Last
week in worship here at Mount Hebron Presbyterian we were thinking
about “Jesus the Healer.” This week we'll be taking a look at
Mark 6:1-13, a passage in which Jesus preaches to His home crowd...
and does not receive a good reception. The text tells us that He
could do no “works of
power” among them
and that “He was
amazed at their unbelief.”
There is a saying that “Familiarity
breeds contempt.” The oldest known use of the phrase comes in 'The
Tale of Melibee' one of 'The Canterbury Tales' written by Geoffrey
Chaucer around 1386. Over the years the phrase has had a number of
applications.
The most common one is when we don't
recognize what an amazing person somebody is, because we happen to
see them every day. Such a sentiment can even apply to things we own.
Our close acquaintance blinds us to the value of what we have. As
Jesus explains in our passage from Mark, “A prophet is not
without honor, except in his own country.”
When applied to things we own, such as
tools, or engaging in dangerous activities, we discount the danger,
because we are used to it. We fail to remain safe by forgetting to be
respectful of the harm that can come from our familiar tools or our
familiar activities.
An example I read about was the farmer
who raises corn and shreds it before blowing it up into the top of
the silo. The shredder frequently gets jammed. Routinely un-jamming
it every day makes the farmer careless, until they, or one of their
worker,s gets a hand caught and shredded. Apparently in rural
communities this is not a rare occurrence. Over-familiarity can be
dangerous.
If a boss is over-familiar with his
workers, (or vice versa) they may lose the necessary degree of
respect that makes the working environment work! In Nazareth that
day, Jesus could not do the work He was called to do among the
people. They dismiss His authority by saying, “Is this not the
carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James....(and all the
rest of the family)?
Maybe the most dismissive place of all
to place limits on what God can do, is the arena of our own lives. We
simply can't believe that God do anything wonderful in the heartlands
of our daily activities. We limit the work of God's Spirit because we
dismiss the possibility of any real change happening in such a
familiar place as our every day experience.
Because of familiarity, Jesus was not
accepted in His homelands. He couldn't work wonders because they
assumed that nothing good ever happened in their neighborhood. Let us
try not to make the same mistake in our own lives. Let us be open to
the possibilities that exist, even in the midst of the familiar. Let
us not dismiss our lives, our families, our church, or our community
as being a place where Jesus can work the miracle of Kingdom
building.
For some music Hawk Nelson sing “He Still Does (Miracles)”
Note: Blog is taking a months vacation. Musings will resume in August
The
Reverend Adrian J Pratt B.D.
No comments:
Post a Comment