Proper 9 (July 7, 2024)

Mark 6:1–6 NIV84

1 Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 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 has been given him, that he even does miracles! 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4 Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.

God’s Measure of Success

Sermon Theme: God calls us to a different standard of success, faithfulness.

Text: Ezekiel 2:1–7

Other Lessons: Psalm 27; 2 Timothy 2:1-13; Mark 6:1–6; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Goal: Christ’s faithfulness earned our salvation and that, although they may be hesitant to speak the word God gives them because they fear failure or rejection, “success” in their Christian life and witness is not measured in human terms, but according to God’s measure.

Sermon Outline

In the last chapter of Mark, Jesus commands: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). As we journey through the gospel of Mark in this half of the church year, our Savior prepares us for that mission as we watch him prepare his disciples. In the first few weeks of this Pentecost season Jesus' teaching offers something better. The next three weeks showed Jesus' power to do what we can't. Now we enter a group of Sundays where Jesus prepares his disciples—and us— to share the gospel. We are calling this series, “Meaningful Ministry.”

We are wired for success. What I mean by that is when we do a task we want it to work. If the batteries are dead in my microphone, I expect new batteries to solve the problem. We expect good results to be attached to a good days work.

But this Sunday, Jesus is preparing us for something different; He is preparing us for the rejection that we will face when we go about doing the work He has given us to do. Ezekiel's call is a case study in that rejection. Jesus is the prophet without honor in our Gospel. St. Paul, in chains for the gospel, encourages Timothy to endure that same hardship for the sake of the gospel in our Second Reading. God's Word is not chained. “God has spoken by his prophets... . May God strengthen us to not be discouraged by the world's rejection. Because God has called us to a different standard of success. Faithfulness.

Most of us are hesitant prophets. Most of us are glad we’re not Moses or Isaiah or Jeremiah or Jonah—to whom God came right up and said, “You’re on. You’re it. You’re going to speak for me.” We’re glad we can keep a somewhat lower profile, maybe hide from God, keep quiet. The reason may be that we’re not sure we’d measure up. We figure we couldn’t succeed, that people would laugh at us or reject us.

In our text this morning, God came to a similarly hesitant prophet, Ezekiel, with a message to speak, but also with a word of comfort for him and for us. Don’t worry,

God Calls Us to a Different Standard of Success.

God’s Definition of Success is Faithfulness to His Word.

We are shaped by our culture to measure success in a variety of ways:

Popularity (how many people like us).

Fame (how many people have heard of us).

Honor (how people think of us).

Even in the Church, we often succumb to the world’s way of measuring success:

Church attendance.

Buildings.

Budgets.

Being respected by others in the Church or in our communities.

Our lessons for today proclaim that God looks at things differently.

In our Old Testament Reading, God tells Ezekiel that success is measured in terms of Ezekiel’s faithful proclamation of God’s Word, not the people’s acceptance of that Word.

In our Gospel, Jesus experiences rejection by the people of his hometown.

In our Epistle, Paul learns to rest in the grace of God and to count on God’s power, not on his own weakness.

That is, God has a different standard of success.

Success is fulfilling our vocation, as part of the plan of God to redeem the world.

It is different for each of us, as it was for Moses and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Jonah, and Ezekiel.

God’s kind of success does not always lead to things that the world counts as success. But,

God Measures His Success in His Saving Us.

God called Ezekiel to speak so that his sinful people might repent and be saved (vv 1, 3).

God prepared Ezekiel to succeed, giving him his Spirit and his Word (vv 2, 4).

Not many would listen (v 5), but Ezekiel was successful simply being faithful to that Word.

God takes upon himself responsibility to save.

And did he ever take responsibility for success in saving!—on the cross.

The people of Jesus’ day expected a Messiah to win their political freedom from the Romans.

By those human standards, Jesus was an utter failure, killed by those Romans and by his own.

But this greatest of failures, the cross, is God’s greatest success, for it accomplished God’s plan to redeem you and me.

The chief symbol of this “failure,” that cross, has become our symbol of success, around which the whole Christian Church around the world and across the ages rallies. It stands as a reminder:

Of God’s plan.

Of God’s success.

Of our calling.

Of our weakness and God’s strength.

Conclusion: How do you measure success in your life? How do we measure success in our life together as a congregation? God’s Word redefines success and replaces our standards with his. But God’s Word also comforts us with the knowledge that our success, like that of Ezekiel, depends on God, not on us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Text as Theology: Throughout the call account, God emphasizes one central theological issue: the prophet is called to proclaim faithfully a message that Israel will not hear. The prophet is responsible for faithfully speaking God’s Word; he is not responsible for how the people receive that Word. The prophet is prepared for “failure,” measured in human terms, by the repeated emphasis on the rebelliousness of Israel, past and present. The central issue, from God’s perspective, is that by the faithful preaching of God’s Word, “whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them” (2:5). This theme is repeated in various ways in 2:7; 3:4–7; 3:9b, 11; 3:17–21; and 3:27.

God prepares his prophet for this task, not only by the powerful vision of ch 1, but also by especially sending to him the Spirit (2:2; 3:12, 14, 24) and by giving him the Word (2:7–3:4; 3:10–11, 17, 27). It is upon these, not upon the acceptance of the people, that the prophet must depend. His task is to “go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them” (3:4, italics mine).

This leads us to the messianic trajectory of the passage. The mission of the prophet foreshadows the mission of Jesus. For Jesus also, success is not measured in human terms. Like Ezekiel, Jesus was rejected by the people of his own day, even by the people of his hometown (the Gospel), despite the fact that he received the Spirit at his Baptism and was the very Word of God Incarnate. Indeed, our salvation was accomplished by an act that appears, in human terms, to be a failure: the death of Jesus on the cross as a condemned and dishonored prisoner.

For God’s messengers, the standards of success are not the standards of the world: acceptance by community, honor among peers, praise of the masses, and (especially here in America) accumulation of wealth. If we are to carry out faithfully our vocation as the Church of Christ in the world, we must understand that we are sent to “go . . . and speak with my words to them” (3:4) and learn with Paul (the Epistle) that, resting in the grace of God, we may rejoice in our weakness, through which the power of God is revealed (2 Cor 12:9–10). This makes the cross the perfect symbol of our faith, both because it was the means by which God accomplished our salvation and because it reminds us to rest in God’s grace and trust in God’s power alone as we speak his words to the world.