Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Proper 9 B - Sunday, July 4, 2021
Today's Gospel is in two parts. The first tells of Jesus’ difficulties in returning to his hometown after an impressive series of miracles, healings and wonders performed while on the road, only to be met with skepticism and outright rejection. It's hard to know where to place the blame. Word would certainly have gotten back to Nazareth about all that had happened while Jesus was away. People likely turned out, as people will, to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe Jesus wasn't dazzling enough or impressive enough or mature enough for his hometown audience. Or on the contrary, maybe he had matured too much and in the wrong directions.
I think many of us have had the experience of returning to our homes and families or old friends, particularly in early adulthood, and finding ourselves being treated as the children we used to be and almost helplessly acquiescing in that role. I know people who have said that, although they are now in their 40s or 50s or beyond, when they visit their parents, they find themselves regressing to a state of dependence, impotency, or outright infantilization. And their reaction is often one of frustration, anger, and rejection. This is not helped by the defensiveness, smugness or apparent certitude that seems almost inevitably to accompany late adolescence.
There are always two sides to this equation. The hometown folks, whoever they might be, think they know who we are now, or expect us to be who we were once upon a time. Any breaking out of that expected mold can be threatening, especially to those who have remained behind and have tried to maintain a center of stability amidst a sea of change. So, in ways subtle or not so subtle, we hear echoes of that famous question, “Who do you think you are, anyway? Just who do you think you are?”
In a village such as Nazareth in Jesus’s day, a village of perhaps 2000 to 3000 people, everyone pretty much knew exactly where they stood in social rank and in the larger pecking order. Any attempt to do something against or outside that rank or status would likely be perceived as both overweening pride and a real threat to the established order. So, when this tekton, this carpenter Jesus, returns to his hometown and begins to teach, folks are suspicious. And if his teaching is not what they expect, if it doesn't reinforce the social norms and community expectations but challenges them, then he becomes dangerous, someone quite outside the box of social propriety, someone who needs to be handled carefully or even shunned if not outright expelled. Luke's gospel account of this event (Luke 4:16-30) concludes with Jesus being led to the brow of a cliff to be hurled over, presumably to his death. In this case, I think people just keep their distance. Jesus could do no miracles, no healings, no deeds of power there except that (as the Gospel adds almost as a casual aside): “… he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured it them.” It adds: “And he was amazed at their unbelief.” Perhaps he could perform no signs because of their unbelief. But equally plausibly, maybe he could do no deed of power there because people simply didn't present themselves. They avoided this uppity local who should have known better. They kept their distance. And that distancing is unbelief of a sort which makes healing and wholeness unavailable to the whole community. (1)
Jesus experienced failure. And he warns his disciples whom he sends out that they too will encounter failure. He tells them: “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” Not every mission ends with success. Not every venture is crowned by accomplishment. Not every undertaking ends in triumph, just as not every phase or moment in our lives is happy or rewarding.
Admittedly there are various kinds or levels of failure. There are minor failures of the sort that we experience daily and there are major failures that happen, let us hope, rarely in our lives but which leave us deeply shaken and indeed sometimes traumatized. There are failures that differ in their visibility or openness, if you will, from very public failures which may be accompanied by shaming or dismissing or bullying, to very secret ones known to us alone which are often accompanied by their own internalized shame, bullying and self-dismissal. There are failures that point to the betrayal of our own deeply held ideals or values or commitments and there are failures that have to do with the sense of professional competency in our work or vocations. There are failures that relate to relationships that have been damaged or destroyed, or to put it more honestly, that we have had a hand in damaging or destroying. These may be the most painful of failures, and the most long lasting in their consequences.
What I find interesting in today's gospel is that the very practical advice that Jesus offers his disciples when they meet with failure on the road is advice that we too can adapt. The dust shaking that Jesus describes was probably a common ritual decontamination practice. It has been noted that pious Jews upon returning from gentile areas would shake the dust off their garments and even their sandals to symbolize and to remind themselves that they were leaving a profane sphere and entering a holy one. It may also have overtones of cursing or demeaning the other, but it need not. More likely it was a way of reminding themselves of the need to free themselves of the psychological and spiritual and material attachments that can come from journeying through a strange and perhaps exotic land. It becomes for Jesus’ disciples a liturgy of letting go after failure.
I think we all need such rituals and liturgies after the disheartening experience of having fallen short of an ideal or goal held out to us or that we hold out to ourselves, as good and as wholesome as it might be. What kind of rituals do we have, or can we develop in such circumstances? I think of some I have used: journaling at length about a major failure, learning from it, and then ripping up or burning the writing, perhaps throwing it in a river. In other instances, taking a long walk and clearing my heart and my mind, examining my responsibilities, my mistakes, my blind spots and filters and prejudices and recognizing how so often I am just like those hometown folks of Jesus’ day.
One preacher has noted that this ritual of shaking out the dust is important not just for the townspeople who need the witness that God's word has come, and they have rejected it and are called to repentance. It is also a ritual of importance to the disciples:
“It helps them bring closure to a failed initiative and move on from it. The people of God are not to waste their resources fretting over those who will not receive the word. Nor are they to waste their time in self-absorption when things don't go as planned. Just as Jesus acknowledges, with disappointed wonder, his rejection by his own people and then moves on to other villages, so his disciples are admonished not to tarry seeking to persuade those who refuse the message. Move on.”
After failure, we need to move on. Sooner or later, we need to get on with our lives.
Again, how do we do that? I find it significant that Jesus sends his disciples out two by two, which to me implies that not only is success to be shared but so too is failure. We generally ought not, and often cannot, do this ‘shaking off the dust’ by ourselves. We need at least one other person to share in our failures and in our rituals of moving on. This may be a friend, a confidant, a spiritual companion, or professional counselor, but frequently we simply can't do it on our own, especially in the case of failures which have been significant or traumatic. Prayer certainly. Perhaps a priest. Perhaps the Sacrament of Reconciliation…not so much in terms of forgiveness of sin but in terms of release from the bondage of self or societal rejection.
Failure is never fun. Failure is seldom welcome. But failure may not be all bad. Saint Paul in the astonishing words that we heard this morning from Second Corinthians talks about his own struggles with being less than effective and less than perfect even in the face of wonderfully consoling mystical revelations. He has been misunderstood, vilified, and rejected. He speaks of: “…a thorn given him in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment him” which, he says, was given him “to keep me from being too elated.” I'm not sure how many of us are often tempted to feel too elated, but the other part of his message is that when, in spite of fervent prayer, the thorn was not taken away, when the failures continued, when the struggles seemed almost overwhelming, he learned an important lesson from the Lord: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Power made perfect, fulfilled, fleshed out, brought to completion in weakness and yes, even in failure. We must learn something here, something central, something that, I might say, is at the very heart of the gospel. And that is the Lord's assurance that “My grace is sufficient for you….”
The great and outrageous Lutheran preacher Nadia Bolz-Weber shall have the last word. She says, and I quote: “Rejection has been the traveling companion of the Gospel from the beginning. Don't take it personally.”
Rejection, failure, weakness…don’t take it personally. In the end, it’s not about you or me. It really is about the power of God at work in us, doing infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. A God whose grace is sufficient for us.
Now unto to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be ascribed, as is most justly due, all honor, power, might, majesty, and dominion, henceforth and for evermore.
Amen.
(1) Truby, Thomas L. and Laura C., “Jesus is Cast Out and the Disciples Cast Out”
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