Today's Gospel must resonate with many of you as it did with me. I mean who here has not had the experience of coming home and being brought down a notch or two? You are lucky if you come from a family that sees you with all your shortcomings and still accepts you and loves you as you are…   all of you come from that kind of family, right?

Most of us don’t. Social workers and therapists make a good living helping us to untie the knots of your childhood’s family of origin.

I will always remember the Fege family reunions, which usually were held about this time of year at the home of my sister Rosie who lives in Fl.  My parents lived with her.. I once invited them to spend their Golden Years with me but my sister won out… she’s a nurse and at the time she was married to a physician…

Anyway, it was at one of those gatherings that MJ and I returned from a brief absence to find my brother, his wife, my sister and my nephew engaged in a Bible study... What made this activity a little strange is that my sister-in-law was on a phone consulting her minister in Dallas Tx.

I later learned that that Bible study cost my sister over $300.00 in phone bills. We were invited to join them. Since I did not have my red letter KJ version with me and I had been banned earlier from using my Gk NT – because God only writes in KJ English - ( as the cartoon of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown flashed before me),

I declined.

In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus, after visiting the neighboring towns where he healed the sick, brought the Good News to the poor and even took care of his disciples who weren’t quite up to a sudden squall on the Sea of Galilee, comes home to Nazareth, where he faces the hometown crowd..

Those who knew his mother, his sisters and brothers; Nazareth where he had played in the street as a little boy. Eugene Peterson, a writer and Minister from Canada, recently translated the Bible into modern English. This is his translation of today’s Lesson:

He left there and returned to his hometown. His disciples came along. 

On the Sabbath, he gave a lecture in the meeting place. He made a real hit, impressed everyone.

“We had no idea he was this good!” they said. “How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?”

 But in the next breath they were cutting him down. “He’s just a carpenter – Mary’s boy. We’ve known him since he was a kid.

We know his brothers, James, Justus, Jude, and Simon, and his sisters.

Who does he think he is?” They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell sprawling. And they never got any further. Jesus told them,

 “A prophet has little honor in his hometown, among his relatives, on the streets he played in as a child.

 Jesus wasn’t able to do much of anything there – he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them, that’s all.

He couldn’t get over their stubbornness. He left and made a circuit of the other villages, teaching.

As we celebrate the 4^th of July with family gatherings, parades and a show of patriotic fever it might be helpful (in the light of today's lessons), to reflect both on the individual brokenness of our lives and the world in which we live. First let it be noted that Jesus himself came from a broken family.

In several places the Gospels make reference to the tension between Jesus and his family of origin. At one point his siblings said publicly that their brother wasn’t quite right. When he was twelve they all took an extended vacation to Jerusalem, and it was several days into the trip on the way home his family noticed that he was not with them. So they backtracked and looked for him and when they found him they weren’t at all happy that he had put them through all this trouble. Good thing DYFS                                 didn’t find out. Mom and dad might have found themselves in some hot water.

Jesus was first of all a healer. The German word used most often to refer to Jesus is “Heiland”… healer.

As we have read “They brought to him all who were sick or possessed and he cured many who were sick with various diseases.”

By the time we come to the 6^th Chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had healed the 12 y.o. daughter of the ruler of the Synagogue,

a leper, Simon’s mother-in-law, a paralytic, and the list goes on. .  .

So, as we thank God for freedoms, let us not forget that families as well as nations, including our own, continue to need healing. 

As Christians we live not only by the Constitution but also by the Bible. As a matter of fact, for us the latter always trumps the former. 

It is not the Constitution, but the Bible, that is used in our courts when a person is placed under oath.  The Gospel calls us to follow Christ!

To follow Him means that we are called to be risk-takers.

To be risk-takers means that we don’t stop with vs. 6 “He was amazed at their unbelief.” We continue with vs. 7. “He called the Twelve and began to send them out two-by-two”

In parallel passages (Mtt.5, Lk.2), the Twelve did what Jesus did. They called for repentance, cast out demons, healed the sick and preached the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

Which is another way of saying that as Christians we are to participate in Kingdom building.

Even as we are the United States of America, there are divisions. The Supreme Court continues to grapple with what it means to be “One Nation under God, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

We are passionate about many things. Some us believe that Universal Health Care is the answer, others feel just as passionately that it is the worst possible of all worlds. When over 30 million Americans have no health care it means that those who have it will pay for those who don’t… is that a solution?

That’s bad economics to say nothing of bad ethics.

In a few weeks the ELCA will meet and address one of the most controversial issues facing Christianity today. The question of Gays and Lesbians within the fellowship of the faithful. Passion is strong on both sides of the issue… both sides feel that the Bible is clear on these things.

We have good people who love God and follow Christ to the best of their ability that are on opposite sides of the fence on these and other issues. A Rabbi gave  us this story:

 Following the Israelite’s great deliverance at the Red Sea, the angels in heaven broke out in a song of jubilation – the slaves were free and their oppressors swept away by the Red Sea. The one of the angels noticed that God was not there. The angel searched far and wide and finally found God in a distant corner of heaven, crying. The angels said, “The chosen people are safe, the Egyptian army has been destroyed, why are you not celebrating with us?” And God replied,

“How can I celebrate when my children, the Egyptians, are drowning?”

All of the things that divide us will in time be brought to a point of decision. .

Like the ELCA statement on human sexuality,

like Immigration reform, like …

We must decide. No decision too, is a decision.

Some will win some will lose. We live in a world where we will not always agree with one another. There is pain when values are in conflict.  It was not different for Jesus.  Jesus came home to Nazareth. As far as we know it was the only time…  and they took offence at him (ESKANDALIZONTO is the Gk. word from which we get SCANDALIZED). They where scandalized by him.

It wasn’t just what he said, either. It was personal. “Who does he think he is?”

“We know this guy and his family. He’s nothing” they said of him. “And he was amazed at their unbelief.”

So what did he do?  He kept on teaching and healing. He kept on trusting God that things will work out in the end… He died holding on to what he believed was right. He did not let go of that belief. And today, 2,000 years later, we along with those who have gone before us and those who will come after us, still believe that he was right. 

In the OT Lesson God sends Ezekiel “ to a nation of rebels …”

In II Cor.  Paul defends his faith against those who question his credentials claiming that the 

Gospel is not about him but “therefore I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ…”

Conflict is inevitable, be that in families, among friends, or as a nation.  It is conflict that gives life its flavor, it is a tension which can lead to growth.  It is the spice, the salt that flavors.. it is the Kingdom that continues to break into our complacency… or as Luther once said “the curses of the ungodly sound sweeter to the ears of God than the alleluias of the pious…” it is repentance, Metanoia, that draws us ever closer to Christ. Amen