We’re still early in Jesus’ ministry,
still early in the fulfillment of his mission which, as we noted last week, is
defined over in Luke: it’s to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to
the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free.
And up until now, we’ve seen him going about that mission: healing a guy with
an unclean spirit and Simon’s mama-in-law, going on a Galilean preaching tour,
healing a paralytic dropped down through a roof, teaching in synagogues,
demonstrating against wrong-headed laws, teaching in parables, tangling with
the weather, healing a demoniac, a hemorrhagic woman and a synagogue official’s
daughter. . . and if you go back and look at his ministry up until this
point—it’s easy to do in versions like the New Revised Standard, which have
helpful headings that follow the action—if you go back and summarize his
ministry, you’ll see a remarkable balance between teaching and practice,
between saying and doing. Everywhere he practiced he taught and everywhere he
taught he practiced.
And now we have kind of a strange
interlude, where he comes to his hometown from Capernaum—by the sea—further
inland to Nazareth. He comes to Nazareth and as was his custom, he heads to the
synagogue and begins to teach. And “many who heard him”—aka his own people, his
own family and friends—are astounded.
“Where did he get all this,” they ask,
“What is this
wisdom that’s been given him? Look all this stuff
he’s doing, all these deeds of power
. . .isn’t this the son of the carpenter and Mary? Don’t we know
all his sisters and brothers, didn’t we ride him around on our backs, didn’t we
dandle him on our knees?”.
It reminds me of the reaction of some of my friends and family when I went to
seminary . . . you?
a minister? What about that time when . . . and they’d trot out some episode in
our mutual past that wasn’t exactly ministerial . . . or when I got out of my
dissertation defense, the last hurdle before a PhD, and all my teachers gravely
shook my hand and said “Congratulations, Dr. Olson” and all my fellow grad
students asked “Can we still call you jerk?” (I always answered “yes, but now
it’s Dr. Jerk to you.”)
Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the
saying goes, and that’s what seems to be going on here. A home-boy comes home,
and people just assume he’s putting on airs, trying to be better than them, no matter
if he is or not. And Mark says that they take offense at him, and it’s instructive, I think,
to note that the Greek verb translated here as “to take offense” is scandalidzo,” from whence we
get the word scandalize. Thus, we could render the phrase as “they were scandalized by him.” They
were scandalized
by his behavior, by his teaching and wisdom, by his deeds of power.
And it behooves us to explore a little
bit the meaning of the word whenever we encounter it, because it’s importance
in the New Testament far outweighs its frequency. So in what sense did Jesus’
actions—his healings and making clean and general making the last first and the
first last—in what sense did what he was doing “scandalize” his homies? Let’s
look at the anatomy of scandal: in its basic form, it involves two parties and
an object, often called the model. Say Aunt Tillie is scandalized because young
Mary is wearing white after Labor Day. The two parties are Mary and Aunt Tillie
and the model is in this case a model of behavior: wearing white after labor
day. And the scandal arises because Aunt Tillie—on the surface, at least—doesn’t
think that Mary ought to be wearing white after labor day because it
contradicts the model behavior.
But there’s a couple of things to
remember here. In a scandal, it takes three to tango, not just two: a model, in
this case a model behavior, and two people or parties or nations. So Aunt Tilly
and Mary are both caught up in the scandal, not just Mary who is the
perpetrator in Tilly’s eyes. And in fact, that brings up the second thing we
should remember about scandals: it’s about two parties both striving to obtain
the model. Tilly secretly would like to be able to wear white after Labor
Day—she often says it outright: “I’d like to wear white too, but not everybody
can be a fashion rebel.” And we should take her at her word: she really would
like to do the forbidden behavior, but the rules—often what we call taboos—stop
her. And what about Mary? She has reached out and taken the model behavior to
heart, she has grasped it even knowing that it is taboo. She is contending for
the model, in this case for the ability to break a taboo.
But there’s a third thing we need to
know about scandals: they tend to be mimetic,
imitative. That is, the two parties contending for the model want more than
just to possess it, they want to—in some sense—be it as well. Thus, both Aunt
Tilly and Mary want to be that person who flaunts the rules, who is—as Aunt
Tilly calls it—a fashion rebel.
Theologian Robert Hamerton-Kelly calls
the model in a scandal that which “both attracts and repels,” and we see it all
the time, don’t we? Often, the most virulent haters turn out to be exactly the
thing they are railing against. That’ always been apparent in religious
circles: Jimmy Swaggart, the TV preacher and railer against adulterers. Guess
what? Ted Haggard, the preacher who stood alongside presidents and bashed gays.
Guess what? In politics, it has become equally obvious. Back when we lived in
Mississippi, Governor Kirk Fordice carried the torch for “family values.” Guess
what? More recently, Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina, also outspoken
supporter of “family values.” Guess what?
But you say: preacher. If this passage
describes a scandal as you (and Mark) seem to think, what is the taboo Jesus is breaking?
What is the model that his homies simultaneously desire to be and deride? Why,
it’s that old human failing: the desire to be like God. You remember ol’ Adam and Eve? Desiring to
eat from the tree of knowledge, and God says “Before long, they’ll be just like
us?” Well, in this
case, Jesus’ countrymen were jealous of his acting like a priest, acting like a
stand-in for God, making clean that which is unclean, righteous that which is
un-righteous. Curing the Garasene demoniac of his madness. Healing the
hemorrhaging woman. Bringing the Temple official’s girl back from death, the ultimate
unclean. The taboo Jesus broke—and to which all his friends and relatives
themselves aspire—is acting like a priest which, of course, is acting like God.
And if they
couldn’t do it, why should Jesus
be able to? After all, they say, is this not the son of Mary and brother of
James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?”
And, Mark says, they were scandalized
by him.
Where are the scandals in our own lives?
What do we envy our neighbors, our fellow church members, our co-workers? If we
look within the ubiquitous framework of scandal, we can see it everywhere. A
church stands empty, unused by anyone but the pastor and secretary 150 out of
168 hours in the week, yet when a program expands or a new program tries to get
a foothold, the congregation gets all defensive. Rivalries for supplies, space
and decision-making power tend to all be in this mold . . . we are envious of
others for using space that often stands empty 90 % of the week. We are envious
of session-members or other leaders the decision-making power, even when we
consistently refuse to serve on session or committees. Scandal—the rivalry for
something desirable—tends to tear up churches, it tends to cause dissension and
strife within a community of God, it drives members to other churches, it makes
others withdraw from service, it can even drive folks away from organized
religion altogether.
As in our passage, scandals can be so
debilitating that the ministry of God—deeds of power—is no longer possible in a
particular church, even in an entire denomination. Witness, for example, the
long-running conflict over ordination and marriage standards, which impeded
the mission of the Presbyterian Church USA for decades, and continues to do so
to this day.
But you know what? Christ came to show
the futility of this kind of rivalry, to show that we don’t need to contend for
God’s grace, that it’s freely given, that there is plenty enough to go around.
Like those disciples of old, he confers his power and authority upon us through
the Holy Spirit and sends us out, two by two, and three-by-three and
congregation-by-congregation. And we are powered and empowered by that Spirit,
and given the wherewithal to continue Christ’s ministry in our home communities
and beyond. Amen.
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