Not Much of a Carpenter

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 5, 2009

Not Much of a Carpenter
Mark 6:1-6

A sense of excitement ran through the town.
Everyone in Nazareth was out, talking….
talking about Jesus,
Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary,
the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon.

The people of Nazareth had heard the stories about Jesus
that had traveled with the wind:
his teaching, his wisdom,
and the healings,
and even miracles.
Had there been such a thing as a newspaper back then
the headline might have read,
“Nazareth Welcomes Jesus:
Local boy returns a celebrity!”

On the Sabbath, people crowded the synagogue
to see and hear Jesus.
It was the custom in those days
that when a visitor came to the synagogue,
he was given the honor
of reading from Scripture and then interpreting.
Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah
and he read from the book
and then he began to explain the text.

At first the people listened carefully, attentively.
but then questions began to course through their minds.
Not questions about the text,
about what God was saying as he spoke through the prophet,
but questions about Jesus:
“What is this wisdom that has been given to him?
Where did this man get all this?
What deeds of power are being done in his hands?”

And then the questions turned to statements,
critical, cutting, belittling, insulting.
We can almost hear what the people were saying
as the words became nastier,
attitudes toward Jesus spiraling downward:
“Don’t you remember him as a boy?
His head was always in the clouds;
He never played with the other children.
He was not the least bit respectful of his parents;
Who can forget what he did to poor Mary and Joseph
that time they went to Jerusalem for the Passover?
It took his parents three days to find him,
and then he didn’t even apologize,
he just said something about
being about his Father’s business.

It would have been good if had been
about his father’s business
and stayed put to work with Joseph.
That’s what the eldest son is supposed to do:
carry on his father’s trade.
For the little bit that he worked with his father,
he certainly wasn’t much of a carpenter.”

“And now he tries to impress us with wisdom,
as though he’s a man of scholarship and learning.
And who are these men with Jesus,
these …‘disciples’?
They look like a rather rough crew,
especially that Peter.
Imagine: a group of fishermen trying to teach others
about the Lord God!”

Here’s Jesus returning to his hometown,
to the people who knew him as a boy,
and the words fly fast and furious,
ugly and insulting.
The text tells us the people “took offense” at him.
Another way we can translate the sentence
is that the people “stumbled over” him,
they did not know what to do or think.
So what path did they take?
in today’s parlance,
they “went negative” on him.

The people of Nazareth thought they knew this man,
and they rushed to judgment.
Gossip turned to insults,
insults turned to outright hostility.
In Luke’s version of this story
the people not only run Jesus out of town,
they try to run him off a cliff.
(Luke 4:29)

“A prophet has no honor in his hometown.”

This is an awful story.
The people who think they know Jesus
better than anyone else
don’t welcome him,
don’t listen to him,
don’t learn from him.
They belittle him, tear him down, mock him.
Jesus ends up the astonished one,
astonished by their faithlessness,
astonished by their unbelief.

Now, before we go too negative about the people of Nazareth,
the question we have to ask is
had we lived in that time and that place,
would we have thought or done anything differently?
Wasn’t what they did
what we still find all too easy to do?
Aren’t we quicker to tear down
than we are to build up?
Aren’t we quicker to criticize
than we are to praise?

Paul saw this tendency even in the most faithful.
He spoke to it in almost every one of his letters:
To the Christians in Rome he wrote,
You are not going to argue with one another
over petty, silly things, are you?
“Let peace fill your hearts,
build up one another.”
To the people of Galatia he warned,
“If you bite and devour one another,
take care you are not consumed by one another.”

To the people of Corinth he wrote,
“As long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you,
you are not following Christ,
not opening yourself to the presence of the Spirit,
you are closing yourself to faith and belief.

Even the people of Philippi,
of whom Paul thought so highly,
he still felt compelled to remind them,
“Do all things without murmuring or arguing.”

He summed up his teaching
in his letter to the Colossians,
“…clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, meekness and patience.
Bear with one another,
and if anyone as a complaint against another,
forgive each other;
Just as the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love…
and let the peace of Christ rule your hearts.”
(Colossians 3:12ff)

We are called to build up,
build up,
build up one another through our every word,
and every act.
Build up one another in this church,
in our community,
in this nation whose birthday we joyfully celebrate,
and in the world.

In Paul’s words, we are to:
“Love one another with mutual affection;
[and] outdo one another in showing honor.”
(Romans 12:10)
“Let no evil talk come out of [our] mouths,
but only what is useful for building up…
so that [our] words may give grace to those who hear.”
(Ephesians 4:29)

It is hardly what the people of Nazareth were doing
as they spoke about Jesus.
But they found the path they went down so easy,
just as we do.
We find sharp remarks funny, clever, comical;
television sit-coms seem to be built on insulting comments.
We eagerly laugh at the remarks of acid-tongued curmudgeons.
Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice was well known for her barbed tongue,
summed up in her comment to a guest
at a White House dinner:
“If you don’t have anything nice to say about anyone,
come sit by me.”

But going down that path, while it brings a laugh or two,
leads us away from God, away from Christ,
closes our hearts and minds to the work of the Holy Spirit.
As you come to the Table this morning,
I invite you to renew your commitment
to the life that Jesus calls us to:
a life grounded in love,
a life grounded in words that build up,
words that praise, words that encourage;
a life turned away from words that
find fault, that belittle,
that criticize, that insult or mock.

As you come to this Table,
I encourage you to reflect on Paul’s words
to the Christians at Rome:
“So let’s agree to use all our energy
in getting along with each other.
Help others with encouraging words;
don’t drag them down by finding fault.”
(Peterson, The Message)

Come to this Table to be renewed and refreshed
by this grace-filled meal,
and then go out sharing grace-filled words
building up here, and in all places, and all times,
speaking in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN