The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, July 07, 2024
The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Scripture citation(s): Mark 6:1-13
A Sermon by
The Rev. Alison Turner
on
Mark 6:1-13
✛
Homecoming
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Last Fall, our Choir Tour led us to the home of Country Music. It was both an exciting and fascinating experience to arrive in Nashville airport and to be immediately greeted over the PA system, “A Warm Welcome to Saint Thomas Church of Men and Boys to Nashville, Tennessee.” Within seconds we discovered the signature hospitality of the city, with its abundance of kindness; its generous servings of food; a city where country music was being played at every turn, in every street, morning, noon, and night.
One highlight of the tour for the Choristers was a visit to the famous Ryman Auditorium. A venue where multiple performers had made their debut, founded their careers or consolidated them. For a brief moment, our boys stood on the same stage where country legends and rising stars had performed to enthusiastic audiences and made famous their wistful, melancholy lyrics of longing, love and homecoming. You know the type of songs, with dreamy themes of nostalgia and yesteryear, sung out by the likes of Johnny Cash, where “The old hometown looks the same as I step down from the train, And there to meet me is my Mama and Papa…” – Songs of home and bygone days recalled from a prison cell, when “It’s good to touch the green, green grass of home.”
Home. I wonder what the word ‘home’ means to you?
Home is more than the bricks and mortar. Comfort; belonging; and safety are just some of the words that come to mind. Those words were probably represented in the scenes of homecomings all over this country over the 4th July holiday.
The 1973 number one hit “Tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree” was all about homecomings, but its origins were in the yellow ribbons worn by women in the 19th century whose husbands were serving in the US Cavalry.
Homecomings are essential rites of passages for those returning from active duty, as well as for the families whose relatives are repatriated after death in conflict. I remember the homecomings that the Rector organized for the Royal Marines returning from Afghanistan several times at Exeter Cathedral, and one harrowing homecoming service because 52 didn’t come back.
And for us, too, although it happens less frequently now, the bringing of the body of a loved one to Church the night before the funeral – that homecoming reminds us of our heavenly home – the true home that Jesus told Thomas about before his own death and resurrection.
In today’s gospel we are presented with a story of a homecoming that is difficult for Jesus. The passage is preceded by many healing miracles and the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. As we have seen in the Gospels, there is great expectation wherever Jesus went…except today.
There was no fanfare to welcome him home to Nazareth, simply a large inquisitive crowd that followed Jesus and his Galilean disciples as he entered the old familiar streets, passed the houses and the places where he once had played, and where Jospeh the carpenter had his workshop. Jesus was not greeted by a warm welcome, with local pride; rather he was seen as a disrupter of the peace, as one who had somehow changed; as one who brought an unwelcome, audacious challenge to the status quo, to the community, and in the synagogue of all places, the place where he had, presumably, celebrated his Bar Mitsvah all those years ago. How dare he interrupt their faithful yet comfortable and maybe complacent life?
There was no time for nostalgia; his own people took offense at him, and there was a consequence, for we are told that “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.”
As he preached in the synagogue, the people could not understand the authority with which he spoke. It reminds me of the opening lines of John’s Gospel: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (John 1:10-11). Only a few weeks ago, we heard another rejection when the Scribes came from Jerusalem and told people that Jesus could only cast out demons because he was possessed by the prince of demons. On that occasion, the family of Jesus tried to rescue him, but Jesus said “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Perhaps this homecoming for Jesus, painful as it was, prepared him in some way for the rejection that was yet to come.
How might we act if Jesus were to visit and challenge us and our own comfort zones?
For many of us, this church is a kind of home where we feel we can belong, and feel safe, and feel comfort. But to be a community committed to hospitality, welcome, and inclusion, we must constantly look for Jesus in our midst.
You remember the parable Jesus told at the end of Matthew’s Gospel? We have heard it mentioned more than once recently in sermons from this pulpit. “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:34-36) In that parable, the righteous are puzzled to hear the King praise them in this way, but he says in response: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
How might our church be for those who seek, but have yet to feel accepted, un-judged, included, and safe at home?
Some words of Archbishop Rowan Williams:
I’ve often preached – like others, I’m sure – on how, when we come back to our places, after taking Communion, we ought to look at our next-door neighbours with awe amazement. The person next to me – whom I may love deeply, may not know at all, may dislike, may even fear – is God’s special, honoured guest, praying Christ’s prayer, living from Christ life. Just for this moment, they are touched with the glory of the end of all things; and so are we, and here are the things of the world, God’s natural gifts, turned into effective signs of God’s recreation and renewing love. They too are what God wants them to be at the end of everything, signs of overflowing love . (Tokens of Love – page 120).
