Mr. Alexander Lang - Sermon - April 26, 2009

He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. 4 Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." 5 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6  And he was amazed at their unbelief.
Mark 6:1-6 (NRSV)

I would like to pose a question to you this morning. It’s a difficult question and one for which I don’t have a well defined answer, so I thought we could work on this problem together: are we more than the sum of our past? Another way to approach this question would be to ask: does our upbringing and our experiences define who we are or can we be more than those things? I have to be honest with you, I tend to waiver back and forth when trying to answer this question.

But before we get into the meat of the question, let me give you some concrete examples of how my upbringing and my experiences have defined me. To give you a little background, I lived in the same town in Virginia from the time I was born until I left for college at 18. Of the 90 people who graduated with my high school class, 82 started with me in kindergarten. When I was 19, I decided that I wanted to be a pastor. Initially, my decision was met with blank stares and colorful remarks like, "Don’t you need to be religious to be a pastor?" or "You know Alex, you kind of need to be intelligent to be a pastor." You see, I liked religion. I studied religion as my major in college, but I wasn’t particularly religious. I didn’t go to church very often and to be brutally honest, I didn’t really even know anything about the Bible. So it makes sense that my friends who had grown up with me since kindergarten were judging my ability to become a pastor based on my past actions. They had trouble envisioning me as a pastor because it didn’t fit into the history of what they knew about me.

When they look at me, they remember a kid who mowed lawns in the summer. They think of a kid who was obsessed with the television show Air Wolfe. They conjure images of a guy who spent way too much time at swim practice and reeked of chlorine when he came to school. But what caused them the most difficulty when imagining me as a pastor was simply my personality. Pastors are generally very extroverted people. My personality is that of an introvert. I kept to myself mostly in school, so it was very hard for them to imagine me interacting with people in the manner of a pastor. Indeed, had I let my upbringing and my past experiences define me, they would have been right. Thankfully, I was able to become far more than my past would have indicated I could be.

In our scripture today, Jesus is dealing with a similar situation. He has come back with his disciples to his home in Nazareth. On the Sabbath, Jesus begins teaching in the synagogue. The initial reactions seem positive: They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!" So on the surface, we can glean that they were impressed by Jesus. But then the people in the synagogue begin questioning one another saying, "Wait a second, wait second, hold on. Don’t we know this guy? He’s that carpenter. The son of Mary…and he’s got some brothers…James, Joses, Judas, Simon, and his sisters are right here with us." The initial reaction of amazement slowly gives way to the realization that they know this person. So the crowd begins to transition from amazement to offense. The question is, "Why did this transition occur? Why did they go from being amazed to being offended?" Well, it has something to do with Jesus being a carpenter. When we look at that word for carpenter in Greek, tektwn, it’s describing more than a person who just works in wood. tektwn refers to a craftsman, a person who is able to build anything. In today’s world, we would call Jesus a handy-man. You need to build wall, Jesus is your man. You need to fix your roof, Jesus has got it. The fact is the people of Nazareth became offended because Jesus’ place in society as a handyman precluded him from being able to speak about God. In other words, the people of Nazareth, because they knew Jesus from a very young age and watched him grow up, were unable accept that Jesus could be more than his past.

I think one very important observation we can take away from this interaction between Jesus and the people of Nazareth concerns our expectations of people’s potential. In other words, if I introduce you to a young woman who was valedictorian of her high school class, currently attends Harvard University for undergrad and wants to attend medical school to become a doctor, you would assume that she has the potential to achieve her goal. On the other hand, if I introduce you to a high school dropout who reads at an 8th grade level and he expresses the desire to go to medical school, you would probably roll your eyes at the idea. We assume that the high school dropout does not possess the same potential as the valedictorian to attend medical school. Obviously, this a prejudice, but our bias is not completely unfounded. Statistically speaking, the number of people who drop out of high school and eventually go on to graduate from medical school is infinitesimally small. So if you were a betting person, the better bet would be on the girl who went to Harvard. So you see, our experience is such that the person’s past does often indicate their future.

Yet, what happens if the high school dropout defies expectations and does become a doctor. This raises another question and gets us back to our original focus: why is it so hard for these people to accept that Jesus had become something different from what they knew? Indeed, you and I have the same tendencies as the people in Nazareth. We like to place people in boxes. We like to be able to characterize a person by placing them into definable categories. For instance, when we meet someone for the first time, we begin making judgments about the person’s appearance, intelligence and demeanor. Then we begin comparing that person to other people we know who are similar. When we think we have found the correct category for the person, this determines how we treat and interact with the person. To give you a concrete example, after people find out I’m a pastor, people will generally treat me in a completely different manner than before they knew that piece of information. People place me into the pastor box. For some people, the pastor box is a good thing. For others, the pastor box is really bad. It all depends on their history, their past. That’s why first impressions are so important, because unfortunately, once we are in a box, it takes a lot to break out of it. What’s worse, the longer we stay in one place, the longer we stay in one geographical location where we get to know people really well, the thicker that box becomes. This was the difficulty that Jesus faced and as a result, he was able to do very little work in his home town. The scripture says, "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." When people break out of the box that we place them in, we are often unwilling to accept that they could be more than our expectations. When a person does surpass our expectations it causes us to reflect on whether we are surpassing our expectations for ourselves.

I would like to use Jesus’ experience for a parable of our own experience here today. We have a lot of work to do together in this church, so it’s imperative that we not place each other into boxes. Jesus shows us that the thicker the box, the more we constrain one another and the less we are able to accomplish. I would like to make a pledge to you this morning: I am going to work very hard to not place any of you into a box. I want to know you on your terms, not on the one’s I create for you. I want you to show me what gifts you bring to the table and I want you to know that your past does not have to define who you are with me. I am going to accept you no matter what your upbringing, no matter what your past actions, because in my mind, I believe you are more than any one of those things. I would also like you to extend me the same courtesy. I think if we work towards the end of accepting each other for who we are, not judging one another for our past and being open and genuine, God is going to allow us to serve this community in some amazing ways. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the privilege to serve you in this church. I look forward to getting to know every one of you, both for who you are and as a people bound together in Jesus Christ with the potential to defy the expectation.