Pastor Ralph Douglas West - The Peril Of Missing Jesus | Mark 6:1-6

0:09 20 minutes. Mark chapter 6 beginning at verse 1. Thank you for all of our worshipers who have led us. We praise God for your leadership today. Mark 6 beginning at verse 1 Jesus left there and went to his hometown accompanied by his disciples when the Sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue and many who heard him were amazed where did this man get these things they asked what's this wisdom that he has has it been given to him what are these remarkable miracles he's performing isn't this the carpenter isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon aren't his sisters here with us and they took offense at him.

1:46 Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his own town among his relatives and in his own home.

2:07 He could not do any miracles there except lay his hands on a few sick people and healed them. He was amazed at their lack of faith. This is the word of God. You may be seated. The peril of missing Jesus. That's what I want to tag this text.

2:34 The peril of missing Jesus. Don't miss Jesus in the overwhelmingly places of familiarity. This happened in the 1980s. The former owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Clint Murchison Jr., went into the North Dallas offices to see Tex Schramm. he walked to the reception desk, a young lady that was working in the administrative offices of the Dallas Cowboys asked how she could assist him. He said, I want to see Tex.

3:23 And she curtly looked and responded and said, well, you can't see him. Do you have an appointment with him? He said, no, I don't need one. She said, well, who are you? She said, he said, I own the joint. you can be in the presence of familiarity. You could be in the presence of the exceptional and over-familiarity can cloud your vision. That's what this text that we've read together really points to in verses one through six is the peril of over-familiarity. That you could miss Jesus in the places where you ought to know him the most. You can come to a place like this.

4:19 The church and miss Jesus. You can miss him at home. You can miss him at work. You can miss him in a conversation in the everyday moments of life. In the 16th century, there was a monk known as Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite. His biographer has remembered him and almost every Christian since then to now who involved themselves in learning how to pray or want to form their spirituality knows that name, Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence was not a priest He belonged to the Carmelite order And he was known for these words He learned how to practice The presence of God You would assume that if he's in an order Then he performed that practice Maybe in a chapel No his station was in the kitchen washing dishes.

5:29 And washing dishes he learned how to practice the presence of God. When I say this morning I don't have time to elaborate on that. But stretch your imagination and think of the different places or times that you have missed God in an ordinary space because of your over-familiarity with who Jesus Christ is. This text, again, is tailored to teach us one thing, that Christ came veiled in the unexpected. That's the only thing I have to say today.

6:10 By way of emphasis, that Christ comes to us, but many times he veils himself in the unexpected. In verse 1, he left there and went to his hometown. Those of you that read poetry or write it, you know that poetry is the one genre where every single word stands for something. For those of you that have been reading poetry and you say, I just don't get it. Remember this, every word is there for something. Read it out loud.

6:51 And Mark writes like a poet, he left there, Capernaum, and went home, Nazareth. Jesus, among men's savior, his role on earth, he was a preacher. And Capernaum was a place of popularity. No preacher leaves the popular place to go to obscurity. I'm here to tell you. Capernaum is where he does his work his ministry, his headquarters is there this is where you remember him on one side of the lake going into the home of Peter's family and calling disciples and they're following him and he's gaining momentum at this point as the most popular charismatic religious leader on the planet wherever he goes people crowd around him.

7:52 And he's leaving that to go to Nazareth. Can you find it on the map? Even he had to ask, can anything good come out of Nazareth? It's the equivalent as you read the life of Martin Luther King Jr. When you started his life in Montgomery, he's so popular. But after 1963 and the march on Washington Fighting for workers' compensation for people of poverty His message changed And the day everybody celebrate Martin Luther King Everybody marched with him But it wasn't that many people He had left Capernaum to go to Nazareth as long as he was in Capernaum as long as he kept the message about rights civil rights that's a needed message but that's not a threatening message but when you start talking about poverty you got to talk about economy when you talk about the military industrial complex you start talking about money and then when you wrap that around racism and he called it the triple evils of America. You are asking for trouble. And all them people that followed him down in the South, left him in Chicago, left him in Los Angeles, and booed him in New York.

9:32 He left Capernaum, popularity, went to Nazareth, where things can get tough down at home. Jesus hadn't been home in a long time. He's in his 30s and he hadn't been there since then. They remembered exactly who he was. And so he had gone back on the Sabbath.

9:58 Have I ever told you why I love Sabbath so much? Have I ever told you? Probably haven't. I keep it pretty close to me. Why Sunday means so much. I hear people, well, he's a preacher. That's not it. The Ten Commandments now? No. That shapes it. That gives content why Sunday means so much to me. Some of you heard me say growing up in my mother's home how many times over the years in that house I moved. And she moved more after that after I had gone away to school. I can remember growing up on Pick Fair next to Isaac Elementary. My father and mother separated To Lavender Street Then to Wayne And back to Lavender Then to Los Angeles I address changed so much I can't remember any of those addresses I do remember one address Because my mother stayed there I think for the longest time And that was after I had gone to school 7600 East Houston Road Apartment 70 I remember that Because it's in so many of my books I was a college student at that time The reason why the church means so much to me Is not because of the pastor And I love my pastor He was a wonderful preacher Or the choir Betsy Moore led that And I enjoyed that so much I can hear in my ear on Sunday sometimes Leading the choir He abides, he abides, he abides with me of Brother McIntosh, who was the deacon who led morning worship at 7.15 a.m.

11:46 at our church. The reason I fell in love with the church is because it was the one address that never changed. when everything else was unstable.

12:06 3215 Lounge Avenue, that was the one place that I knew that I could go to and it was in the words of Robert Frost that when you go there, back to home, it's the one place where they got to take you in. Jesus had left there Capernaum gone to Nazareth on a Sabbath and he stood up to teach just trust me to say that he taught a lot of lessons there he's reflecting probably on the sermon on the mountain Matthew or the sermon on the plain in Luke and he's teaching the people who would listen to him and follow him what it meant to really be a Christian It's very much different from what we hear today or what Christianity is. Today, evangelicals have so co-opted Christianity that we think that all Christianity means is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

13:10 That's all it means. Nothing more than that. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Thus, that leaves you then to do anything here. And Jesus never separated the sacred from the secular. Jesus not only looked up, he always looked out. He was always saying that real Christianity gets its hands dirty being involved in the life of people that other people have dismissed, marginalized, and rejected. Real Christianity goes to work in the world. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. And this is hard to break through when all of you begin to believe that that's all Christianity is, is, well, do I pray? Do I read my Bible?

14:04 You can do that and not do anything. I heard somebody describing Martin Luther King that pulled up some of his letters and was reading from his dissertation. And his whole argument was that Martin Luther King was not a Christian.

14:26 I listened because one of my friends asked me to listen to it and he, bless his heart, he has a soft mentality. He's not very strong intellectually. I told him I said well you got to watch summing a person's life up at age 26 I said I wish he would have kept reading he would have read beyond that and said this at that moment after the bombing of his house at that moment after the bombing of 16th Street Avenue Baptist Church and those four girls were killed after and he go down the death of Emmett killed after the death of those civil rights workers who were killed in Mississippi. He said, God no longer was some abstraction to me, some theory. I had to call on a God that my mama and my daddy knew about. And my response was just simply this. If he's not a Christian, it ain't no hope for the rest of us because I don't want to be a Christian that all my Christianity is is what I do in 20 minutes in the pulpit I want my life to matter for something I want it to make a difference in the world I want to make sure that somebody can drink clean water and you don't have to start in Africa you can go up to Michigan if you're looking for a project to work on.

15:58 And that's what Christianity is, is taking the love of Christ from Capernaum down to Nazareth on the Sabbath and living out the teachings of our Lord. Well, it was Sabbath and it had made its way and what Jesus wasn't really interested in was about how popular he was going to be Peter McLeod pastored First Baptist Waco years ago and at the World Baptist Alliance speaking to the youth McLeod had an interesting line of saying This whole idea that Jesus is a guarantor Of your popularity and success And this is the words he used Is a rape of the gospel I've never seen so many And I'm a preacher so I can say this As a critical lover So many of us that do this work That's more interested in popularity than the power that the gospel could give into the life and world of people.

17:16 Jesus left Capernaum and he made his way. And while he was there on a Sunday, people said, this boy can, he can teach. I'm not making this up. Read it. Verse 2. And they were amazed. They were out of their mind thinking about, he can really teach. I get it when he teaches.

17:54 He makes it so plain. He puts God's kingdom on the pavement. He doesn't just talk about what it means to be blessed are they who mourn and blessed are the poor and blessed who hunger and rush. He gives a picture and lets you see it. and then they started asking questions you see it Where did he get this from?

18:28 He doesn't sound like he's gone to Jerusalem seminary to me. So where did he get these things? And the wisdom, where did that come from? As evident, this is not human wisdom that he's talking about. This is something supernatural. This is beyond human comprehension. This is beyond what we've read in the writings of the Plato's, the Plato's or the Socrates or the Areoponies. Where did he get all this from? And how did they do these remarkable miracles? Miracles are enough, but the remarkable miracles? this is chapter 6 so you just look backwards that's all if we're reading it chronologically it didn't necessarily have to happen right in this order but chronologically for you and me we just go back and say he did miracles?

19:21 what kind? well chapter 1 he's healed people with leprosy he's not very big on respecting people's property in chapter 2 he tore up the people's roof but at least he got the man some new legs i don't know what they did to repair that hole in the roof but he got him some new remarkable miracles straightening up with his hands and then what about this business of him speaking to the wind remarkable the wind I mean that's nature and then the waters and the waves and the boat about to go under and he says peace be still if he can quieten a storm at sea what can he do with a human heart that is enraged with fear and anxiety.

20:15 Remarkable miracles he does. And what about what he just did? But that woman who had been sick, he let a woman touch him. And you know you ain't supposed letting a woman touch you in the New Testament. And he broke the barriers of gender and said, whoever wants to touch me, I make myself available to you. Just touch me. I sure hope you hear what I'm saying today. Touched him. Remarkable miracles. Where did he get all this stuff from? How did he get this? He's remarkable. so they started and I'm done now in verse 3 because I set the clock at 20 and it's off and they started saying this is he the carpenter's son Is he Mary's baby?

21:28 No way else had he ever been summed up as the carpenter's son. He had been home, he's preaching, he's done remarkable miracles and people have forgotten already who he is. And that's always a danger, isn't it? When you go back home. Because people still want to treat you the way they treated you. when you were 15 years old. In the Louvre, there's a beautiful painting. the Violetra where Jesus is in the carpenter's shop and he's holding a candle and the painter paints this picture where the translucent light breaks through Jesus and the illumination is on the face of the father.

22:38 Joseph is not working on a tabletop he's not working on a bench to sit down on at the table he's not working at a nightstand to put the lamp on it and at the bottom you can already imagine that the image reflects a cross and the carpenter who raises Jesus as his biological son his stepson would be the term that would be used never made a distinction never claimed to be anything other than what God had called him to do But he didn't miss in the veil of familiarity. This whole idea of missing Christ in popularity. He knew in that painting that I make no mistake wherever my son might go.

23:36 Whether it's Capernaum or whether he's in Galilee. That he came to do one thing and that's to die on the cross. That beautiful image is this, the carpenter's son. I could close right there because carpenters work with wood and nail and hammer and saw and chisel. And one thing that carpenters do, they work to put things together. Stuff that's separated, they put it together. And that's what Jesus came to earth to do. That that which hath been broken, he's going to put it together on a hill called Calvary. Is this Mary's boy? They were trying to insult him when they said that.

24:32 Is this Mary's boy? All of the scandalous rumors that circulated, that people propagated, is this Mary's boy? And they said, on the tone, you ought to know this. You ought to know what you signed up to when you said, I'll follow you, Jesus. You get her from that seat and walk down the aisle and you think you're joining or becoming a member of a church. You are connecting to the body of Christ, the message of the kingdom of God.

25:08 Is that Mary's boy? Yeah, Mary's my mama. But she ain't my Lord. and they missed, missed who Jesus was at home at Nazareth. Is this James and Judas and Joseph's brother?

25:30 Is his sisters here with me? That's one of the verses in the Bible I've always loved because people ask that Jesus had brothers and sisters. Yeah, he's ordinary. And the people that missed him were the people that were closest to him. Let me close.

25:53 And so Jesus says, you know, prophets, they're honored, they are honored, but it's hard for you to honor them when you're from the same place where they're from. and so he couldn't do many miracles there I believe Jesus wants to do remarkable miracles every week in his house when he comes home. I believe that. I was asked at a university, Ralph, do you really believe in the healing and the supernatural intervention of God?

26:46 That was the one time I didn't let where I was. shape my response as an academic. I say, I believe it. Whether God does it or not, I believe that God can do whatever God wants to do with his creation because he's the Lord of that creation. And then they asked him, do you believe in the gifts? I said, I believe in every last one of them. I believe in every gift that the Holy Spirit bestows upon God's people. I believe it. I do.

27:32 And Jesus couldn't do at home what he did in Capernaum and that's not home. He couldn't do at home what he did over in Galilee. That's not home. And the last thing I want is for God to do more somewhere else than the Lord can do at home because of the lack of my faith. And let me say this, I'm not promoting some cheesy, trivial reality with God. I'm not promoting being silly and ridiculous. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying that I believe that God is who God is. And without faith, it's impossible to please him. But you must believe that he is who he says he is and he will reward those that diligently and faithfully pursue after him.

28:35 I got to believe that. If I don't believe that, I need to stop preaching on Sunday morning. I believe God can set the captives free. I believe that God can heal the sick. I believe God can. I believe that. I'm done now. And then they were amazed. I'm through now. Thank you for giving me an extra five minutes. I'm serious. Thank you for giving it to me. And you know what Jesus was amazed? He wasn't amazed at that faith.

29:15 Read it if you don't mind. Hopefully you haven't closed the Bible. I only say that for those of you who are new here and just visiting. If you ever want to follow my sermon, just follow the scriptures. And what did it say? He was amazed by that what? lack of faith now this is Mark and this is my closing do you know who gets it in the gospel it ain't the disciples you know who gets it and makes the greatest declaration is a person that ought not know who jesus is read it remember that when you really say i'm gonna go look for it and you'll find it at the end of each of the gospels that the person who shouldn't get it is the one that didn't grow accustomed to the over familiarity of Jesus.

30:20 When Jesus died on the cross, a centurion of all people, a soldier said these words, surely he must be the son of God. He shouldn't get it. He shouldn't get it before people who were hungry were fed got it. He shouldn't get it before people that was lost were found He shouldn't get it before people who are blind could see. He shouldn't get it, but he did. Because if you're not careful, you are walking here every Sunday and leave and say these words. I didn't get nothing out of it.

31:02 It didn't mean nothing to me. Nothing happened to me. and I can go back today and think about five things where I saw Jesus anew today in reading the scripture and singing the anthem and listening to the prayer and listening to the names called and say look at Jesus show up in church. You can miss it.

31:28 I'm gonna show you something and I'm done. How easy it is to miss it. I told him at eight o'clock I shouldn't tell this story, but I missed it. I missed it. I'm a pretty bright fellow when it comes to remembering things. But I missed it. Right here, every time I look at the picture, it haunts me to say, how in the world did you miss that moment? It was a couple of years ago, a few years ago now. John Lewis had come to the church and I greeted him and we exchanged pleasantries and I thanked him for something that he had done and we laughed and for a minute, you know, we exchanged pleasantries and know some of the same people and say, man, I didn't know that you grew up with this.

32:28 Yeah, we grew up together because, you know, John's a preacher, you know, he's a preacher. and he stood right there and challenged the people like Ramona did and I let him leave. After the benediction I said, man, how dumb can you be? I should have said wherever he's going, he's going to be late and gave him a Bible and sang a song and find out what you're going to talk about and made him preach.

33:04 Because he's the embodiment of remarkable miracles. Now I know we live in a time now where we don't know a lot about a lot of people. So this Alabama who went to American Baptist Seminary then, American Baptist College in Nashville, is on the groundwork of the civil rights movement. President and one of the leaders and shapers of SNCC, Nick whose speeches redacted because it was too sharp for America in 1963 at the Mars John Washington.

34:01 And then in 65, he gets his head literally split open, marching for voting rights after Jimmy Lee had been shot and killed, protecting his mother, and all they were trying to do was to go and vote.

34:24 Not a privilege, but a right. An unalienable right that has been granted to all of God's children once they reach an age that they can vote. You ain't got to be fighting to vote. This is what you're supposed to do. This is what the Constitution says has been bequeathed to us. and all I could think of is that you let familiarity blind you of an exceptional moment. Now come here for a minute. Come here for a minute. I'm talking to my members. I know everybody ain't my member but I'm talking to my members now. When you walk through the doors of this church and people always got a complaint, always got something to say. You tell them I left Capernaum. I left corporate America.

35:17 I left my neighborhood. I'm going home to Nazareth today. and I'm not going to let you and nobody else make me miss Jesus when he comes to the hometown. I come to hear what he has to say to me. And so after the day, I don't want Jesus to be amazed because he says, church without walls, lack of faith. I want him to say, I like showing up at the church without walls because them people believe in me and what I'm able to do. Amen, I'm done, I'm done. Come on, let's pray. Yeah, there you go. If you believe it, then you ought to worship God and thank him today. I do. I do. I do, too. Come on, let's go to God today with heads bowed and eyes closed.

36:20 I'm going to ask you, unless you just absolutely got to go because you're going to work and you got to get there for noon, then I understand you're leaving. but if you just break in rank because you grew up in a church where maybe the church never had a discipline I'm not trying to be funny where it never meant anything to go to the end how many millions people, millions of folk have looked at Cat Williams now I don't know what the last number is what was the number? 58 million people sitting down listening to foolishness Thank you. I'm one of them. we ain't been in church that I'm giving people feel like they need to leave time to go

37:17 because there's a group of people that's here that they didn't miss Jesus. They came and said, I found, I saw, I experienced exactly what I was looking for. Tell them church was 10 minutes late and they held up just for me so I could experience everything. yeah I didn't know I was gonna get there on the Lord's Supper day I didn't get no I was gonna get chance he all the way I heard and there you go he is he's an amazing god and so all of that just for me lord we thank you for the day unapologetically we thank you for worship today you in control of this this your house do with it what you want we celebrate you just help us never to miss you in our presence because of over familiarity.

38:27 For the people that are going to unite with this church today by well and in this room, stirring their heart right now, don't wait, just get up and come forward. And then Lord, we thank you that this week will afford us opportunities. Help us to open our eyes where we can see you, look for you in those ordinary moments of life, In the strong name of Jesus, we pray. And all God's people say, amen. Praise God. Come on, leader.