 people live there. Hometown has produced
no celebrities. On the other hand, my father’s hometown of Aliquippa,
Pennsylvania produced musician Henry Mancini, basketball’s Pistol Pete
Maravich, football’s Tony Dorsett, Ty Law, Sean Gilbert and Coach Mike Ditka.
Celebrities aside, hometown is where
you were born, grew up or your principal place of residence. I open with
hometown because for the first time in Mark’s Gospel Jesus returned to his hometown.[2]
Nazareth was a small, insignificant village of a few hundred inhabitants. Here,
one might expect a warm welcome and enthusiastic acclaim, but Jesus met a very
different response.
According to his usual custom, on
the sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue to teach. At first the villagers seemed
to react in the same way as other audiences: they were astonished at his wisdom
and authority. But in this case, the astonishment seems inappropriate and out
of place. In their minds Jesus was just one of the guys, someone they knew all
their lives. They never saw anything extraordinary about him. All this
itinerant preaching and miracle-working seemed to them to be putting on airs.
Their questions displayed not a sincere
pursuit of truth but rather indignant skepticism. Isn’t he the carpenter? Isn’t
Mary his mother? They pigeonholed Jesus because they were confident that they
knew all about him and could not accept that he might be from God.
Wisdom and mighty deeds are
attributes of God himself. Of God’s wisdom, we read in Jeremiah, “It
is [the Lord] who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his
wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.”[3]
The prophet Daniel affirmed, “Blessed be the name of God forever and
ever, to whom belong wisdom and might.”[4]
Regarding God’s might, “Moses
implored the LORD his God and said, ‘O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot
against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great
power and with a mighty hand?’”[5]
Jesus’ ancestors knew that God brought them out of slavery by his mighty hand
and the outstretched arm.[6]
However, they could not bring themselves to draw the logical conclusion of
their reasoning concerning Jesus’ wisdom and might.
They were scandalized and offended
that a hometown boy might be inaugurating the Kingdom of God because it did not
conform to their preconceived ideas about how God would and could act. Their
attachment to their ideas became the obstacle to their faith. Earlier in Mark,
we read about such people: “They may indeed see but not perceive, and
may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.”[7]
And so, Jesus cried out, “A
prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives
and in his own household.”[8]
In doing so, he linked his destiny to that long line of Old Testament prophets
who suffered rejection or violence because of their unpopular message. We find
this in more than six Old Testament books.
The Chronicler wrote, “The
LORD, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers,
because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they
kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his
prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was
no remedy.”[9]
Nehemiah prophesied, “Nevertheless, they were
disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and
killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you,
and they committed great blasphemies.”[10]
In
his hometown, the failure of his kinsfolk to accept Jesus was symbolic of their
rejection: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”[11] Jesus could do little
more there than heal a few sick people. Now, before I begin my second point, I
leave you with a question: Like the people in his hometown, how do I reject
Jesus’s teachings in my life?
My
second point is healing. When we talk about healing, we mean restoring someone
to health or the process of getting well. In antiquity healing had two aspects:
professional medicine and faith healing.[12] We think of the Greek
physician, Hippocrates, commonly known as the father of medicine because he
professionalized it. The Hippocratic Oath included the principles of medical
confidentiality and non-maleficence, that is, do no harm. Even today medical
graduates swear a modified form of the Oath.
Faith
healers used herbs, amulets, charms and chants. They performed exorcisms and
interceded with the gods of healing. In the Old Testament priests were the
custodians of public health. Levitical laws concerned diet, health, sexual
practices, quarantine and the Sabbath rest because they were seen as God’s
concern for physical health.
Jesus
is represented as a healer of multiple physical and psychiatric diseases, but
he did not use magical practices. He healed by voice commands and physically
touched an ill patient but never a demoniac. The early church continued Jesus’
healing ministry, as we read about Peter healing a man in Acts. And in James we
read, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church,
and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And
the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him
up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”[13]
Here,
however, Jesus only cured a few sick people, and the reason Mark put it this
way is because he wanted to highlight the necessity of faith, that is, a basic
openness to God’s power at work in Jesus, as the proper disposition for
receiving his healing. Despite the atmosphere of unbelief in Nazareth, Jesus
cured people by personal touch.
Ironically,
Jesus marveled at the Nazoreans’ lack of faith. He showed the same emotion that
characterized others who reacted positively towards him. In the previous
chapter of Mark, after Jesus healed the man possessed by an evil spirit and
told him to return home to his friends to tell them how merciful the Lord was
to him, everyone marveled.[14] In Luke’s version of
Jesus calming the storm, his disciples marveled. Here, Jesus marveled at their
lack of faith. Few things caused Jesus to react so strongly as a lack of faith,
or conversely, great faith. Matthew recounted how Jesus marveled at the great
faith of the Centurion and the Canaanite woman.[15]
I
will return to healing in my conclusion but before moving onto my third point,
another question: How does my pride and self-reliance keep me from fully
trusting Jesus’ healing powers?
Finally,
hospitality. Hospitality is the friendly reception and treatment of guests or
strangers in a warm, friendly and generous way. We derive hospitality from the
Latin word hospes, meaning host, guest
or stranger. The word hospital originally meant a guest-chamber, guest's
lodging or an inn. In ancient cultures hospitality involved welcoming the
stranger and offering him food, shelter and safety.
In
Ancient Greece, hospitality was a right, where the host was expected to make
sure the needs of his guests were met. A person's ability to abide by the laws
of hospitality determined his nobility and social standing. In India
hospitality is based on a principle where the guest is God. Whenever I have
visited a home of a person from India, I noticed how gracious they are,
offering drink and food, even on a brief visit.
Judaism
praises hospitality to strangers and guests based largely on the examples of
Abraham and Lot in the Book of Genesis.[16] Hosts were expected to
provide nourishment, comfort and entertainment for their guests, and at the end
of the visit, hosts customarily escorted their guests out of their home and
wished them a safe journey. These stories set the tone for biblical teaching.
God is both the guest and the gracious host who befriended the Israelite people
while they were strangers. Because they were once sojourners, the Israelites
esteemed the stranger and the sojourner.[17]
Jesus
too is guest and host. Throughout his life, he remained a wayfarer who depended
upon the hospitality of others: Matthew the tax collector, Simon the leper,
Peter, Martha and Mary, as well as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the wife of Chuza,
Herod’s household manager, Susanna, and many others, who provided for him and
his disciples out of their means.[18] As host, he washed his disciples’
feet and broke bread for them to eat.
In
our passage today, Jesus instructed his disciples to take nothing but the
clothes on their backs, sandals and a walking stick. Mark included these items
in his passage to emphasize that discipleship meant walking on the way with
Jesus. Their lack of a sack meant that they could not accept coins or other
goods from people. They could not rely upon their own resources but had to
learn how to depend upon God’s all-sufficient providence. We read in Second
Corinthians, “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and
multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.”[19] Paul concluded that he could
“do
all things through him who strengthens [him],” because he “learned
the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”[20]
Because
they were occupied not with daily needs, but God’s work, they would be free of
distractions and remained focused on their mission. Their need for food and
shelter would call forth generosity from those to whom they ministered. And
their lack of material possessions lent credibility to their message since it
demonstrated that they were preaching the Gospel out of conviction and not a
desire for gain.
Allow
me, now, to share a personal story of receiving another’s hospitality. On
January 6, 2014, our first grandchild, Emma, was born in Anderson, Indiana. At
the time, my wife, Cindy, and I lived in Edmond, Oklahoma. The travel time
between our house and Emma’s hospital was 12 hours … under normal
circumstances. We left Oklahoma at 6:00 a.m. planning to arrive in Indiana by
suppertime. Instead, we hit one of the worst ice storms in Illinois. We made
Effingham by evening where traffic came to a standstill. We spent our first
night at the Effingham Performance Arts Center on cots with 200 other
travelers. Truckers, parents, infants and toddlers all crammed into one open
space on cots. Cindy and I got no sleep that night.
The
next morning, I learned that we would not be able to continue our trip and make
Anderson by nightfall. We did not want to spend another night at the Performing
Arts Center. So, being a Lutheran pastor, I looked up the Lutheran Church in
Effingham. We called St. John’s Church. I explained to the secretary our
plight. A few minutes later, the church president called and offered us a place
to sleep. He met us and we followed him to his home. He then invited us to
lunch. After lunch, we returned to his home, showered and napped. A few hours
later, he asked if we would like to go to dinner with some friends. We obliged.
The next morning, we headed out. We avoided the interstate and kept to state
roads. We arrived in Anderson that afternoon. There and then, we saw and held
our first granddaughter.
I
tell you this story because we experienced Christian hospitality firsthand from
the president of a Lutheran congregation in Effingham, Illinois. Hospitality is
who we are as Christians. Hospitality is our ministry as individuals and as
church.
How
do we show hospitality to those who minister to us so that they are not
distracted by daily concerns but can focus on their mission, the Gospel, the work
of God? How do I not
show hospitality for the Holy Spirit in my heart? What things do I do to drive
Him away? Would I open my home, table and bed to a sojourning pastor
and his wife?
My
friends, extending hospitality in the name of Jesus Christ heals more hearts
and souls than almost anything we can do in this world. If we want to heal our
world, our nation, our neighborhoods and our families, we will by extending our
homes, hands and hearts to people who may be seeking shelter, food and a warm
bed, but unconsciously are seeking salvation … from the one who had no place to
lay his head. Offer yourself to those who seek Christ as He offered himself to
you and me, and when you do, may the peace of God that surpasses all
understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1] http://www.pottertwp-pa.gov/?page_id=67
[2]
Healy, 111ff.
[3]
Jeremiah 51:15.
[4]
Daniel 2:20.
[5]
Exodus 32:11.
[6]
Deuteronomy 7:19.
[7]
Mark 4:12.
[8]
Mark 6:4.
[9] 2
Chronicles 36:16.
[10]
Nehemiah 9:26.
[11]
John 1:11.
[12]
J. Massyngbaerde Ford, Healing, The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,
General Editor Richard P. McBrien, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. New York.
1995, 603f
[13]
James 5:14-15.
[14]
Mark 5:1-20.
[15]
Matthew 8:10; 15:28.
[16]
Genesis 18:1-8; 19:1-8.
[17]
Hospitality, The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. 515.
[18]
Luke 8:1-3.
[19] 2
Corinthians 8:10.
[20]
Philippians 4:12-13.
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