This is not an uncommon thing to happen: I say something, and the other person thinks I’m criticizing them, even though that wasn’t at all what I had in mind. You know what I mean, don’t you? I feel the need to ask, because I can’t be sure. I presume you’re familiar with the situation where you’re talking to a person who appears to be of good hearing and sound mind, as well as reasonably attentive, but he or she still doesn’t seem to hear you. You make eye contact, you speak slowly and clearly, and without a trace of condescension (as far as you can tell), using common English, but you’re not getting through to them. It’s incredibly frustrating. We just don’t understand each other as well as we think we could or should.
Our hearing develops while we’re still in the womb, and we learn to talk and pay attention to speech in the first years of our life, but we all know that speaking and listening is not just a matter of having the right vocabulary and good hearing. Marriage and family counselors are known to spend much of their time coaching their clients how to speak and listen.
The Bible includes a great number of sayings and writings of prophets who saw very clearly what was going on in their day, and they spoke, they declared, they urged and warned – but who was listening? Often their pronouncements were collected a generation later by people who wondered how they or their parents could have missed the urgent truth. God said to Ezekiel, “I’m sending you to the Israelites, a rebellious people. I’m sending you to their hardheaded and hardhearted descendants, and you will say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ You’ll speak my words to them whether they listen or whether they refuse. You aren’t being sent to a people whose language and speech are difficult and obscure but to the house of Israel – they will refuse to listen to you because they refuse to listen to me.”[1]
The prophets knew that listening is not only determined by language and speech, but by such curious human traits as hardheadedness or hardheartedness. “Whether they listen or whether they refuse,” the heavenly voice said to Ezekiel, “they will know that a prophet has been among them.”[2] Has been – the belated knowledge comes with a measure of regret, but it can yet soften our hardheaded and hardhearted inclinations. The belated knowledge can open our stubborn hearts at least for the desire to listen to each other more attentively.
When Jesus began his ministry, he left his home in Nazareth and went to Capernaum on the shore of the big lake. The people in Capernaum, Mark tells us, were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority.[3] He continued to teach and heal in the villages of Galilee, and word about him spread. His family wasn’t thrilled, though. They were embarrassed; there was talk in the village; some were heard saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”[4] The people who had known him all his life didn’t know what to make of his sudden urge to leave home and walk all over Galilee, talking about repentance and the reign of God.
His family tried to convince him to come home, but once, when people told him that his mother and his brothers were outside, asking for him, Jesus replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”[5] Now that is a beautiful thing to hear for all those who sit around Jesus, but imagine what a harsh word that was for his mother or his siblings.
So eventually Jesus came back to his hometown, Mark tells us, and when the sabbath came he went to the synagogue and began to teach. And again, people were astounded. But it wasn’t the kind of wonder that erupted in Capernaum and elsewhere; it was a mix of bewilderment and outrage. Where did he get all this? What is the source of his power? Who does he think he is? Nothing he said and did in his hometown was any different from what he had done elsewhere, but the outcome was the exact opposite: no miracles and wonders, no marvelous signs of the nearness of God’s reign, only upset and angry people.
Jesus himself was amazed at their unbelief, Mark tells us; and the disciples, I imagine, were pretty puzzled as well, wondering what was going on. They had watched him silence demons and drive them out. They had been there when he stilled the storm, commanding the wind and the waves, and they obeyed![6] But in this little town, it was like his words hit the walls and fell to the ground. The contrast couldn’t be more striking.
“Prophets are not without honor,” he said, “except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Mark tells us that folks in Nazareth didn’t grasp who he was. It would be easy for us to dismiss them as hardheaded or hardhearted – but only if we can’t see ourselves in their shoes. “Isn’t this Mary’s boy who used to work in construction?” they said.
There’s a Jewish text from the 2nd century BC called Sirach, and it sheds a little light on how people then could praise manual laborers and, at the same time, remind them not to think or act above their station. “Scholars must have time to study, if they are going to be wise,” it says there; “they must be relieved of other responsibilities.” And then it continues,
How can a farm hand gain knowledge, when his only ambition is to drive the oxen and make them work, when all he knows to talk about is livestock? He takes great pains to plow a straight furrow and will work far into the night to feed the animals. It is the same with the artist and the craftsman, … the blacksmith … [and] the potter … All of these people are skilled with their hands, each of them an expert at his own craft. Without such people there could be no cities … [But] these people are not sought out to serve on the public councils, and they never attain positions of great importance. They do not serve as judges, and they do not understand legal matters. They have no education and are not known for their wisdom. You never hear them quoting proverbs.[7]
“Isn’t this Mary’s boy who used to work in construction?” folks in Nazareth said. “We know you, Jesus. We know your family. We’ve known you since you were a little boy – who are you to come here quoting proverbs and teaching in parables and talking about the kingdom of God?” It was inconceivable to them that God could be at work in a man they knew so well, a man they had practically known all his life. And so they didn’t bring their sick for healing. They didn’t bring their children for his blessing. They didn’t come to hear his teaching. “Who does he think he is?” They didn’t expect anything, and they were not disappointed.
Jesus could do no deed of power there, Mark tells us. A miracle, the story suggests, is like the tango: it takes two. One who does the deed of power and another who is open to it. Ann Lamott wrote about her step into a life of faith, “I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”[8] But people can also look at a stand of redwoods, and all they see is lumber. Mark’s Nazareth scene suggests that for deeds of power and signs of the nearness of God’s reign to become manifest, it takes at least one who is open to receive what is being done and said. And without that kind of receptivity the wonders cease.
Communities where everyone knows everyone else feel comfortable and safe; but for those who look at life from angles that aren’t defined by what the neighbors might think, life in Mayberry can be suffocating. Small communities have lots of unwritten rules about how things are done properly, and that’s why they can be hardest on their most creative people. If anyone has an idea that breaks the mold, the first response is not, “Wow, keep talking!” but, “Who does she think she is?”
Churches, of course, often function just like small communities, and I wonder how many times we stifle the wisdom and power of God in our midst, and we don’t even notice. There’s a crucial difference between having known Jesus all your life and listening to Jesus now. And Mark’s story suggests that it might well be the difference between “no deed of power here” and “it was a time of miracles and wonders.”
Between the lines of his story, Mark says to us, “People who have never seen Jesus face to face know him better than his own family and kin because they believe that God is speaking and acting through him.” Perhaps we all secretly wait for a god who pops onto the scene like Fourth of July fireworks, and so we miss the God who is so incredibly everyday human.
But once we perceive the presence of God in Jesus, once we see him as the embodiment of God’s love, and hear God’s voice and word through him, deeds of power begin to happen. Acts of mercy. Works of compassion. Miracles of understanding. Ripples of forgiveness.
And when we begin to believe that God is not too big to meet us in each other, we’re ready to be sent. Jesus tells the Twelve to take nothing for the journey, but to travel light. On the kingdom trail, it’s not about the gear; never has been. It’s always been about trusting the power of the one who calls and sends. It’s all about the wondrous power we allow to become manifest when we receive the word of God in Jesus with open hearts. It’s incredibly everyday human, and it’s astounding.
[1] See Ezekiel 2:1-7
[2] Ezekiel 2:5
[3] Mark 1:21-22
[4] Mark 3:22
[5] Mark 3:32-35
[6] Mark 1:27; 4:41
[7] Sirach 38:24-34 (GNT)
[8] Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further thoughts on faith (New York: Riverhead, 2006), 296.