MARKAN MEDITATIONS

Meditations in the Gospel of St.Mark

St. Mark 6:1-6

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THESE VERSES tell the story of how Jesus was received in his own home town where he had grown up, and was well known as the eldest son of Joseph, the carpenter, and Mary. This is a very sad story but it does help to open our understanding into the true condition of human nature as we are born into this world.

When Jesus got to his home town, as was the compulsion of his mind and heart, on the Sabbath he engaged in teaching in the synagogue. In the Jewish religious culture, there was always a slot in the worship for people to engage in teaching if they had some training or something to offer of spiritual worth. As he proceeded to teach, the people of his own town were arrested by his discourse. We are told that they were amazed at his teaching. His words had an impact on them. They felt the power in his teaching. They felt how profoundly different and better was Jesus' teaching to what they were used to in the synagogue. It had profound and penetrating truth, and it reached deeply into their minds and hearts.

Instead of seeing the value of the teaching Jesus was giving them, and seeking to benefit by it, the people began to carp and criticise. Firstly they asked how he came by his wisdom. By this ploy they avoided the application of his words. Doubt and criticism always armours the hearer from hearing and of being blessed. Then they remembered his humble and poor beginnings, and they despised him, and felt it beneath them to heed his words, let alone listen to them.

Their minds acknowledged that Jesus' teaching was good and from God, but their sinful pride would not let them submit to this teaching. They were not going to demean themselves by receiving and believing the words of the son of the most poor and ordinary family. It was their pride which caused them to reject Jesus.

Pride is the very seed of sin within the human heart. It was pride that was Adam's downfall, when he obeyed the devil rather than God. Pride, in essence, is the expression of the response to the devil's seduction of Adam, when he seduced Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil by implying that then Adam would be like God. If sinless Adam in paradise could be seduced by the pride of being greater than God created him, then how much more fallen human beings like ourselves, who have the seeds of this desire to be above others. It is the characteristic of pride that we don't like to acknowledge people are better than ourselves, specially in the case of Jesus in his home town, where the people had always considered themselves better than Jesus and his family.

The tragedy of this inherent pride shut these people from the blessing Jesus was prepared to bestow on them. When we are told here that Jesus could not do any miracles there, this is not to suggest that Jesus was impotent, or made impotent by the unbelief of the people. Rather it is expressing the fact that although Jesus was ready to do miracles among them, they didn't want him to because it would damage their pride and feeling of superiority over Jesus. Thus these people were rejecting the blessing, and Jesus was not prepared to coerce them with blessings they hated to receive.

We are told that Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. Jesus was plainly amazed at the sinful bondage of the will, that rather than lose their superiority, they were prepared to refuse all belief in the power and deity of the Lord.

This problem of inherent pride is not confined to the high and learned. It can be seen just as commonly amongst those who have little to be proud of. It is the universal plague of the evil one on all born of Adam's seed. It points to the desperate need we all have for the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. The work to convict us of our sin, and cause us to become poor in spirit, rather than proud in spirit. Just as these people in Jesus' home town missed the saving grace they could have received from Jesus, so, unless we are brought low and humbled before God, we will never seek the Saviour, but pride ourselves that we can save ourselves, and make ourselves acceptable to God, by our own efforts and good works.