MARK -My Words (6)

 

Next Jesus and his friends moved to Nazareth, the part of the country where he had grown up.  When he spoke in the meeting place, locals who knew him as a child marvelled.  “Where did he get that education from.  He’s that carpenter’s son, Mary’s boy.”  They saw him as a precocious upstart. 

Jesus knew what they were thinking and remarked that leaders tend to be derided in their hometown.  The opposition surprised him, and he was only able to help a few.

So the little band continues, traveling from village to village.  Jesus called together his twelve friends and put them in pairs.  They were to go into the villages and ‘drive out evil’.  They were to travel light, with no food and not even a change of clothes.  'When you enter the village, someone will greet you.  Stay only with them.  If they do not welcome them, move on and don’t even say goodbye.'  Jesus’ friends did this, and may people were blessed by their encounters.

Everyone was talking about what Jesus was up to.  The regional governor, Herod, who had had Jesus’ cousin John executed, even heard that people were saying that John had come back to life. 

Herod arrested John because John was brazenly saying that Herod should not have had an affair with his brothers wife.  The governor did not know what to do, because he secretly respected him.  But John would not compromise and seemed to have no fear.  Herod got himself caught in a knot having offered his stepdaughter anything she wanted as a reward for dancing before his friends (he had drunk too much at the time).  His wife seized the opportunity and got her daughter to request John’s head on a silver platter.  So the grizzly dead was done.  Herod regretted his actions and was intrigued with the thought that he could have come back to life.

People are constricted in their ways.  Their natural prejudices about Jesus restricted what they were able to receive.  This continues, with many gifted people being overlooked because they come in the 'wrong' package.  The message here appears to be 'sigh and move on.'

Evangelism is a tricky word.  For some it's just 'one way'.  Here Jesus is saying 'find the people who are open to you, who want you, and will enjoy being generous.'   The passage reminds me of the work of Ali Boulton  in Winchelstowe.  Ali did a deal with the Creator, that she would only do what local people asked her to do.  She would not create the change herself, but be there to nurture and foster positive change when it happened.  In this way she would know that whatever she did not come from her.

Herod was a victim of the system.  I'm not being sympathetic; he was the system.  But in order to benefit from the system, he had to become it's slave.  The logical conclusion of this was that he would have to 'kill' good people.  This is what it is like.  

Herod had hoped that the 'superpowers' John had, might have come to his rescue.  But they did not, which was a mercy for Herod because by the same logic, surely 'revenge' would also have been appropriate.