Baggage

Today’s Gospel passage follows immediately after last week’s. Last Sunday, we heard about Jesus’s arrival in a seaside town. Word about him had spread, and a crowd surrounded him the moment he came ashore. He healed a girl who was at the point of death and just the touch of his cloak was enough to cure a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. All those who witnessed these events “were overcome by amazement.” And who can blame them?

But then Jesus traveled to his hometown, Nazareth. Nazareth is about 18 miles west of the Sea of Galilee, a long day’s walk. In Jesus’s time, it was a village, with a population of at most three or four hundred people. That’s just a handful of families, all of whom would have known pretty much everything about one another. Some of you are from small enough towns to know what that’s like—the good and the bad of it—little privacy, few secrets, but also deep connection.

No crowds surrounded Jesus when he arrived at home. When you’ve watched a child grow up, it’s hard to see him as anyone too extraordinary. Besides, there was at least a whisper of scandal dating back to Jesus’s birth, so how important could he be? Look at how the people of Nazareth describe him: “the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon.” Jesus’s proper name would have been Jesus bar Joseph, Jesus son of Joseph. Those who called him the son of Mary probably intended it as an insult.

A quick side note in case you’re wondering about all these siblings Jesus seems to have… The Bible never says that Mary had only one child. That’s an idea that came later. But it’s a strong tradition, and many people will tell you that these siblings must be Joseph’s children from a previous marriage or maybe Jesus’s cousins. I’ll be very Episcopalian and just say that you’ll have to decide that one for yourself.

But back to Jesus’s hometown.

If you spend your life in a small town, no one ever forgets anything. You’re deeply known, but it’s hard to reinvent yourself.

We can even do this to ourselves. I’m not from a small town, but I’ve known myself my whole life. Growth is hard. It’s easy to feel like an imposter when you try to do something important. That foolish child who did all those silly things can’t possibly be a trusted adult, a professional, a leader. Surely everyone will see through the mask.

We do it to ourselves, and others do it to us.

Of course, we’re not Jesus. Even on Jesus’s worst day, when he supposedly “could do no deed of power,” he was still able to cure a few people who were sick. That’s pretty impressive for a bad day.

The kind of power Jesus displayed is completely outside my experience. But the judgment Jesus faced is something most of us probably can relate to.

Today’s passage doesn’t end with Jesus’s disappointing visit to Nazareth. After visiting his hometown, Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs. He “gave them authority over the unclean spirits.” And he told them to “take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.” If they weren’t welcomed, they should shake off the dust on their feet and move on.

This approach seems even less likely to succeed than preaching to people who remember what you were like as a toddler. Walking into a town uninvited, unprepared, without provisions. Telling the very same people who you plan to ask for lodging and food that they need to repent. I must have skipped that chapter in How to Win Friends and Influence People.

But it worked. The apostles went out, “cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”

What should we make of all this? What do these stories have to say to us here today?

Only a few of us are from towns as small as Nazareth, and even those of you who grew up in a town that size didn’t stay there. I have traveled long distances on foot, but I don’t make a habit of it, and I take a credit card with me when I do. About the only instruction in today’s Gospel that I’m sure I can follow is the direction not to wear two tunics—and that’s mostly because I only have the vaguest idea of what a tunic is or why you might want two of them.

Jesus’s world can seem so foreign.

But I wonder. Jesus and his followers were vulnerable, living on the edge. They lived in troubled times. Different times from ours, but they must have felt some of the same anxieties we feel.

In our own troubled times, I feel at loose ends, wanting to help, wanting to make things better, but not sure what to do or how. Not sure whether the small changes I’m capable of could possibly make a difference. I’ve heard similar things from some of you.

I wonder if the model of Jesus and his disciples might have something to teach us.

Here are a few practical lessons I take from today’s Gospel reading:

First, faith matters, and faith manages. The assumptions that other people make might make it harder for you to be heard, but that shouldn’t stop you from acting. Your past doesn’t control your future.

Second, we need one another. It helps to go out two by two.

Finally, we don’t have to have all our ducks in a row in order to make a difference. Trust in God. Have the courage to set out—no bread, no bag, no credit card, no strategic plan, no safety net. It won’t always work out. If it doesn’t, shake the dust off your feet and move on. But sometimes it will work out. And enough “sometimes” might just change the world.

The power of the cross, the power of the Gospel, is, as Paul says, made perfect in weakness.

May we each find the courage to go where God sends us. And faith enough to travel light.