Todd sent me a U-Tube video this week that is a spoof on churches. It’s an ad for a church called “Me-Church” and the slogan is “Where it’s all about you.” It starts out with a woman in an office who looks at the camera and says “I lead a really busy work week and when Sunday rolls around…I’m tired. How about a church service that starts when I’m ready?” Then the announcer comes on and says: “Can do. When you come, we begin!”

Next there’s a young couple with a small baby. The husband says “This little guy plays by his own rules. We want a church service where, if he starts screaming, we’re not the bad guy.” Announcer? “Say no more. If your baby’s screaming, you stay seated. Those around you can leave!” It gets way more ridiculous from there. The very unsubtle message is: being in the community of faith, being a Christian is not all about us, or having our needs met. Jesus is in the business of changing the world, and if we’re going to follow Him as this gospel of Mark is calling us to each week, we’ll be about that work as well.

Our text this morning reads like part of a training seminar that Jesus is offering his followers. There are two parts to the story, and I want you to listen for them as we read:

• the first part deals with things that are barriers to faith- things that keep us from seeing what God is doing, and
• the second part deals with things that that are encouragements to faith- things that help us follow.

Reading: Mark 6:1-13

So Jesus goes to his hometown, which Mark has already told us is Nazareth, accompanied by his disciples. Now, in the chapters leading up to this, Jesus has been about some pretty amazing things. He has shown himself to be Lord: Lord over nature by stilling a storm and healing those afflicted with disease, Lord over the spirit by casting out demons, and even Lord over death itself in raising a little girl.

And a number of times, as people come into contact with him, the gospel writer Mark has observed: “And they were overcome with amazement.” It’s happened time and again. “They were filled with amazement.” Even Jesus’ closest friends and followers have found themselves asking the question – “Wait a minute- who is this guy?”

But now Jesus is back home. And as he begins to minister there in his hometown, he starts in a very traditional, very appropriate way - he goes to teach in the synagogue and at first it seems to be going really well: “Many were astounded…they said “where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands?”

But very quickly, almost without a word in the text, everything changes. “Wait a minute! What are we saying? We know this guy, he’s someone just like us! Mary is his mom, his brothers and sisters all live in our midst, he grew up here.” It can’t be anything special, because if God was doing something special it would look different. They knew. They could only see what they expected, which was a barrier to seeing what God was doing.

And so, it says, they took offense at him. This word is a really interesting one. The root word is the word we get “scandal” from. Took offense, scandal, scandalized by, stumble, stumbling block. They all come from the same word. The passage Kelly read from I Corinthians said “…we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Mark uses this word eight times, and every single time it is in the sense of something that obstructs a person from coming to faith, or following Jesus.

Up to this point it has always been the people around Jesus who have been amazed, but now it is Jesus who is amazed. He is amazed at people’s unbelief. Not their intellectual assent, but their inability to trust. It sort of flips it on its ear a little bit, doesn’t it? We’re used to telling God what’s on our mind. But here’s a glimpse into Jesus’ mind. Jesus looks at the people around him- hometown, kin and own household, and thinks: “Wow, I can’t believe it. After all this, all these things, they can’t see what God is doing. That is amazing.” They stumbled over Jesus.

Our culture is really stumbling over Jesus right now. They don’t know what to do with him. They’d like to put him in a box that says “a good teacher,” but they have to skip over lots of uncomfortable things that Jesus said about himself: “I and the father are one,” “I am the resurrection and the life,” and “no one comes to the Father but through me.”

Our culture would like to call Jesus “a religious leader who was unfortunately martyred,” but they have to skip over all the places where Jesus talked about exactly how and why he would die- so that others might truly live.

Our culture is in this funny place where it’s stumbling over Jesus. Oh, running hard after spirituality- whatever that is, exactly- and listening to everything from meditation to self-empowerment to reincarnation to scientology to universalism to secular humanism, all of which seem to be readily discussed in the marketplace and in schools…but not Jesus. Our culture is stumbling over Him. Takes offense at him. Too close to home, maybe.

But it’s not just our culture. It’s us, we, the church. The folks in Nazareth were the ones who knew Jesus the best! And we’re the ones who now claim to know the most about Jesus, to be the closest to him…and we stumble. Would Jesus look at us and say “Wow, after all this time, all these things, you don’t believe or trust…that is amazing.” What are some barriers, stumbling blocks, that keep us from seeing God?

One is: we don’t recognize our own need. They sure didn’t seem to in Nazareth. Or at least we won’t admit it. Last week with Margie we read the stories of Jairus and his daughter, and the woman with the chronic bleeding. They were both people who were badly in need, they recognized it and part of their faith was just in dragging themselves to Jesus. It was life and death. Faith grows when we recognize our need. And when we don’t recognize our own need, it becomes very difficult to see the needs of those around us.

A second stumbling block: we think we know it all. “I’ve been a Christian 5 or 10 or 40 years, I know how God acts.” We know it can only look like this. The folks in Nazareth may not have known what it would look like for God to show up, but they knew what it didn’t look like. It didn’t look like God appearing in someone they knew, or in a human being from their midst. They knew God’s Messiah would look like something else.

Maybe we think God will only work healing in medicine, not miracles. Or in miracles, not medicine. Maybe we think God will only work in logic, not emotions. Or in emotions, not rationality. Maybe we think God will only work in charismatic gifts. Or never works in the gifts. As long as we insist that God can only do certain things, we limit God. It is our unbelief that makes Jesus go “Wow, really?”

The second part of this story presents some antidotes to those barriers. What helps us to see more of what God is doing/wants to do? Well, interestingly enough, Jesus sends the twelve out on a mission trip. They have been with him, watched him, listened to him, been taught by him and now he sends them out. It would seem to be something of a strange move, one I would never have agreed with. These twelve have not come across like anywhere near ready so far in this gospel story.

They are not the best candidates for missions by any stretch of the imagination. Nor are they given much. They are going out without their faith solidified, their finances planned or their function fully resolved. There’s not much of a job description, yet Jesus sends them out with almost no supplies or “plan B.” No extra bread, bag, money. Take a staff, wear sandals, one coat.

This is not how I like to travel. It’s certainly not how we would send out a high school mission trip, or a team to another country, is it?

So why is this such good training for followers of Jesus? A couple words are important here:

1. Obedience. Scott Gronholz showed me a video clip this week (must be my week for videos). Do you guys watch “The Office?” The clip showed Steve Carell (Michael on the show) and Dwight driving down the road in a rental car. Michael is driving, and they clearly don’t know where they are going. They are lost. BUT…they have a GPS, a Global Positioning System device, the kind with the audible voice.

The voice tells them to go right, they go right, it looks like a good move and they’re driving down the highway. But then the voice says “Turn right now.” Now, off to the right is a small pasture and a large lake. Dwight says “not here, it means further up the road,” but the little voice keeps saying “Turn right,” Michael says “It’s saying turn right, it’s probably a shortcut!,” Dwight starts yelling, Michael turns right and of course they drive directly into the lake! Steve just had to obey that little voice.

We don’t like the word “obedience” much these days. But it’s a question of who you’re going to obey. Jesus called these twelve and sent them out. They were committed to him, he told them where to go and what to do. Obedience. Just because we don’t like the word doesn’t mean we throw it out. If we are going to follow Jesus, we say “yes” to obeying. Not always because it makes the most sense to us, not always because we see the whole picture, but because we acknowledge that He knows far more than we do and we have said yes to following and we trust he won’t take us into the lake.

Every time I meet with a couple for premarital counseling, one of the first things we talk about is I ask them to commit to NOT being sexually intimate during engagement. I don’t ask them to do this because I think sex is bad (it’s not) or because I think it is easy for a couple to abstain (it’s clearly not). But first and foremost, it is something that God asks of us. Every single time that a sexual relationship is encouraged in scripture, it is ONLY in the context of a committed, long-term, faithful marriage. It’s the way God designed us, and designed marriage. So I ask the couple to commit to this out of obedience to God.

Now, we also talk about why this makes such good sense, because it does. We talk about engagement being a time to get to know one another on various levels- psychological, social, spiritual, mental, and how sex has this way of overpowering all those other learning opportunities. So it does make sense. But it starts with saying “yes” to living obediently to God.

Jesus sends these twelve out. I know they aren’t real confident with what they are to be doing, where their meals will come from, what they are supposed to do, in fact

I ‘m sure they’re scared to death and I doubt if they see the big picture very well, and they probably have their doubts. But Jesus sends them out and they obey. They go. They trust him. When we are obedient, we put ourselves in position to hear and see God at work.

2. Risk. The twelve risk being made fun of. Risk starving. Risk the wrath of people who don’t like what they’re doing. They’re preaching, they’re healing, they are way, way out of their comfort zone.

I met a friend last week from our years in Minnesota. He’s about my age, a businessman, salesmen, in town for a convention. When we were in Minnesota he was very young in his faith, but it’s clear that in the years we’ve been gone, he has had a wonderfully deepening relationship with Jesus. We had a good time catching up over coffee. Then he said “You know, Dan, tonight I’m meeting a friend from college days. We used to party just a ton, just a ton- and I’ve met Jesus and moved on, but he’s still into the same things. I’m scared of explaining to him that my life is different.”

We had a great talk. Talked through what that conversation might look like, some ideas on how to approach it, prayed together there in Starbucks. But you know what? My friend was taking a big risk. Risk being made fun of, risk feeling foolish. They ended up having a great conversation. But it was risky. Maybe that wouldn’t feel risky for you, but something else would. Risk causes us to depend on God.

So…barriers to belief from the Nazareth story: not recognizing/ admitting our need, and thinking we know it all limits God. And things that help us believe from this story- being willing to obey, and to take risks.

Now, I have to tell you. I had a pretty intense week last week. Leading a very intense meeting with someone whose career is in jeopardy. Being with a family whose mom just died suddenly, and doing a memorial service. Visiting with someone for the first time who is in his forties, is in the hospital and who could easily die soon. And he’s scared, really scared and he’s cautiously looking for God for the first time.

Some of those conversations made me realize again that the things we talk about here in worship, from scripture: our need for Christ, trusting him, allowing him to do new things, following him without all the answers…these things matter. They matter hugely. Life and death.

It’s really not about finding a church service that starts when you do, is it? It’s really not about whether we enjoyed the band or the organ, whether Dan had a decent sermon or not. It’s not about getting an inner tranquility. It’s not about an outreach program. It’s about life, really living and being available to the God who wants to change the world. Close to home, and far away. And who for some crazy reason, wants to use us to do that. Let’s pray.