Nothing

Text: Mark 6:1-13

There is a kind of story that comes in many versions. They all go something like this:

On a stormy night / [on] a moonless night / a winter night,

an old man / a crippled woman / a starving child

comes to a monastery / [comes to] a country inn / the home of a rich man / a farmhouse / the church

and asks for money / [asks] for food / for a place to sleep / for help for a friend.

But he is treated poorly / [he is] locked out / spit upon / turned away.

Finally he comes to a place where

they welcome him / [they] feed him a warm meal / give him a place to sleep / go with him to help / give him from their own meager belongings.

And it turns out—that he is Jesus!

The point of these stories is that it is not so easy to recognize God when God is in the ordinary—ordinary things or people or events. It seems that we like our God to be big, bold, powerful, awesome, and mysterious. Not so much small, humble. Not too close up.

When the Gospel story that we just heard appears in Mark, Jesus had already performed miracles of healing. He had taught crowds in the countryside. He had cured a woman who could not stop bleeding and restored life to little girl whom all thought was dead. He had cast out many demons.

Then he came home.

The townspeople are of two minds about Jesus’ homecoming. They have heard of his teaching and healings. “What is this wisdom that has been given to him?” they ask themselves. “What deeds of power are being done by his hands!” They don’t deny that Jesus has been successful. They don’t deny the news of his power and wisdom. It is not that they don’t believe he has done these deeds. It is that they cannot reconcile the deeds with the man they know.

Jesus was just a carpenter. On the social scale of the times, about as low as you could get. Unlike even subsistence farmers, carpenters had no land. It was a lowly and low-class occupation.

And yet, this low-class man, son of Mary, had abandoned his family. He had gone off to teach like an educated man. He had gone off curing like a prophet. He put on airs. He gathered a group of followers. The townspeople don’t know what to make of him.

The ordinary familiarity of Jesus trips them up. It is not, in spite of the way the text is translated, that they are offended by Jesus. It is that they cannot see through to Jesus. It is that the power of God in Jesus is obscured for them by the plain, simple, poverty-stricken human ordinariness of the man they all know. He is hidden from them.

Clothing is intended partly to protect us. But its functions just as much to disguise us and portray us in a particular way that we choose. What we wear tells people about us. And all the trappings of our lives are like that. It is nearly impossible for people to know us really. What we own, what we do for a living, where we live, where we come from are opaque layers that people use to figure us out. Sometimes this is aggravating. (Jesus is aggravated by it.) But mostly this is what we hope for. (It is not what Jesus hoped for.)

Right after Jesus finds that his hometown friends cannot see the person that the rest of the world sees, Jesus sends out his disciples to heal people. He sends them out with almost nothing. He ordered them to take nothing except a staff. No food, no luggage, no money. The least amount of clothing possible: a pair of sandals and a tunic. Close to naked as possible. No, no, no, no, no, no, it says in Mark. Six times: no. Nothing.

Everything we carry with us is aggravating. Even when it is great. Everything is its own problem. Clothes require washing and storing, books require shelving and getting rid of, cars require repairs and worries. Things we love lead us anticipate their loss or theft or damage. Things, for all their wonder, are a pain.

But we like to be able to hide behind the things we carry. It takes a lot of time and care to do so. To keep secrets from one another, or particular others. To be careful that we reveal only the right things to the right people. To not expose ourselves and thus become vulnerable. To keep track of who knows us in what way. And to clean up the messes when the boundaries of knowledge we have set up fail and things break loose.

Jesus sends his disciples out with nothing so that they can focus on the task at hand. Which is first of all to free people from demons and to heal them. And which is second of all to give others—people who have houses and food and some things—give others a chance to welcome the disciples and to care for them.

And Jesus sends his disciples out with nothing so that they may be seen without prejudice. So that, to put it another way, they may be transparent to God. So that they may be known as only the people they are and the deeds they do.

And Jesus sends his disciples out with nothing two by two, because it is too hard and too scary to go out naked into the world by yourself.

The things behind which we hide are opaque. So that while we protect our selves we also blind ourselves. And the less we reveal, the less we see. Until, at the end, we hide from everyone and are able see nothing.

The more we spend time looking into the mirror the less we see of God. The townspeople do not see God in Jesus because they are preoccupied with their status and are unwilling to honor Jesus. How will they ever recognize God? They—we—are often enough like the people in those stories who cannot see God standing right in front of them.

Today [baptized child] was baptized into the body of Christ. The church has been called to care for her, to help her to learn to proclaim Christ through word and deed, to care for others and the world, to work for justice and peace, and to trust God in all these things.

We have all been called to help one another to do the same. We follow the way of Jesus. Who has taught us to travel light, and to keep our eyes open. And to see all that there is to see.