A sermon preached by the Reverend Sarah Grondin at St. Jude’s Anglican Church Oakville, Wednesday, February 5, 2025, Feria in Epiphanytide .
I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
What does it mean to “go home” or to have a “home town?” Is it the place where you were born? Is it the place where you went to school? If you moved around a lot growing up, how do you decide which of those places is your home town? Is it the place you lived the longest? Or maybe the place you have the most memories of?
I grew up in a small town in South Western Ontario called Corunna, and it had a population of around 4,000 people then. I lived there until I graduated high school and moved away for University, and it was the only “home” I knew at the time. I was born there, I went to school there, and I had never lived anywhere else.
All sorts of firsts are associated with that place: I had my first job there, first crush, first time driving my parent’s pickup truck. (and yes, of course they had a pickup truck)
However you define it though, hometowns are a strange thing. There are lots of reasons why we might want to go back to our hometowns, and there are lots of reasons why we might not want to go back to our hometowns… and perhaps the strangest part of that is the reasons for both might be exactly the same thing. Familiarity can be comforting, but familiarity can also breed contempt.
In our gospel reading today we’re told that Jesus returned to his hometown with his disciples, and as was his custom, on the Sabbath Jesus was in the Synagogue. From what we know of Jesus’ life, he lived in Nazareth for most of it, so he’d likely been to this synagogue hundreds of times.
But this time is different… this time Jesus isn’t there to listen to someone else teaching, he’s the one doing the teaching. And Mark tells us that those who were listening were astounded at what he said. Some translations use the word “amazed.”
But this kind of amazement isn’t the fall back in awe sense of wonder you have when something amazes you in a delightful way, it’s more the astonishment you feel at something you’re not 100% sure is even real.
If the people’s collective comments in verse 2 were translated literally, it would end up something like this: “What’s all this now? Who gave this guy such wisdom? What kind of (miraculous) power is this that flows through his hand?”
By stating and framing things this way, the people are implying that the obvious conclusion—that this is all from God—can’t be the correct one. Something’s up, but they don’t quite know what.
All of their questioning darkly hints at the possibility that the source for all this is something shady, something underhanded, maybe even something evil. It’s almost as though they’re grasping for an explanation, any explanation, other than the obvious one.
They can’t accept that Jesus is a Somebody because they are convinced that they, his hometown neighbours, already know who he is. To those who grew up with Jesus, the idea that he contains great wisdom and does great miracles can’t possibly be the case, because Jesus has never been good enough for such a destiny.
As far as they’re concerned after all is said and done, Jesus is, and always will be, a labourer, who was illegitimately born, and one of many ordinary children.
As we read through the gospels, we can see that Jesus is subjected to several different identity narratives by different groups of people, but this one rejects the truth because the truth’s too big. It’s overwhelming. It’s paradigm shattering. It’s uncomfortable because it breaks open the tidy long-standing illusions of familiarity and expectations.
Jesus is doing and saying things that don’t fit the image the people in his hometown have of him, and rather than allow this encounter to be an opportunity to expand their understanding and image of him, they shut down that possibility with scoffing and unbelief.
How often are we guilty of thinking that way too? How often do we place limits and labels on the people we know, or the people we think we know, that impact what we believe they’re capable of doing?
Oh, they can’t really do that—I’ve known them for years and they just don’t have it in them!
Oh, he’ll never change, he’s been set in his ways his whole life! You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Oh, she’ll never amount to anything, I know where she comes from, and nothing good ever comes from there!
It’s easy to get stuck in that kind of thinking, especially when it comes to people like our family and friends, and the people that we’ve known since ‘way back when.’ I think it’s safe to say that it’s human nature to prefer a certain level of predictability in our lives.
We don’t like to be confronted with things that will force us to re-think everything we’ve spent our lives trying to sort out. So when something comes along that challenges our assumptions and expectations it’s easier to write it off as slight of hand, than it is to deconstruct the things we thought we knew.
And as we see in our gospel reading today, this can also apply to our relationship with God. If we grew up believing in God, much of what we think and feel about and towards God, was shaped by the people around us: our parents, our teachers, our priest, and so on. And we take these bits and pieces that are given to us, and we assemble them in a way that helps us to make sense of ourselves, and the world around us.
And whether we mean to do it or not, we end up putting labels and limitations on God as well. We expect that God will act in a particular way, and in particular situations… and we reject anything that falls outside of those expectations, because God’s truth is just too big.
When we hear stories about the amazing things that God is doing in other people’s lives and in other places, we might be impressed by them at first, until we start to wonder how this God, and the God we think we know, could possibly be the same God.
When this happens, we’re presented with a choice. We can choose to allow God’s self revelation to stretch our faith and knowledge, to challenge our closed off thinking, and to embrace the new thing that God is doing in the world.
Or we can choose to stick to the familiar of what we think we know. We can reject the claims of others that God is moving in the world, and we can scoff and choose unbelief… just like the people of Jesus’ hometown did.
Jesus was miraculously healing people and teaching about a new way of relating to each other and to God that had love and mercy at the heart of it… and because of this Jesus was turning into a hometown scandal.
But here’s the thing… whether we’re willing to get on board with what God is doing in the world or not, Jesus will continue to do his thing, whether it matches our expectations or not. And as we see in the gospel stories over and over, frequently, it’s “not.” We also learn that there’s no stopping the good news.
The people in Jesus’ hometown won’t listen to him, so immediately following that he expands his ministry even further, and sends out the 12 disciples with a renewed and increased mandate. The more the world tries to tamp Jesus down, malign his character, and hinder his ministry, the more the Holy Spirit responds by sending out more workers to share even more paradigm crushing teachings and do more miraculous deeds!
And if we read the end of the gospels, we know that the hometown scandal becomes the saviour of the world. How’s that for shattering expectations?
My prayer for all of us today is that we would look inside ourselves and sit with our souls for a bit. What is it you believe about God? What about God’s truth feels too big for you right now? Are you open to the possibility that the Spirit is doing something new in our world?
And perhaps most importantly, are you willing to let your labels and expectations be shattered by God’s presence here in the midst of us… the God who leads us to light and life, if we choose to follow. Amen.
