Sermon Tone Analysis

Pentecost 7

Mark 6:1-6

July 27th

*“Expectations”*

 

Introduction:  A young boy thought to himself, when I grow up I am going to work at a job that I like and make lots of money and buy the things that I want to buy.

Years later as a man that young boy remembers.

He remembers, as he works long hours for short pay and even less appreciation.

He remembers as he tries to make his pay check stretch trying to make the bills.

This is not what he expected.

A young girl dreams of the man that she will marry, her knight in shining armor.

A young man dreams of the princess that he will cherish as his bride.

They would love each other and take care of each other.

They would live happily ever after, so the dream goes.

God brings them together.

The Prince and Princess are married.

As the years go by, so does the romance.

Relationships are hard work and especially the one between husband and wife.

They remember their dreams, but this is real life, and it’s not what they expected.

When we retire, the couple thought, life is going to be great.

We will have time to do what we want and go where we want to go.

So it is at first.

But there is nothing graceful about aging.

Slowly the eyes grow dim; the ears only hear whispers and the legs aren’t as steady as they once were.

Slowly they become captive to bodies that long for the good old days.

They remember their dreams, but this is real life, and it’s not what they expected.

Returning from His journey, it must have felt good for Jesus to be back in His hometown.

Nazareth, a small community secluded in the mountainous hill country of Galilee, was half way between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee.

Here, His people were isolated enough that they had developed a local dialect.

Yet they were connected to the whole world because from here they could look down on the well traveled highway between Rome and Egypt.

How many times did Jesus look down on the passing caravans and Roman Legions, the endless line of humanity going from one place to another but really going nowhere?  From here, in a way, a person could look down on the whole world as it passed by.

In Nazareth were all the comforts of home, the sights and smells and the comfort of your own bed.

Here was His mother Mary, and the memories of His father Joseph teaching Him to be a carpenter.

Here in Nazareth were the comforts of familiarity, of knowing and being known by family and friends, brothers and sisters.

The Sabbath day came.

As was the custom, the people gathered together in the Synagogue, like we gather together for church.

Jesus was well received and thought of as a young man (Luke 2:42, 4:16).

Therefore the people gathered to hear Jesus as He began to preach.

We are not told the topic of His sermon that day but we can surmise that it was very much like most of His sermons, “The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and be saved.

Believe in me, the anointed one of God – the Messiah.

Believe in me, the Lamb of God who has been sent by God the Father to take away the sin if the world.

Believe in me and be saved.”

His preaching amazed the people, they said, “Where did this man get these things.”

Did you hear that?

They called him “this man” like they didn’t even know him.

Continuing they said, “What wisdom is this which is given to him”, like it was some knew wisdom.

They mocked the miracles that they had heard He’d done by saying, “And what wisdom is this which is given to Him that such mighty works are performed by His hands.”

They went on and on in their unbelief, all of them, family, friends, brothers and sisters, saying, “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses (Jim and Joe), Judas and Simon?

And are not His sisters here with us?”

We are told that, “they were offended by Him.”

They were offended by Jesus.

Each and every one of them had an idea of who the Messiah might be like and when He might come to save the people.

Everyone had an idea of how he would express the saving power of God.

Some people thought He would come and lead the people into freedom from the Romans.

Some thought that He would be a profound religious teacher that would explain how they might experience God more.

And of course He would be pious and holy, born to a proper family as it should be.

Reason after reason, dream after dream, they thought they knew what they were looking for.

Jesus was not it.

He was not what they expected.

He was all too real for them, a real man living a real, not so glorious life.

He was a working man, a carpenter.

He was the son of a mother and a brother to his sisters.

The familiarity of knowing and being known by Jesus, the man, stood in their way of believing and being saved.

They didn’t understand that it was God’s time for His  kingdom to come and that it would come through Jesus, the son of Mary and the Son of God.

The people had no time for the coming kingdom because it wasn’t coming in the way that they expected it to.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it, or maybe not.

Jesus still comes to us in ways that are all to familiar, in ways that are all too real.

Often these ways offend us too.

They go against our preconceived ideas about how the kingdom of God should come into the world and come to us.

They don’t often match the ways we think that real religion should be.

This is why there are so many religions of man and this is how true religion is corrupted.

Man fancies finding God through his own deeds and works.

The heathen of the world make up ways to reach God by their own pious lives.

They try to please him by constant prayers and meditation.

They seek to excite the conscious and raise it to a new level towards God trying to experience Him.

They try to appease God and prove their worth through self sacrifice and through the sacrifice of their own sons and daughters, as is done in Islam.

They offer food to stone and metal idols hoping to satisfy the gods; but their God’s are not satisfied.

Their Gods are demons that want to destroy the souls of men.

We in America are slowly being exposed to these false religions.

They come to us through the media, through T.V. the movies and the radio.

They come to us in the guise of good things, self help and new philosophies that promise to make our lives better.

They lead us to be spiritual but not with the Holy Spirit of God.

They lead us to have faith, but not in God’s Son Jesus.

We are being deceived because a lot of what we see and hear meets our expectations of what we think religion should be.

True religion, the Christian religion, is also subject to man’s corruption.

The religion of God is all too common and boring.

Throughout Christendom people are dressing it up.

In Church there are rock bands and movie screens; there are worship services for everybody’s tastes, “hold the pickle hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us.”

There are ministries to the tall people and ministries to the short people.

We have small groups’ large groups and maybe even an army of one.

All these exist so that we might experience God.

In stores there are Christian movies and books and records and CDs.

There is software and hardware and fashions and things to buy and things to must have.

If we don’t watch out we might be “Left behind” or forget to pray our prayer of Jabez.

The inclination is to dress Christianity up a bit and make it look like real and powerful religion.

In the end it is made out to be the same as heathen religions.

Do this or do that, buy this and pray that – these are the ways you can experience God.

Of course we may have a different kind of problem here.

We dressed our Christianity up 40 years ago in a particular liturgy and hymnal and forgot that there might be more than one outfit of clothes, more than one or two ways to worship the Lord.

Sometimes I think we fear using new hymns the way we fear snakes.

Like other Christian groups we are tempted to dress up Christianity.