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July 6, 2003; Proper 9, Year B
    The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector

During my years in seminary, and even for a while after I was ordained, I had a dream of returning to my home parish of St. James Episcopal Church in Goshen, Indiana, to be their rector.  I thought that it would be wonderful to return home to be a pastor to my family and friends who were in Goshen.  It was in the several trips that I made home during the first years of my ministry that I began to realize that people remembered me as I was, and many seemed to have a difficult time accepting that I was not the same Harold that they had know before.  (An example of this is that at my fifth High School reunion I was a policeman, at my tenth High School reunion I was a detective, and at my fifteenth High School reunion I was a priest.  No one would believe me that I had gone to seminary and been ordained a priest, my former classmates thought that I was working undercover.)  I realized from my contact with people in my hometown, people who had watched me grow up and those I had grown up with, that the dream of returning home was not very practical.  Many of them still remembered me the way I was, which was not necessarily the icon of a boy or young man who had contemplated entering the priesthood, and could not believe that I had become a priest.

There is an unwritten rule in ministry that says a preacher should never return to the church of his or her childhood to be the pastor.  No one really seems to know where this advice came from, but it is quite possible that it originated from the incident reported in the Gospel reading from Mark this morning.

Jesus’ family and friends remembered him as he was, and could not, or would not, see him any differently when he returned to Nazareth after being gone for some time.  Many of us have had the same type of experience.  It might have happened at a family reunion, a high school class reunion, or just returning to the neighborhood where we grew up.  People who knew us back then often have a difficult time really seeing and accepting us for who we are today.

One of the most difficult things to overcome in life is the way that other people type or categorize us.  It is difficult because people have formed their opinions, which they believe are accurate, and generally they will not change their opinions until they are shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that what they believed about someone is not correct.  An obstacle that gets in the way of changing our opinion about someone is our willingness to listen and see that someone has changed.

Bishop Michael Marshall, a noted preacher and writer says in his book A Change of Heart, “The human problem, according to the Bible’s diagnosis, is that man is in-sensitive – apathetic – and so in that way all his senses are deformed.   We are blind, we are deaf, we are lame.”[1] 

I don’t believe that Jesus expected rejection when he returned home.  These were good people, people who knew him, and had heard about the good things he was doing.  Certainly they would welcome him and listen to his words of wisdom.  What a surprise he got!  They questioned what he said and who he claimed to be.  They could not see beyond their memories.  This Jesus is a carpenter, not a rabbi or priest, let alone the messiah.

It has occurred to me that we might possibly find ourselves in the same shoes as the people of Nazareth.  Many of us have known Jesus most of our lives – having grown up with stories about him.  We have become familiar with Jesus.  Yet who is the Jesus that we have become familiar with?  Is he the innocent baby Jesus of the Christmas story?  Jesus the carpenter boy?  Jesus the teacher, or Jesus the Good Shepherd?  Does he have authority in our lives, or has he become our friend, who we can say hello to whenever we feel like it?

We live in a world, even in a religion, where people pick and choose what they want believe about God and Jesus.  The danger in this is that Jesus is no longer our Lord and Savior, the one to believe in and follow, but rather someone we listen to when we feel like it.  Is our Jesus someone who has advice for most situations that we encounter, but we don’t always have to take it.  Is he someone who has something to offer, but if we feel that it cost too much, then we will wait for it to go on sale?

We are not really blind, deaf, or lame.  We just focus on what we want to see and hear.  I pray the we are not be like the people of Nazareth, unwilling to listen to the words of Jesus as them come to us even today, thereby limiting what Jesus, the Christ, can do in our midst.

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