The Ministry of Moving-In

Mark 6:1-13
He left there and came to his hometown. His disciples followed him. When the Sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue and the many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this come from? And what is this wisdom given to him? How did he come to have such power in his hands? Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” So they took offense at him.
Jesus said, “A prophet is not honored in his hometown and in his own family and in his own house.” And he could do no signs of power there except to lay hands on a few sick people for healing. He was amazed at their unbelief. So he traveled through the surrounding villages teaching.
He called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two. He gave them authority over evil spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for their journey except a walking stick, not bread nor bag nor money pouch, but to wear sandals and not to dress in two tunics. He said to them, “When you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place does not welcome you and refuses to hear you, leave there and shake the dust from under your feet as witness against them.”
So they went out preaching repentance. They cast out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

One of my favorite professors from seminary now lives in Philadelphia. My last year at Perkins was a time when I was finally enjoying school and one of the reasons for that was the teachers I had who helped me ask the right question and to listen for God is some new ways. Millie was one of those folks. She was very encouraging to me and after seminary we kept in touch. Our families grew at about the same time as Millie and Harold adopted a child from China and we welcomed Joel and Rachel into our lives. When they moved to Philadelphia we started to visit and that’s why I’m telling you this story.

I have discovered that there are people who need to have other people who will just invite themselves into their homes. I don’t think Suzanne is sold on this idea. I think she thinks that it’s just a way for us not to have to get a hotel room when we go places. But I am certain that it’s true. Millie and Harold need to have me come and visit every so often and I feel that it is my Christian duty to remind them of that about once a year. If I have a church conference in Philadelphia I’ll invite myself over. Or if we need a family trip, we’ll invite ourselves over.

Now I know this sounds self-serving, but it’s not. Millie and Harold are wonderful people, but they don’t get out as much as they should and they would never see us if we didn’t go to them. When we go, we bless them with a friendship that we won’t let go of. They bless me, too. I need to go visit just as much as they need me to come take up their third floor room for a season. But I’m really more aware of the ministry of moving-in I’m providing, which is really on the flip side of helping them to develop their ministry of hospitality.

I also should say that what I’m doing in inviting myself over is very biblical. If you ask yourself what Jesus would do, the answer is clear – he would invite himself over. It’s what he did with Zaccheus. (You remember the song, don’t you? “Zaccheus, you come down for I’m going to your house today.”) It’s what he did when making preparations for the Passover meal – he sent the disciples to follow a man into his house and to say to him, “Where’s the guest room?” It’s even what he did after the resurrection when the disciples were sitting in a locked room – he came right into the midst of them. Jesus knew something about the ministry of moving-in.

That’s why his instructions to the disciples in the passage we have for today are so interesting. Jesus is sending the disciples out two by two to preach repentance and to heal. But right before this happens there is an amazing story of inhospitality and it will be hard for us to understand what he is asking the disciples to do unless we hear the first part of this passage. You may want to follow along in your own Bible or in the pew bibles near you.

Chapter 6 of Mark’s gospel begins with Jesus returning to his hometown. He has been going throughout the region of Galilee teaching and healing the people. In fact, in the story just before verse one here he has just raised a little girl from the dead. He is a person of astounding power and he is attracting huge crowds. But then he decides to go home.

He came traipsing back into town with his disciples in tow and in any other town he might have expected a thunderous welcome and crowds of people pressing in on him for healing and to hear his teaching. But this was Nazareth. They’re not too impressed with what goes on elsewhere. It might be all well and good for Jesus to do those amazing signs over there across the bay…uh…across the lake, but here in Nazareth we have our own ways and we’ll just see about this one.

Jesus came to the synagogue on the Sabbath to teach. The people who heard it were impressed. “The kid has some pretty good insights. He’s saying some things we might ought to hear. But where’d de get all this? How’d he get to be so wise? And how’d he come about having the power he has in his hands?”

Then some of them reminded the group of his pedigree. “You know, he’s just a carpenter. He’s the son of Mary.” Interesting, isn’t it, that they call him the son of Mary and not son of Joseph? Maybe there have been some dark rumors floating around the village that perhaps Joseph was a little less involved in the birth than he should have been. Either way, the words have the ring of an insult in that society. “Don’t we know his brothers and sisters?” they said. “He is getting above his raisin’.”

Now from time to time I hear people say, “Oh, now if I had seen Jesus and not just heard stories about him, I would have had no trouble believing.” We imagine that Jesus must have glowed like a figure in a Thomas Kinkade painting or had a circle around his head for a halo as in the old medieval paintings. But this story is a good reminder that Jesus was not only accepted, he was rejected. And there were many who did not see a savior in Jesus – only a troublemaker, a radical, a charlatan, or a simple wood-worker forgetting his place.

The reaction he received from his own people even astounded Jesus. He didn’t do many signs there, though he did use his hands to heal a few sick people. But the passage says that he was “amazed at their unbelief” [6:6] and soon he was on his way to teach in the surrounding villages.

So that’s the backdrop to what happens next, because he gathers the disciples together and he gives them authority over evil spirits. They are going to be prepared for their work with the same authority Jesus has had in sending out evil spirits. But they are also going to have to learn to trust God as much as Jesus does. He tells them that they can’t take anything for their journey except a walking stick. No bread, no bag for possessions, no money in their belts. Just a stick and sandals. Like the Israelites preparing to leave Egypt, eating the Passover meals with a staff in their hands and sandals tied on their feet, these disciple were going to have to learn to rely on God and to rely on what God would provide them.

They were only allowed one tunic – a long shirt – to wear. Because if they had two they might be tempted to sleep out and risk the chill of the night. But Jesus didn’t want them sleeping out. This is the important thing they had to learn to do – if they were going to learn to be true disciples, they were going to have to learn to invite themselves into people’s homes.

In Luke’s gospel the directions are even more explicit. They are supposed to go in and eat with the people in the villages. But even here in Mark it’s pretty direct. Jesus says, “When you enter a house…” There is no word here about being invited into a house. They are to go into houses and stay there until they leave the village. Maybe after coming into a village they would discover that there were some nicer homes they wished they had wandered into but, no, they have a special place with the first family they come to.

What happens if the folks you go to stay with aren’t welcoming or if the village refuses to hear the good news? What if they are like the folks in Nazareth who wouldn’t accept Jesus? Well, then, leave but as you do shake off the dust from your feet as a witness against the town. The disciples are meant to be a blessing but if they are not received in that way, well, they have other places to bless.

This is the mission of the disciples. They are to go and tell the good news and they are to do it by inviting themselves over. It is not the case that the blessing they represented was self-evident. It is not true that everybody should have known who Jesus was and what he represented just from coming into contact with him. Jesus knew that the gospel had to be more invasive than that. It had to come into people’s homes and to disturb their equilibrium. The good news is not content to sit in the village square until people discover it, consider it and decide whether or not it’s worthy of a listen. Jesus comes to the door – “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”. Jesus invites himself in. Jesus meets us behind the closed doors of our lives and tells us that the deepest need of our lives, the deepest desire of our hearts, is to play host to the ruler of the universe and to know that we belong. It’s not a polite visit on the doorstep – this mission thing. It’s an invasive procedure.

Now what am I saying? That we ought to be inviting ourselves into the homes of all those who need to hear the good news? Maybe not literally, but certainly we need to be pushing our way into the lonely lives that so many of our neighbors (and maybe we, ourselves) lead.

Americans are lonely people. Just in the last month we had a major study conducted by Duke University where they tried to determine how many friends Americans have. They asked the question, “Who have you discussed important matters with?” in 1985 and then again in 2004 to see how many people we feel we have to share our lives with. 20 years ago, Americans reported that, on average, they had three people to talk to about the most important things they were facing. Now it’s two.[i]

That’s just one survey, but it’s affirmed by our sense that there is something missing. We are a hyper-connected culture. We throw our personal lives up on the web in blogs, we play out our basest instincts on Jerry Springer, we have cell phones and instant messenger and e-mail – but if the survey is right, we feel we have fewer places to take ourselves to be really heard. We’re talking a lot. We’re connected. But we’re still not connecting.

Maybe what many of us most need in our lives is a visitor who won’t let us ignore the deep hurts and wounds we try so desperately to hide. What was it that the disciples were given charge to do on these missions? To cast our demons, to heal sickness, and to preach repentance. We’ve got demons in our house. We’ve got things that possess us so much that it’s amazing they let us get out the door in the morning. The demons may be named unforgiveness or obsession or they may be wrongs we nurse or rights we feel are unjustly denied. Our demons can have many names, but we don’t want to let them go and we don’t want to let anyone know that they are there.

We’ve got illnesses the world knows nothing about. We’ve got gaping wounds we’re papering over with Band-Aids that need deep healing. We’ve got depressions and anxieties and loss and grief. Things we’ve done and things that have been done to us. Who are we going to show those to?

We’ve got sins that need repenting. We’ve gone a long way from home and we need to find a way back. We know God’s been calling us but we don’t want to listen. There’s just too much to lose or just too much to let go of.

You see, there’s a lot that needs a visitor to uncover. We are not those healers. We are not the ones who can set the wrong things right and release the captives. That’s what God does. We are people in need of just the same sort of healing. But when we tell someone about what Jesus is doing in our lives, when we invite them to open some doors they may be holding fiercely shut, when we defy the rules of the world which only create more barriers and not the things which make for peace, when we sit and eat with strangers and friends, we open a space for God to come in and what needs to be done.

One of the most healing nights I ever experienced happened during the World Series. It was 2001 and Arizona and the Yankees were playing. But I watched Game 7 sitting in the front room of a small house in Cortazar, Mexico. We were on a mission trip working with the Methodists in this small city and every night we split up to go to the homes of different families. I was staying with a family that welcomed me from the first day as if I were part of the family.

The family ran a small fruit stand out of the front room that faced the street. It was the living room at night. We sat among the guavas and avocados and talked and watched the ball game on an ancient portable TV with a grainy picture. Berenice, the 12-year-old daughter, got me to help her with her English homework. Her mother introduced me to guava juice and showed me how to make it. Her brother asked me about schools in the U.S. and invited me to go to his.

What struck me about the night was how normal it all was. Despite the language barriers, the cultural barriers, the entirely different worlds in which we lived – it felt like a normal night with baseball, homework, the smell of limes and cilantro in the air, and conversation among people who were strangers only days before, but who now felt like family. I would not have been in that room that night were it not for this gospel. I would not have known what God was doing in that place if the love of Jesus hadn’t led me into that house.

God is doing amazing things every day. God is still casting out demons and tearing down walls, healing the sick and telling good news. God was not content to tell us all this from afar; Jesus invited himself in, first into a manger because the doors were shut, but then, because God does not abide a closed door, into the most personal spaces of our lives. When are you going to invite the healer in? Who are you going to go visit? And what message will you bring them? Get your walking stick and get your sandals on and then trust that God’s going to show you the way. Thanks be to God.

[i] Americans Have Fewer Friends, Researchers Say, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/print?id=2107907