The Tragic Agnostic
Commentary
Note: This installment was originally published July 9, 2006.
One of the most profoundly beautiful pictures in the gospels is the moment when Jesus, suffering on the cross, prays for the forgiveness of those who were responsible for this unparalleled error. He observes about them: "They know not what they do" (Luke 23:34 KJV).
I wonder how many of those people for whom he interceded overheard his prayer. And if they did, what did they think of it? Were they even momentarily flummoxed by the sublime love of this man who, while a victim of their cruel plots, still prayed for them? Or were they offended by the suggestion that they needed to be forgiven? Indignant at the implication that they -- who had been so clever, so calculating, so effective -- were actually clueless?
From Jesus' point of view, his was a generous evaluation of his persecutors. He could have attributed to them all sorts of malevolence, injustice, spiritual blindness, and hard- heartedness. It was a charitable conclusion to say that they simply did not know.
We have a word for someone who doesn't know. Technically, the word for such a person is "agnostic" -- someone, literally, without knowledge.
That is not how the word is commonly used today, however. Rather, individuals will rather proudly claim the term for themselves. It has become a kind of theological version of being a "moderate" politically. The self-acclaimed agnostic is not claiming ignorance as much as he is saying that he is thus far unconvinced, undecided, open-minded. But our three lections for this Sunday suggest a different, more tragic picture of agnosticism -- the terrible tragedy of not knowing.
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
In the wake of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, the nation of Israel faced a leadership crisis. Not since the death of Joshua had Israel been so uncertain about whom to follow.
For most of their history, Israel's leadership had been clear. Prior to their years in Egypt, they were a large family, and so their leadership was patriarchal (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). During their centuries of slavery, their undesirable leaders were Egypt's pharaohs. During the exodus experience and wilderness wandering, their leader, Moses, had been chosen and appointed by God. And a generation later, Moses' clear successor for the next phase of Israel's history was Joshua.
After Joshua, however, Israel suffered through a period of very loosely defined leadership. The judges were ad hoc heroes, but they did not represent a centralized government, and they did not present a clear line of succession.
The last of the judges, Samuel, was arguably the strongest and most godly leader Israel had had since Joshua. But when his time was clearly waning, the people came asking for a king. While Samuel initially balked at the suggestion, the people no doubt assumed that a throne and a royal line would provide the kind of strength and stability that the nation had lacked before Samuel's day.
Saul was the first king, chosen by God and anointed by Samuel. When he and his oldest son had died in battle with the Philistines, Israel faced a kind of constitutional crisis. The crisis created a crack in the confederation of tribes, and Judah decided to go its own way. They regarded their favorite son, David, as the obvious choice for next king, and they turned to him immediately. David ruled this southern subset of Israel for seven-and-a-half years from Hebron. And then, finally, in our selected passage, the rest of the nation came calling.
After much unrest, civil war, and a failed attempt to continue the royal line of Saul in the north, the remainder of Israel came to David to make him their king, too. The people came with three expressed reasons: 1) We are your kin, your flesh and blood. 2) You've already been our de facto leader for some time, even during Saul's reign. 3) The Lord has already chosen you for the job.
It was a face-saving presentation on the part of the Israelites. They did not, for example, include among their expressed reasons the fact that the Ishbosheth experiment had failed miserably. Or the fact that David and Judah had effectively prevailed in the civil strife. And, truth be told, all three of the reasons that the people did articulate for making David their king were also true seven-and-a-half years earlier, when the tribe of Judah made the same self-evident decision.
This episode may be one more among several dozen examples in scripture of people discovering the truth that there is no point in fighting against God's plan. As the wise writer of Proverbs observed, "The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established" (Proverbs 19:21). God had already chosen David to be king: The people's alternative plans, therefore, were bound to fail.
It is perhaps noteworthy that "they anointed David king over Israel." Reminiscent of denominational debates over the issue of re-baptism, the people were doing something that had apparently already been done some years before (see 1 Samuel 16:1-13). It occurs without comment, leaving us to wonder and come to our own conclusions. Did they do an appropriately symbolic thing? Or did they presume to take upon themselves a prerogative of God, thereby failing to recognize properly what he had already done?
David solidifies his new position as king by a cleverly unifying act. Rather than remaining in Hebron, where he had been enthroned during the civil strife, he gives his administration a fresh start by conquering and relocating to a new city: Jerusalem. He builds there, and the passage ends on a note of great promise and hope. Not too long before, Israel was in a leadership crisis. Now they are entering into their golden age.
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
I've often wondered how the people in the churches I've served would fare on a sort of true/false test of biblical passages. That is, if we were to read aloud a number of unidentified quotes, would our people be able to recognize which ones came from the pages of scripture and which ones did not? I suspect, for example, that a good many church folks would say that "cleanliness is next to godliness," "actions speak louder than words," and "the Lord helps those who help themselves" are all quotes from the Bible. Meanwhile, I doubt that many would recognize the first three verses of this passage from 2 Corinthians. This is not the stuff of children's Sunday school lessons or church parlor needlepoint. It's strange and mysterious, and so it is likely unfamiliar.
The larger context is a strange disharmony between Paul and the Christians in Corinth. They have apparently become quite enamored with other leaders -- sometimes glibly referred to as "super apostles" -- and their admiration reflects a certain shallowness on their part. What we admire is always revealing, and the Corinthians' admiration apparently revealed their preoccupation with a kind, flashy spirituality and the bold claims these super apostles made about themselves.
Paul does not share their priorities. Indeed, he seeks to correct them. At the same time, he knows he can beat the super apostles at their own game, and so, reluctantly, he lays out his own credentials. Uneasy with catering to that sort of nonsense, however, he distances himself a bit by making his claims in the third person.
Paul refers to having "heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat." He does not give us any insight into the content of what he heard, but we are reminded of other instances in scripture that reflect similar experiences. Daniel, for example, was urged to keep secret the meaning of a vision that had been revealed to him (8:26), to keep the words of the book secret (12:4), and he later heard secret things that he did not understand (12:9). Likewise in the book of Revelation, John is prevented from revealing something that he had overheard (10:4). Even people who had contact with Jesus' ministry were instructed to tell no one what they had witnessed (see Mark 9:9; Luke 5:14; 8:56).
I heard two young teenage girls playfully teasing each other recently. The one had rather obviously fibbed to the other about some matter, and the second girl was calling her on it. Once she had proven the untruth, she joked, "You were lying through your little yellow teeth!"
The friend turned suddenly cool. Her feelings had been hurt. But not because she was accused of lying; rather, because her friend suggested that her teeth were yellow.
I was at once both amused and disturbed by the episode. Is it perhaps a reflection of a hopelessly superficial culture that a young woman should be more bothered by yellow teeth than by lying?
I'm suspicious that the Corinthians were similarly superficial. I wonder, as they heard this part of Paul's letter read, if they missed the point. I wonder if they became so distracted by the marvels of verses 2-4 that they missed the wisdom of verses 5-6.
One senses from both of the Corinthian epistles that the people there struggled with a flash-over-substance preoccupation. They might feel right at home, therefore, in our culture -- and perhaps also in our churches.
We remember that Paul, in the midst of his corrective discourse concerning the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians, pointed the people to the "greater gifts" and the "still more excellent way" (12:31) of love. And now, here in 2 Corinthians, he must again retrieve their attention from the fantastic to the fundamental.
Paul does not want his reputation to be based on his résumé. He is more pragmatic than that. He knows that the Spirit's influence in a person's life should yield certain apparent fruit (see Galatians 5:22-23), and so what people think of him should be the result of their own experience with him. What a magnificent perspective: that he should be judged, not based on what he has seen, but based on "what is seen in me." Not based on what mysteries he has heard, but on what has been "heard from me."
And then, following the lead of the one "who, though he was in the form of God ... emptied himself, taking the form of a slave ... (and) humbled himself" (from Philippians 2:6-8), Paul masterfully reorients the entire discussion. Having trumped the hand of those who were inordinately impressed by flashy strength, he introduces a new suit: weakness.
Let others boast of their strengths; Paul will boast of his weakness. Why? Because, as with Gideon's army so long before (see Judges 7:2), then the strength and the glory belong entirely to the Lord. And while the "super apostles" may care to draw attention to themselves, Paul's mission is to direct all attention and devotion to Christ.
Mark 6:1-13
As I drove along a little country road in Kentucky, I came into a little town that had a big welcome sign, which read: "Welcome to" (followed by the name of the town) and "Home of" (followed by the name of a certain professional basketball player). I don't know how often this hometown hero gets back to visit the people and places that knew him when, but the sign suggests to me that he gets a warm welcome when he's there.
The town of Nazareth did not take such pride in their most famous son. The local high school band didn't play, nor did the citizens plan a party or parade, when Jesus came back to his hometown. On the contrary, "they took offense at him."
Clearly, the people of first-century Nazareth did not realize who he was. The great irony of that, of course, is that they were so very certain of who he was: "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?"
Perhaps that is why "prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." In a strange place, the prophet is unknown, and so the jury is still out. The people to whom he is unknown are wide open to who or what he could be, for he could be anyone or anything.
Back home, however, the prophet is known. The jury is in. They know all about him already. Or so they think.
Here is a common mistake -- we see it repeatedly in scripture in individuals' encounters with the Lord. People do not recognize who they're dealing with. Egypt's Pharaoh refused to recognize him (Exodus 5:2). The people about whom Isaiah prophesied did not recognize him (Isaiah 53:2-3). The "builders" in the psalm did not recognize him (Psalm 118:22-23; Luke 20:17). And Jesus said to the woman at the well, "If you knew ... who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water" (John 4:10). But she didn't know with whom she was dealing. And neither did the people of Nazareth.
Accordingly, Mark reports that "he could do no deed of power there." What a tragic epitaph to scrawl across the memory of Nazareth. To think that the one and only was there in their midst, and they didn't know it. And because they didn't recognize and believe, they limited what he could do in their midst.
We have seen that phenomenon before. The original generation of liberated slaves coming out of Egypt did not receive all that God had intended for them because of their lack of faith. And so, instead of living in the land of his promise, they died in the wilderness of wandering.
Mark tells us that Jesus "was amazed at their unbelief." What a sad distinction: that a people should be so altogether faithless as to be an amazement. And while Jesus was oppositely amazed by the faith of two Gentiles along the way (Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 7:1-10), the people of his own hometown amazed him for their lack of faith. We are reminded of John's grim assessment: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not" (John 1:11 KJV).
Of course, it doesn't pay for us to tsk-tsk about the people in the Bible who failed if all of our head-shaking keeps us from seeing ourselves clearly. If we have been incredulous; if we have underestimated him; if we have failed to receive him; then let the familiar failures of our predecessors awaken and correct us.
The Gospel Reading concludes with a notable contrast. While the faithless citizens of Nazareth could hamper God's work in their own community, they could not ultimately hamper God's work. After that hometown disappointment, Jesus and his disciples set out with power and purpose to do the work of the kingdom far and wide. And they do so with a conspicuous lack of tolerance for people and places that are unreceptive.
Application
In each of our three readings this week, we witness a group of people who didn't know -- people who didn't realize with whom they were dealing.
In Corinth, the people apparently did not fully recognize all that Paul was. They had become quite enamored with the self-promoting "super apostles," and in the process they had lost sight of the true greatness of Paul.
In ancient Israel, the northern tribes were latecomers to the recognition about David. For seven years, they had resisted and fought him -- either forgetting or deliberately ignoring the facts of who he had been, what he had done, and that the Lord had anointed him to be king.
And, in the most devastating instance, the people of Nazareth did not really know who Jesus was. They thought they did, to be sure, but they were altogether agnostic.
While the obtuseness of the people of first-century Corinth and post-Saul Israel hardly compares in significance to the people of Nazareth rejecting Jesus, there remains a common and troublesome theme: namely, the people of God not recognizing -- and therefore not accepting -- the work of God.
David was God's chosen man. Paul was his uniquely special instrument. And Jesus was his Son. Yet in every case, people -- God's people -- didn't seem to know or recognize.
Their sad stories serve as sober warning and exhortation to us: to set aside our misguided loyalties (such as Ishbosheth); to rise above our worldly preoccupations (such as flashy strengths); and not to limit God by what we think we already know (such as "Is not this the carpenter...?"); so that we might know the work of God among us.
Alternative Application
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10. "The Stuff of Bestsellers." At the very end of this passage, we come across a word that is of immense interest to our culture -- "for." The Old Testament writer concludes that "David became greater and greater for...."
That word, "for," you see, introduces the answer to the questions we want to ask. How did David become greater and greater? What was his secret?
We have books, articles, interviews, profiles, and infomercials devoted to precisely this word: "for." We want to discover and understand the why and the how that lie behind people who become "greater and greater." Whether the success story is a coach or an executive, a celebrity or an entrepreneur, a parent of happy and healthy children, or the pastor of a growing and active church, we want to know the secret of their success.
The matter is no mystery to the biblical writer. David became greater and greater for a single reason: "The Lord, the God of hosts, was with him."
As we noted above, the human plans and endeavors that do not coincide with God's purposes are destined to fail. And, by contrast, the great heroes of faith (such as Joshua and Caleb, David facing Goliath, Elisha at Dothan) have operated with the confidence that, because God was with them, they were destined to succeed.
"With" was the great word of reassurance to an uncertain Moses (Exodus 3:12). "With" was the difference-maker for the psalmist in "the darkest valley" (Psalm 23:4). "With" was the significant name of the baby born to a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). And "with" was the ultimate promise of Jesus to his followers (Matthew 28:20).
The world wants to know the key to success -- to becoming "greater and greater." It's all in who is with us.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 48
It is not an easy thing to grasp something greater than ourselves. With our own frailties and limitations we see, as Paul reminds us (1 Corinthians 13:9), only a part of the picture. By our own make up, we can never really grasp the totality of creation, or the vastness of the universe. And when we try to think about the one who created it all, the senses are drowned in the stormy waters of incredulity. Call it what you will, God, Yahweh, the prime mover, the name finally matters little as we stand in slack-jawed awe before this mystery, this wonder that we name as God.
This psalm attempts to sketch out some of this grandeur as it describes the response of the "assembled kings" to God's glorious city. Consider our own response to things beyond ourselves. Few, if any, can summon up the wisdom or the courage to step into things unknown, let alone the vast mystery of God's holiness. Naturally, fear comes first. Panic, trembling, and a deep incredible pain accompany the reaction to those who attend on God's glory.
In a time such as this when populations are manipulated and managed through the use of fear, this response to God is instructive. It teaches us, first, that there is a vast difference between governing authorities and God. Though kings and leaders have always tried to abscond with God's power and authority, they still tremble in the Lord's presence. It is to our own peril that we mortals forget this difference. Governments and kings may rule here on the ground, but God alone is Creator and Redeemer. Nations bristle with weapons and squander their wealth on warfare, but God alone possesses power over life and death. The learning here is to understand in our deepest self that it is to God and God alone that we owe our final allegiance.
The Second Reading has to do with moving beyond our first fearful response to God's wonder and glory. So often, we get mired down in the goo of our fear, and expend our life's energy spinning our wheels in the muck of terror. But if we can let go of fear, if we can release our death grip on our own inner terror we can stop, and "ponder" God's "steadfast love" for us.
What a thing it is to claim! That the Creator of the universe loves ... us! And yet there it is. Beyond the spectacle of glory, beyond our fearful living lies God's beautiful, inestimable love for us. Indeed, with the psalmist, this is something worth pondering.
One of the most profoundly beautiful pictures in the gospels is the moment when Jesus, suffering on the cross, prays for the forgiveness of those who were responsible for this unparalleled error. He observes about them: "They know not what they do" (Luke 23:34 KJV).
I wonder how many of those people for whom he interceded overheard his prayer. And if they did, what did they think of it? Were they even momentarily flummoxed by the sublime love of this man who, while a victim of their cruel plots, still prayed for them? Or were they offended by the suggestion that they needed to be forgiven? Indignant at the implication that they -- who had been so clever, so calculating, so effective -- were actually clueless?
From Jesus' point of view, his was a generous evaluation of his persecutors. He could have attributed to them all sorts of malevolence, injustice, spiritual blindness, and hard- heartedness. It was a charitable conclusion to say that they simply did not know.
We have a word for someone who doesn't know. Technically, the word for such a person is "agnostic" -- someone, literally, without knowledge.
That is not how the word is commonly used today, however. Rather, individuals will rather proudly claim the term for themselves. It has become a kind of theological version of being a "moderate" politically. The self-acclaimed agnostic is not claiming ignorance as much as he is saying that he is thus far unconvinced, undecided, open-minded. But our three lections for this Sunday suggest a different, more tragic picture of agnosticism -- the terrible tragedy of not knowing.
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
In the wake of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, the nation of Israel faced a leadership crisis. Not since the death of Joshua had Israel been so uncertain about whom to follow.
For most of their history, Israel's leadership had been clear. Prior to their years in Egypt, they were a large family, and so their leadership was patriarchal (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). During their centuries of slavery, their undesirable leaders were Egypt's pharaohs. During the exodus experience and wilderness wandering, their leader, Moses, had been chosen and appointed by God. And a generation later, Moses' clear successor for the next phase of Israel's history was Joshua.
After Joshua, however, Israel suffered through a period of very loosely defined leadership. The judges were ad hoc heroes, but they did not represent a centralized government, and they did not present a clear line of succession.
The last of the judges, Samuel, was arguably the strongest and most godly leader Israel had had since Joshua. But when his time was clearly waning, the people came asking for a king. While Samuel initially balked at the suggestion, the people no doubt assumed that a throne and a royal line would provide the kind of strength and stability that the nation had lacked before Samuel's day.
Saul was the first king, chosen by God and anointed by Samuel. When he and his oldest son had died in battle with the Philistines, Israel faced a kind of constitutional crisis. The crisis created a crack in the confederation of tribes, and Judah decided to go its own way. They regarded their favorite son, David, as the obvious choice for next king, and they turned to him immediately. David ruled this southern subset of Israel for seven-and-a-half years from Hebron. And then, finally, in our selected passage, the rest of the nation came calling.
After much unrest, civil war, and a failed attempt to continue the royal line of Saul in the north, the remainder of Israel came to David to make him their king, too. The people came with three expressed reasons: 1) We are your kin, your flesh and blood. 2) You've already been our de facto leader for some time, even during Saul's reign. 3) The Lord has already chosen you for the job.
It was a face-saving presentation on the part of the Israelites. They did not, for example, include among their expressed reasons the fact that the Ishbosheth experiment had failed miserably. Or the fact that David and Judah had effectively prevailed in the civil strife. And, truth be told, all three of the reasons that the people did articulate for making David their king were also true seven-and-a-half years earlier, when the tribe of Judah made the same self-evident decision.
This episode may be one more among several dozen examples in scripture of people discovering the truth that there is no point in fighting against God's plan. As the wise writer of Proverbs observed, "The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established" (Proverbs 19:21). God had already chosen David to be king: The people's alternative plans, therefore, were bound to fail.
It is perhaps noteworthy that "they anointed David king over Israel." Reminiscent of denominational debates over the issue of re-baptism, the people were doing something that had apparently already been done some years before (see 1 Samuel 16:1-13). It occurs without comment, leaving us to wonder and come to our own conclusions. Did they do an appropriately symbolic thing? Or did they presume to take upon themselves a prerogative of God, thereby failing to recognize properly what he had already done?
David solidifies his new position as king by a cleverly unifying act. Rather than remaining in Hebron, where he had been enthroned during the civil strife, he gives his administration a fresh start by conquering and relocating to a new city: Jerusalem. He builds there, and the passage ends on a note of great promise and hope. Not too long before, Israel was in a leadership crisis. Now they are entering into their golden age.
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
I've often wondered how the people in the churches I've served would fare on a sort of true/false test of biblical passages. That is, if we were to read aloud a number of unidentified quotes, would our people be able to recognize which ones came from the pages of scripture and which ones did not? I suspect, for example, that a good many church folks would say that "cleanliness is next to godliness," "actions speak louder than words," and "the Lord helps those who help themselves" are all quotes from the Bible. Meanwhile, I doubt that many would recognize the first three verses of this passage from 2 Corinthians. This is not the stuff of children's Sunday school lessons or church parlor needlepoint. It's strange and mysterious, and so it is likely unfamiliar.
The larger context is a strange disharmony between Paul and the Christians in Corinth. They have apparently become quite enamored with other leaders -- sometimes glibly referred to as "super apostles" -- and their admiration reflects a certain shallowness on their part. What we admire is always revealing, and the Corinthians' admiration apparently revealed their preoccupation with a kind, flashy spirituality and the bold claims these super apostles made about themselves.
Paul does not share their priorities. Indeed, he seeks to correct them. At the same time, he knows he can beat the super apostles at their own game, and so, reluctantly, he lays out his own credentials. Uneasy with catering to that sort of nonsense, however, he distances himself a bit by making his claims in the third person.
Paul refers to having "heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat." He does not give us any insight into the content of what he heard, but we are reminded of other instances in scripture that reflect similar experiences. Daniel, for example, was urged to keep secret the meaning of a vision that had been revealed to him (8:26), to keep the words of the book secret (12:4), and he later heard secret things that he did not understand (12:9). Likewise in the book of Revelation, John is prevented from revealing something that he had overheard (10:4). Even people who had contact with Jesus' ministry were instructed to tell no one what they had witnessed (see Mark 9:9; Luke 5:14; 8:56).
I heard two young teenage girls playfully teasing each other recently. The one had rather obviously fibbed to the other about some matter, and the second girl was calling her on it. Once she had proven the untruth, she joked, "You were lying through your little yellow teeth!"
The friend turned suddenly cool. Her feelings had been hurt. But not because she was accused of lying; rather, because her friend suggested that her teeth were yellow.
I was at once both amused and disturbed by the episode. Is it perhaps a reflection of a hopelessly superficial culture that a young woman should be more bothered by yellow teeth than by lying?
I'm suspicious that the Corinthians were similarly superficial. I wonder, as they heard this part of Paul's letter read, if they missed the point. I wonder if they became so distracted by the marvels of verses 2-4 that they missed the wisdom of verses 5-6.
One senses from both of the Corinthian epistles that the people there struggled with a flash-over-substance preoccupation. They might feel right at home, therefore, in our culture -- and perhaps also in our churches.
We remember that Paul, in the midst of his corrective discourse concerning the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians, pointed the people to the "greater gifts" and the "still more excellent way" (12:31) of love. And now, here in 2 Corinthians, he must again retrieve their attention from the fantastic to the fundamental.
Paul does not want his reputation to be based on his résumé. He is more pragmatic than that. He knows that the Spirit's influence in a person's life should yield certain apparent fruit (see Galatians 5:22-23), and so what people think of him should be the result of their own experience with him. What a magnificent perspective: that he should be judged, not based on what he has seen, but based on "what is seen in me." Not based on what mysteries he has heard, but on what has been "heard from me."
And then, following the lead of the one "who, though he was in the form of God ... emptied himself, taking the form of a slave ... (and) humbled himself" (from Philippians 2:6-8), Paul masterfully reorients the entire discussion. Having trumped the hand of those who were inordinately impressed by flashy strength, he introduces a new suit: weakness.
Let others boast of their strengths; Paul will boast of his weakness. Why? Because, as with Gideon's army so long before (see Judges 7:2), then the strength and the glory belong entirely to the Lord. And while the "super apostles" may care to draw attention to themselves, Paul's mission is to direct all attention and devotion to Christ.
Mark 6:1-13
As I drove along a little country road in Kentucky, I came into a little town that had a big welcome sign, which read: "Welcome to" (followed by the name of the town) and "Home of" (followed by the name of a certain professional basketball player). I don't know how often this hometown hero gets back to visit the people and places that knew him when, but the sign suggests to me that he gets a warm welcome when he's there.
The town of Nazareth did not take such pride in their most famous son. The local high school band didn't play, nor did the citizens plan a party or parade, when Jesus came back to his hometown. On the contrary, "they took offense at him."
Clearly, the people of first-century Nazareth did not realize who he was. The great irony of that, of course, is that they were so very certain of who he was: "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?"
Perhaps that is why "prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." In a strange place, the prophet is unknown, and so the jury is still out. The people to whom he is unknown are wide open to who or what he could be, for he could be anyone or anything.
Back home, however, the prophet is known. The jury is in. They know all about him already. Or so they think.
Here is a common mistake -- we see it repeatedly in scripture in individuals' encounters with the Lord. People do not recognize who they're dealing with. Egypt's Pharaoh refused to recognize him (Exodus 5:2). The people about whom Isaiah prophesied did not recognize him (Isaiah 53:2-3). The "builders" in the psalm did not recognize him (Psalm 118:22-23; Luke 20:17). And Jesus said to the woman at the well, "If you knew ... who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water" (John 4:10). But she didn't know with whom she was dealing. And neither did the people of Nazareth.
Accordingly, Mark reports that "he could do no deed of power there." What a tragic epitaph to scrawl across the memory of Nazareth. To think that the one and only was there in their midst, and they didn't know it. And because they didn't recognize and believe, they limited what he could do in their midst.
We have seen that phenomenon before. The original generation of liberated slaves coming out of Egypt did not receive all that God had intended for them because of their lack of faith. And so, instead of living in the land of his promise, they died in the wilderness of wandering.
Mark tells us that Jesus "was amazed at their unbelief." What a sad distinction: that a people should be so altogether faithless as to be an amazement. And while Jesus was oppositely amazed by the faith of two Gentiles along the way (Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 7:1-10), the people of his own hometown amazed him for their lack of faith. We are reminded of John's grim assessment: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not" (John 1:11 KJV).
Of course, it doesn't pay for us to tsk-tsk about the people in the Bible who failed if all of our head-shaking keeps us from seeing ourselves clearly. If we have been incredulous; if we have underestimated him; if we have failed to receive him; then let the familiar failures of our predecessors awaken and correct us.
The Gospel Reading concludes with a notable contrast. While the faithless citizens of Nazareth could hamper God's work in their own community, they could not ultimately hamper God's work. After that hometown disappointment, Jesus and his disciples set out with power and purpose to do the work of the kingdom far and wide. And they do so with a conspicuous lack of tolerance for people and places that are unreceptive.
Application
In each of our three readings this week, we witness a group of people who didn't know -- people who didn't realize with whom they were dealing.
In Corinth, the people apparently did not fully recognize all that Paul was. They had become quite enamored with the self-promoting "super apostles," and in the process they had lost sight of the true greatness of Paul.
In ancient Israel, the northern tribes were latecomers to the recognition about David. For seven years, they had resisted and fought him -- either forgetting or deliberately ignoring the facts of who he had been, what he had done, and that the Lord had anointed him to be king.
And, in the most devastating instance, the people of Nazareth did not really know who Jesus was. They thought they did, to be sure, but they were altogether agnostic.
While the obtuseness of the people of first-century Corinth and post-Saul Israel hardly compares in significance to the people of Nazareth rejecting Jesus, there remains a common and troublesome theme: namely, the people of God not recognizing -- and therefore not accepting -- the work of God.
David was God's chosen man. Paul was his uniquely special instrument. And Jesus was his Son. Yet in every case, people -- God's people -- didn't seem to know or recognize.
Their sad stories serve as sober warning and exhortation to us: to set aside our misguided loyalties (such as Ishbosheth); to rise above our worldly preoccupations (such as flashy strengths); and not to limit God by what we think we already know (such as "Is not this the carpenter...?"); so that we might know the work of God among us.
Alternative Application
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10. "The Stuff of Bestsellers." At the very end of this passage, we come across a word that is of immense interest to our culture -- "for." The Old Testament writer concludes that "David became greater and greater for...."
That word, "for," you see, introduces the answer to the questions we want to ask. How did David become greater and greater? What was his secret?
We have books, articles, interviews, profiles, and infomercials devoted to precisely this word: "for." We want to discover and understand the why and the how that lie behind people who become "greater and greater." Whether the success story is a coach or an executive, a celebrity or an entrepreneur, a parent of happy and healthy children, or the pastor of a growing and active church, we want to know the secret of their success.
The matter is no mystery to the biblical writer. David became greater and greater for a single reason: "The Lord, the God of hosts, was with him."
As we noted above, the human plans and endeavors that do not coincide with God's purposes are destined to fail. And, by contrast, the great heroes of faith (such as Joshua and Caleb, David facing Goliath, Elisha at Dothan) have operated with the confidence that, because God was with them, they were destined to succeed.
"With" was the great word of reassurance to an uncertain Moses (Exodus 3:12). "With" was the difference-maker for the psalmist in "the darkest valley" (Psalm 23:4). "With" was the significant name of the baby born to a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). And "with" was the ultimate promise of Jesus to his followers (Matthew 28:20).
The world wants to know the key to success -- to becoming "greater and greater." It's all in who is with us.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 48
It is not an easy thing to grasp something greater than ourselves. With our own frailties and limitations we see, as Paul reminds us (1 Corinthians 13:9), only a part of the picture. By our own make up, we can never really grasp the totality of creation, or the vastness of the universe. And when we try to think about the one who created it all, the senses are drowned in the stormy waters of incredulity. Call it what you will, God, Yahweh, the prime mover, the name finally matters little as we stand in slack-jawed awe before this mystery, this wonder that we name as God.
This psalm attempts to sketch out some of this grandeur as it describes the response of the "assembled kings" to God's glorious city. Consider our own response to things beyond ourselves. Few, if any, can summon up the wisdom or the courage to step into things unknown, let alone the vast mystery of God's holiness. Naturally, fear comes first. Panic, trembling, and a deep incredible pain accompany the reaction to those who attend on God's glory.
In a time such as this when populations are manipulated and managed through the use of fear, this response to God is instructive. It teaches us, first, that there is a vast difference between governing authorities and God. Though kings and leaders have always tried to abscond with God's power and authority, they still tremble in the Lord's presence. It is to our own peril that we mortals forget this difference. Governments and kings may rule here on the ground, but God alone is Creator and Redeemer. Nations bristle with weapons and squander their wealth on warfare, but God alone possesses power over life and death. The learning here is to understand in our deepest self that it is to God and God alone that we owe our final allegiance.
The Second Reading has to do with moving beyond our first fearful response to God's wonder and glory. So often, we get mired down in the goo of our fear, and expend our life's energy spinning our wheels in the muck of terror. But if we can let go of fear, if we can release our death grip on our own inner terror we can stop, and "ponder" God's "steadfast love" for us.
What a thing it is to claim! That the Creator of the universe loves ... us! And yet there it is. Beyond the spectacle of glory, beyond our fearful living lies God's beautiful, inestimable love for us. Indeed, with the psalmist, this is something worth pondering.
