SCRIPTURE: Mark 6:1-13
TEXT:3b And they took offense at him. THEME: What God wants to accomplish through us can be different from what other’s expect of us. INTRODUCTION In June, Pentecost began with readings from the Gospel of Mark, we witnessed the activity of God’s Spirit in Paradise through Jesus’ ministry. This month we will be continuing in Mark, while looking at “Who Jesus is”; Who Jesus is to his hometown, Who Jesus is to King Herod, Who Jesus is as a Human Being and Who Jesus is as Divine. Today we will look at how his hometown sees him. SCRIPTURE Teaching about the Kingdom of God in Parables, Jesus escapes the crowds for time with God in a boat. After calming the winds and seas, Jesus finds himself on the other shore healing a daughter of Israel and a daughter of the synagogue. Leader. The next stop is in the familiar setting of his hometown. Jesus comes in preaching in the synagogue as he has done along the way to his home. He is an impressive speaker but makes his neighbors question how he is able to do this. How did Jesus come to be so eloquent? What is this wisdom given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hand? Jesus has exceeded their parameters of what is possible as they try to reframe Jesus in a box that they feel more comfortable with. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Remember, his mom was pregnant and unwed when Joseph married her. Remember their family? Mary his mom, with James, Joses, Judas, Simon and the girls? Hey if Jesus isn’t going to be our carpenter, then who is going to build our houses? And they took offense at him. Villages needs its members to play their part in order of the community to survive. NPR broadcasted a story about a subsistence village in Alaska where this young boy was developing as a hunter, fisherman, boater, giving strength to the whaling parties, fixing homes, making gear and was becoming an intricate part of the future of this village’s survival. Until he was taken away to a Boarding school in Seattle. He was forbidden to speak his native language, He struggled in the academics they offered, his self-image plummeted until he discovered art, and could use his hand again. In Seattle, he became useless to his village. Their survival became harder as they lost a valuable member for their substance, for someone else’s perceived notion of a better life. They took offense at the United States of America for their policies towards Native Americans. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) developed the boarding school system for Native Americans. Their goal was to assimilate Indian students into Christian, civilized American culture. ‘Killing the Indian inside of them’. In a 2005 as study of this 30-year-old Boarding school program was made and they discovered that although learning about the world beyond their village was valuable, the loss of their cultural identity left a void in many students that lead to substance abuse, and suicide. They found themselves misplaced, finding it difficult to return home but not fitting in to where they were. Jesus no longer fit his neighbors’ image of what was useful to them. And they couldn’t see beyond their own assumptions to what God was bringing to them, so the only feeling they held was Jesus’ betrayal of his role as a carpenter for his home town. APPLICATION When we kill the prophet among us, we all die. How do we step out beyond our limiting expectations to see God’s expansive vision for our community? Today we are celebrating the foundations of our United States, they are prophetic in nature as they promote freedom and equality for all. Yet we have only narrowly practiced these principles of liberty and justice. The Dominant Culture uses freedom for themselves at the expense of everyone else. As a nation we are moving towards the practices of freedom for all, but as a nation our progress has been slow. We wrestle with slavery and its economics over what is fair and right. We had a Civil war to reset our thinking from capital gain to the value of human dignity. The war brought a shift in thinking but these principles took a long time to develop into practices of freedom, respect, justice and equality, whether the divisions were race, ethnic, religious, sex, sexual orientation, immigration or age. It is only now that we will nationalize a holiday celebrating the end slavery in our nation on June 19th. Good on paper but better in practice as the Civil rights movement of the 60’s took these principles of equality and applied them in resistant boroughs of our hometowns. We see on going refinement in equality, in law enforcement’s treatment of black lives, in the taxation of the rich to ease the burden of the middle class, In equal pay for equal work. To maintain the privilege of voting for elected officials. We see the resistance of hometown groups who cannot see beyond their own needs and are limited in seeing the needs of others or the movement of God. So, what do we do? A Comprehensive Affordable Housing Plan will be presented to the Maui County Council on July 18th by Hawaiian Community Assets. On July 19th, the Affordable Housing Committee will receive the Council-generated Comprehensive Affordable Housing Plan. We can stand for affordable housing. Danette Kong sent an invitation for us to show up on Monday July 19th at Kaahumanu Church Lawn to stand from 12 noon to 1pm, one hour, for affordable Housing. We can teach about God’s vision of inclusion. We can be healing to those who have been ignored. We can listen to the hurt and see what we want to ignore and have a greater vision for community that embraces a wider community. CONCLUSION The democracy that established our nation is more inclusive and diverse in nature and freedoms than we have come to practiced. The foundations are there, we just have to increase our inclusiveness to live into it. The perceived dominant culture has excluded, limited and interned the rights of others to preserve the freedoms that belong, not only to them but for all. The music for today’s service is provocative. Some of the lyrics have been reworded for greater impact. The song we are going to sing next is Dakota. Our government continued to treat indigenous people as less valued citizens and took their lands and pushed them to the barren dust bowls of our nation. We made these people dependent on annuities for subsistence and when their payments were delayed it caused them to starve. When they protested, their protest became violent killing townsmen on both sides. 38 Dakota Native Americans were executed for their participation in these killings. As they marched to the gallows it is believed that they sang this next hymn. Sung in their language, the spectators were ignorant of their Christian faith holding them up, as they faced their death. Who is Jesus? Jesus is a hometown kid who is a prophet, and does not see our hometowns as the final destination, but as the starting point for us to begin to imagine what the rule of God’s community can look like. We have the freedoms, the laws, and the liberties to institute them in our living in our nations. All we need now, is faith in a greater vision to put these into practice, where they are not.
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