Jesus departed from there and came to his native place, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands! Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.” (Mark 6.1-6)
Here at the start of Chapter 6, the evangelist Mark offers us a very different picture of things than that which he had provided us in the section that precedes this story of Jesus’ return to his hometown. As we saw last week when we looked at the earlier section, Mark presents Jesus as the worker of mighty deeds, the one who subdues nature by calming the sea, who squashes the power of demons by curing the possessed man, who shocks onlookers when he raises the dead daughter of Jairus, and who surprises a sickly woman whom he heals of a persistent ailment.
The abrupt change in circumstances is signaled by the transition that Mark offers us in the opening verse when he writes, “He departed from there and came to his native place, accompanied by his disciples.” Not only is there a geographical shift, but there is a spiritual shift as the scene changes from one place to the other. Jesus goes back to his native place Nazareth and he begins to teach in the synagogue on the sabbath.
Mark presents the response of the listeners in the synagogue in a series of five questions that they ask themselves: Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands? Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” The questions move from surprise to stupefaction to dismissal.
They recognize that his teaching is unlike the normal course of stuff in the synagogue. They also have heard word that he has done mighty deeds with his hands. And yet, they can’t see outside their box, refusing to see Jesus as anyone but the local carpenter, someone who grew up among them and whose family was well-known to all of them. They pigeonhole him and Mark summarizes their attitude in the simple statement, “They took offense at him.”
Why, we may ask, would they take offense at Jesus? Psychologists would explain it as a classic example of the tall poppy syndrome, a sadly frequent reaction on the part of people when someone stands out for his or her achievements or success, garnering criticism and resentment from others who want to cut them down or minimize their specialness. The phrase is rooted in the practice of poppy farmers who cut down tall poppies in the field so that they fit in with the rest of the plants, the idea being that a field of poppies is more beautiful when the flowers are all the same height and uniform.
Similarly, something ugly in human nature wants to bring another person down to size whenever he or she is seen as an overachiever or more gifted than others. Mark uses the behavior to demonstrate his theme of lack of faith that so often typifies people’s reaction to Jesus. He has Jesus say, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” Mark adds, “So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there. He was amazed at their lack of faith.”
Of course, this reaction on the part of the synagogue crowd also fits well with another of Mark’s themes, that of the rejection of the prophet, Jesus portrayed in this gospel as another prophet in a long line of prophets who suffer ridicule and repudiation because of his position on matters or his predication of a different way of living in the world.
That theme will carry us forward through the gospel, culminating, of course, in the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross, the ultimate rejection of the prophet, a fate that most prophets sadly experience because of the hard-heartedness and stone-deafness of people who don’t want to hear what the prophet has to say. As a result, prophets more often than not have a short lifespan.
Were we to look ahead in the gospel, we would find a subtle but strong shift that Mark makes after Jesus’ experience in the synagogue in Nazareth. Not necessarily obvious, especially in a casual reading of the gospel, it stands out when the text is looked at more carefully. After Jesus’ rejection at the synagogue in Nazareth, he never steps foot in a synagogue again for the remainder of this gospel.
Truth be told, that fact is no small detail, which makes it all the more unfortunate that it is often overlooked. In all probability, it is rooted in the historical event, the resistance to Jesus by the religious leaders growing steadily and fiercely day by day. As a matter of fact, the historical record shows much the same happening to Paul who began his preaching about Jesus about a decade after the crucifixion. He was similarly rejected and removed from the synagogues when he attempted to proclaim the death and resurrection of the Crucified Lord, forcing him to preach in the open air or outside the town wall.
So, the fact that Jesus never entered a synagogue again in the remainder of Mark’s gospel speaks volumes, making as strong a statement as the words that he preached, emphasizing in a stark way his role as a prophetic figure sent by the Most High God to challenge, confront, and change the status quo, actions that brought on the ire, irritation and irruption of the powerful who saw the threat to their stay in power by the prophet’s words and deeds and found remedy in the quick and brutal cessation of the prophet’s voice by deportation or death.
In refusing to enter a synagogue again after his experience in Nazareth, Jesus makes clear that he stands apart from and away from the status quo and from business as usual. He already has demonstrated much the same when he crosses the line in touching the woman with the flow of blood and in touching the deceased daughter of Jairus, both actions prohibited by Jewish religious practice and remedied only by ritual cleansing.
Other examples of his stepping away from the strict confines of the current religious practice abound, including his failure to require his followers to fast, or his allowing his disciples to pick the heads of grain on a sabbath, or his healing the man with a withered hand on the sabbath. In each of these instances, his challenge to the status quo was met with accusation and derision. His response was simple, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (2.27)
When the religious leaders saw Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, an unequivocal blurring of the lines in their minds, they demanded that he provide an answer for his violation of the code of behavior that called for the ostracization and diminution of these sorts of people. His response was as clear-sighted as it was compassionate, answering them, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (2.17).
Responses and rebuttals of this sort sent the religious leaders into a paroxysm of outrage and outcries, infuriated by his errant ways and incentivized to see him destroyed. They watched in horror as he openly questioned their own teaching of divine law and their own stranglehold on the morals of the peoples. Mark unhesitantly describes their sinister plotting, writing, “The Pharisees went out and immediately took counsel with the Herodians against him to put him to death.”
In short, Jesus takes sides. In refusing to enter a synagogue hereafter he makes it clear whose side he is on. He sides with the outcast and the ostracized, with the impoverished and the unclean, with the despised and the destitute, all of whom had no standing and no place in the world, forgotten and overlooked by the powerful and the privileged. He incarnates in his actions the words that he preaches with his mouth.
As a result, the die is cast and his death is certain, as it is for any prophet who takes a stand against those who hold the seats of power in the world. As we continue our trek through Mark’s gospel, the clock ticks ever louder, the hour coming when the underhanded machinations of the powerful come into clear focus, the body of Jesus nailed to a cross, mocked and scorned by the same religious leaders who stand at a short distance and hurl insults at him one last time, shouting to him, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross.”
It is not without significance that Mark presents the mission of the Twelve immediately after Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth, a segue that states the obvious. Those who follow after Jesus should expect the same treatment. The prophet who speaks out and the person who calls for change will never find a warm reception in the halls of the powerful, whatever the place, whatever the time. Mark wants that fact to be understood by any who would follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
In 1965 Martin Luther King organized a march to Montgomery to demand a change to the Jim Crow laws that prevented blacks from exercising their right to vote. The fifty mile march began at the Edmund Petits Bridge on Sunday, March 7th. As the marchers crossed the bridge, they were met by state troopers who rushed the crowd armed with clubs, whips, and tear gas, the day now remembered as “Bloody Sunday.”
A second march was scheduled for March 21st, this time under the protection of the National Guard. Dr. King called for volunteers to come to the march. Among the thousands who came was Viola Liuzzo, a thirty-nine-year old white woman from Detroit. A wife and a mother, Viola was horrified by the violence of Bloody Sunday and decided to go to Selma for the second march.
Fearing her family would talk her out of it, she did not tell her husband of her plans until the last minute. She drove her Oldsmobile sedan to Selma and called them from the road, begging them to understand that this was something she had to do. “I’m tired of sitting here watching people get beat up,” she told her family. The second march was without incident.
However, that night Viola was taking some marchers back to their home in Selma, driving down Highway 80. A car full of Klansmen sped up behind them and ambushed them, firing multiple shots into the car. Viola was killed instantly. She was the only white female protester to die in the Civil Rights Movement. After her death, Viola’s family received a flood of hate mail that accused her of being a communist and was threatened with crosses burned in front of their home. Her husband had to hire security for his family and her children had to transfer to a new school.
Sadly, much of the smear campaign about Viola was later traced directly back to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Needless to say, with the full force of the powerful breathing down their backs, the following years were a nightmare for the Liuzzo family. A quarter-century later in 1989, Viola Liuzzo’s daughter Sally attended the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. There she met Martin Luther King III, the child of another martyr of the cause.
King pulled Sally aside and said to her, “I wanted you to know something. Thirty years ago, my dad couldn’t be in this ballroom. And today you and I are here together and it is because of your mother.” His words echoed the sentiments of the Galilean prophet called the son of Mary who faced rejection and persecution because he also envisioned a new world, a world imaged by the Kingdom of God, a place where the powerless and the dispossessed also have a place in the world.
Although Jesus never stepped foot in a synagogue after his rejection in Galilee, he continued to preach and to teach until his last day and to his dying breath, offering a vision of this new world, its possibility now contingent on faithful followers who also imagine a place where all belong equally, followers willing to put their lives on the line to take a stand for the common good and for what is right, for inclusiveness and for human decency.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 