“Putting out the welcome mat”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Mark 6:1-13 (Forward, p. 52) CEV p. 1033

The question of ‘welcome’ is a many layered and tangled one. A story is told of a somewhat picky ‘welcomer’ who kept her outdoor hat on a peg by her front door. If the doorbell rang, she would put on the hat before answering the door. If the person she found standing there was someone she wanted to see, she would exclaim, “How lucky you are to come just now as I just got in!” But if the person was unwelcome, she’d explain, “Oh, I’m sorry. You have come at a decidedly inopportune time. I was just heading out.” Of course, we will never know what her motives were or what made her decided one way or the other, which only goes to show just how complicated this question of ‘welcome’ actually is.

It is a question that comes up front and center in the two sections of today’s reading. The people of Nazareth were decidedly unwelcoming in their treatment of Jesus. Now, just why this is so, is indeed somewhat puzzling. They had heard of His power and His wisdom from nearby communities, so why were they so hostile. One explanation is that they thought that they already knew this ‘hometown boy’ so well that they thought they knew what to expect. They thought no better of Him, no different of Him, than what they had seen and experienced of Him during His childhood and early adulthood. Or, maybe they were offended by what they considered to be a ‘putting on airs’, trying to be something that He wasn’t. He was a carpenter, no more and no less, and so being a teacher and healer wasn’t part of what He was ‘cut out’ to be, wasn’t part of His family heritage. Whatever the reason, they were not only amazed by Him, but also offended and unhappy, which meant that their faith in Him was rather meager. As a consequence, Jesus was able to do very few miracles there.

In the case of the sending out of the Twelve, the question of welcome was also something very important. But here the disciples seem to get a better reception, a more fervent welcome, than even Jesus, than what Jesus received in His hometown! The disciples were to stay put and enjoy their food and hospitality wherever they were invited in. But, if they were rejected, they were to treat the householder and the townspeople as if they were heathens and rejects. (That’s what the shaking of the dust from off their feet was all about.) (It is interesting to note that Jesus didn’t do this with His own fellow villagers, while the disciples were told to do so, presumably as an acted-out parable telling them just how God viewed them!)

To me, this poses to two questions. First off, just how welcoming are we, you and I, to Jesus? I mean, how welcoming are we of Him in terms of our time, our priorities, our activities? How much ‘room’ do we give Him, time wise, in our lives? And how much ‘room’ do we give Him in terms of allowing Him to work unimpeded?

And what about His servants, His people? I doubt that the initial twelve that Jesus sent out had identifying badges like the Mormon missionaries do, or that they were carrying very identifiable literature as the Jehovah Witnesses do. I suspect that they were pretty ordinary, even nondescript, and yet even so, Jesus expected people to welcome them into their homes and into their communities. So, what about us? Do we always recognize God’s people when they show up in our church or at our door or in the community? But even more so, how do we know whether God has not sent them, Christian or not? I remember a saying of Mother Teresa, “Lord, help me to recognize You even in your humblest disguise.” We just never know, so like Nazareth and like the towns and villages that the Twelve visited, we should always be open to whomever God sends our way. Amen.

Forward notes: “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house’” (verse 6)

“Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, reminds us that people from our past often remember us as we were when they knew us. They hold us to their perceptions of who we used to be, not allowing for growth and change in our ideas or ideals.

“The people in Jesus’s hometown were incredulous when they heard him teach. This could not be the ‘the carpenter, the son of Mary.’ They had their fixed notions of who Jesus was when he returned home.

“Jesus’s ministry included teaching and performing miracles. It changed him. When he did this in his hometown, his neighbors would have nothing of it! ‘Is not this the carpenter?’

“Mark tells us that Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. Was he referring to their disbelief in his teachings and miracles? Or was he referring to their inability to understand that God could use a carpenter to bring about God’s kingdom?

“If we grow, we change. We do well to remember that others do, too.”

Moving Forward: “Pray for the courage to be open to new ideas.”