Amazing unbelief!

Matthew 13: 54-58; Mark 6: 1-6

Mark 6:6a

⁶And he was amazed at their unbelief. 

In today’s reading Jesus is back home in Nazareth for the last time. Jesus was the famous son of a local couple and brother to well-known young people around the town. After a busy time around Galilee being home in familiar places and among familiar people should have been a time of rest, building up and preparation for the rest of the work that is ahead.  However it was not to work out that way. The people of Nazareth and especially those who attended the local synagogue could not accept that someone who shared their humble circumstances, belonged to a family that was rumoured about and who earned his living in a modest occupation could be the fulfilment of the promises of God, for liberation and freedom from all the social, economic, political and personal forces that raged against them. The people of Nazareth internalised and acted out the social conditioning that they were exposed to by the powerful forces at work in their culture. They accepted the plethora of prejudiced beliefs articulated about them. They accepted the narrative that people like them could not achieve great things; they accepted their allocated part in the story of life that their family origins defined and mapped out their future and level of achievement; they accepted what they have been told about themselves: socially, psychologically and physically. Any other telling of the story of life was rejected in favour of the contemporary dominant social and economic narrative. They were victims of the hegemony of ideas and power exercised by the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots and don’t forget Rome.   

When Jesus challenged these assumptions He was rejected by them time and time again. Jesus and His teachings were not just rejected by the powerful and vested interests of His culture but by the ordinary people of His own social class and those He came to liberate. Jesus was amazed that they didn’t get the story He came to tell; that a different world was not just possible but that it had arrived. The Kingdom of peace has arrived; it’s fulfilled! It is a challenge to us to today ask ourselves the question about what story of life we are willing to participate in. Is it the dominant narrative of our culture with its religious and faith commitment to secularism and socio-economic determinism? Do we claim to be disciples of Jesus yet live by other principles, priorities and ethics? Do we accept our place and what is said about us by the powerful social and economic forces at work in our culture and turn our back on the practical expression of the teachings of Jesus? Remember Luke 4? Jesus read and then reflected:

¹⁸ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free, 
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ 
²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ 

We are called by Jesus to be participants in the practice of good news to the: poor, the captives of oppressive discourses of power, those blind to the possibilities of the teachings of Jesus and oppressed by the practices of dominant ideas that there is no alternative to the current social, political, economic and psychological status quo. Jesus came and fulfilled the promise of a new Kingdom that is practical, achievable and beneficial to all of us who share a common humanity and are prepared to accept and apply the teachings of Jesus.