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Monday, June 28, 2021

126 Where We Belong

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Where We Belong”, originally shared on June 28, 2021. It was the 126th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Are you living now in your hometown? In the place where you were born? Where you grew-up? Or is your hometown someplace else?

   What do you think of when you think about your hometown? Your family? The places where you’ve lived? Your church? A local hangout? A school?

   When you’ve been away and go back, do you feel estranged, or do you feel that you belong?

   Today, we’re going to see what happens when Jesus visits his hometown, and what it says about where we belong.

   A new variety of the COVID-19 virus, the Delta Variant, has appeared. It is more aggressive than the original virus, but it is controlled by the vaccines now being given. One third of all the people in LA County who are over 16 haven’t even gotten their first dose of the vaccine. That means that they are even more likely to get sick than those who were exposed before they received a vaccine. We have work to do in our hometowns and beyond.

   My son and I shot some video at Hometown Rentals in San Dimas the other day. Hometown Rentals serves the San Dimas area renting tools and party equipment. San Dimas is not my hometown, but I served a church there for almost 32 years. My hometown is Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Except for summers in college and seminary, I haven’t lived there for 55 years, but I’ve gone back to visit. It’s my hometown.

   Thomas Wolf titled one of his novels, You Can’t Go Home Again. That title was a way of saying that we remember things about a time in which we lived as a particular person in a particular place, none of which can be reproduced. It’s like the saying that you can’t step into the same stream twice. The water is moving and is always different from the water you stepped into the first time.

   A lot of ink has been fused to paper explaining why both of these ideas are wrong. But are they?

   Jesus goes back to his hometown in

*Mark 6:1-6  It starts:

He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 

   Well, they did allow him to teach in the synagogue. In Jesus day, there was no local clergy in the synagogues. The men would gather and a scroll with a book of what we would call the Old Testament would be given to the most learned person in the room to read and to teach.

   Jesus’ teaching was remarkable, his wisdom was way beyond their expectations, and his reputation had proceeded him. He had cast out demons, healed people, calmed a storm at sea, and raised the dead!

   What was their reaction? Proud beyond measure? “Local boy does good?” Did they give him the keys to the City of Nazareth?

   No, they were having a hard time processing what was happening.

   Well, suppose a kid from your neighborhood, someone you know growing up, someone who had previously been known as “the carpenter”, turned up doing these things? I think we’d have a hard time processing that.

   The people in his hometown were stunned and astounded over who he was, continuing with verse 3

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?”

   Just in case it slipped by on you, did you notice that Jesus had brothers and sisters? The community remembers them, but it had not remembered that Jesus redefined what a “family” was three chapters earlier in Jesus’ ministry, in

*Mark 3:21,32-35 at verse 21

   “When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ [Note: You know, “people were saying”.]

   And continuing at verse 32:

“A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’”

   Mother Theresa was once asked what she thought was the world’s biggest problem. She didn’t say “War”, or “Ignorance”, or “Poverty”. She said that the world’s biggest problem is that we don’t define “family” broadly enough.

   No, they didn’t celebrate Jesus, verse 3 ends with the sentence,

“And they took offense at him.”

   They took offense at him. Why? Because they literally couldn’t believe what was happening right in front of their eyes. It’s been said that “Seeing is believing”, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. Believing is also a way of seeing. We don’t always see things as they are. We see things as we are.

   That’s why Jesus so often calls for us to have eyes to see and ears to hear.

   Here’s an example: if I fill a glass up to its midpoint with water, is it half-empty or half-full? We could all see it is filled to its midpoint, but what that means depends upon how we “see” it.

   Another way to see the glass is as an illustration of how God works. The glass is neither half-empty nor half-full. It’s 100% full. It’s half-water and half-air, but it’s 100% full. God is always 100% present, whatever the circumstances of life. Even when that presence is unexpected, unanticipated, or unseen. We just need to the eyes to see it that way.

   Mark continues with these words:

Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

   Jesus didn’t take it personally. Prophets, people who speak for God, are usually unrecognized by the people who taught them how to speak. Jesus knew that. It’s been said that an expert can be anybody more than 50 miles from home.

   So, why could he do no deed of power there? Are miracles only a matter of wish fulfillment, or of seeing what you want to see, absent once you’ve pulled the curtain back on the Wizard?

   I don’t think so. I think that Jesus was giving another example here about the Christian life. Everything about us happens in relationship. The people in Jesus’ hometown did not have a relationship with God or they would have recognized who Jesus was, and they would have seen His power. They weren’t connected with Jesus. Instead, they were offended by what they had seen and heard.

   So Jesus could do no deed of power there. Except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them!  What?? Laying hands on people and curing them is no big deal??    Maybe Mark includes that detail to remind us that God’s action does not depend upon human belief. Jesus was not a faith healer. Jesus was a healer. Jesus is God.

   For example, sometimes, people pray “in Jesus’ name” thinking that it will force God to give them what they want. It doesn’t work that way. In the Bible, to do something in Jesus’ “name” means to act in accord with God’s will.

   Sometimes, people just want God to bless what they are doing, not to do what God is blessing.

   Sometimes, people just want God to behave in accord with their experience and their expectations, not in accord with God’s will.

   This passage from Mark ends with the words, “And he was amazed at their unbelief.” Why? Was his expectation for humanity too high? No. He knew them and he was amazed that they did not know Him.

   I am almost 100% Norwegian. I ran across an article a couple of years ago that helped me understand the culture from which I came, but I think that it would be helpful to anyone who has grown up in a small town like the one Jesus grew up in, or is a member of a small community within their town, or a small church, or works for a small business, or is a part of a small group. It was about the laws of Jante.

   The laws of Jante were written in 1933 as part of a novel by Danish/Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose, but they describe the real-life reality of life in Scandinavian countries, even to today, that value social conformity.

   For example, the 10 rules of Jante include the following:

  1. You’re not to think you are anything special.
  2. You’re not to imagine yourself better than we are.
  3. You‘re not to think you are more important than we are.
  4. You’re not to think you can teach us anything.

   And the 11th rule, called in the novel “the penal code of Jante”:

      Perhaps you don’t think we know a few things about you?

   Sally and our son and I visited Norway in 2004. One of the things we noticed was that, though Norway is now a rich country, everyone’s dress was very casual and practical. A docent in a museum we visited said that she liked Sally’s lipstick and volunteered that   Norwegian women typically did not wear make-up. She said, “Italian women dress like they’re going to the opera every day. Norwegian women dress plainly so as not to seem like they’re doing better than others”. The Laws of Jante.

   I mentioned this to a woman in the congregation I was serving at the time in San Dimas who had grown up in a Swedish community in Kansas. She said that the Swedes have a saying; “The tallest flower gets cut first.” The Laws of Jante.

   These laws of social conformity don’t seem to be limited to Norway, though. I think we see a 1st Century Israel version of them in today’s story about Jesus’ life.

   Expectations for social behavior have had their influence on me, and my Norwegian heritage is important to me, but they don’t tell me where I belong.

   Where do we belong, then? We belong to God. We are a new creation. We have been born again.

   Repentance and forgiveness lead us to belong. We belong to Christ. We belong where Jesus is. We are connected by a family tie called “faith”, a living relationship with the one true living God.

   We belong because we have died with Christ in our Baptisms and will therefore rise with Him.

   We belong because God assures us of our forgiveness, life, and salvation in Holy Communion with God in, with, and under the forms of bread and wine.

   We belong because the Word of God reveals it to be true.

   We belong because we are reconciled with God by the cross of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human being.

   We belong because the Holy Spirit has called, equipped, and sent us to be the Body of Christ, each of us given a spiritual gift to serve the whole Body.

   We can move away from God, but we can always turn back to God. We belong because the selfless love of God will not us go.

   As Paul writes to the Romans, the 8th, verses 38 and 39.

*Romans 8:38-39

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

   Many of us are wondering where we belong as we come out of the pandemic life and into the New Normal. Jesus redefined the family, the most basic of human relationships. He gave us a way forward toward the restoration of the fundamental relationship with God for which we were created. 

   We belong in a living relationship with the one true living God because God made it so. Let us live in faith where we belong.