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NOTHING NOTEWORTHY ABOUT NAZARETH

For some 18 years the door is firmly closed to us regarding Jesus early life. We are not even given so much as a glimpse into those years. The door closes after he and his parents traveled to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. Mary and Joseph went every year to Jerusalem for this special feast that commemorated the Passover ( see Exodus 12). On this particular occasion Luke tells us Jesus was 12 years old, and as was the Jewish custom, he was being prepared to take his place in the religious community the following year.
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It was also on this occasion that Jesus disappeared for three days, when they found him he was sitting among the rabbis, the teachers and experts in the Jewish religious laws. Jesus responded to his anxious mother who asked him why he was treating her and his father this way by simply stating that they should have known "that I would be in my Father’s house?" Jesus cancels out Mary’s use of 'father' by stating that he had to be in "My Father’s" house. He then travelled with Mary and Joseph back to Nazareth where we hear nothing for the next 18 years. The door has been closed tightly shut.
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The door opens again as Luke describes with great drama another occasion when Jesus is once again in Nazareth, that place where it is said "no good thing can come from." On this occasion, we learn that the people of Nazareth, his neighbours, for this is the village where he lived and was brought up, did not approve of how Jesus thought, spoke and taught. After his sermon in the synagogue aroused their anger, the people took him "and brought him to the precipice of the mountain that their city was built upon".
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Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel while she was in Nazareth and told of the birth of this child she was to call Jesus. (See Luke 1:26-38). She was not yet married and was only pledged to be married to a man named Joseph. There would have been a lot of ‘talk’ around this birth as Joseph was not the biological father and Mary had shamed her family by becoming pregnant before being properly married according to Jewish custom. In a small village like Nazareth tongues would quickly spread the gossip of this scandal, that you can be sure.
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No wonder when his neighbours in Nazareth heard Jesus preach in the synagogue that day they would ask "Is this not the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son, and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters her with us?" And as Mark so succinctly puts it "And they took offense at him."
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We learn a great deal from this verse. First, Jesus was a carpenter, and that he had brothers and sisters. Secondly, because he is called "Mary’s son" Joseph has is all probability died. Thirdly, the people have never forgotten the ‘scandal" surrounding Jesus’ birth and that Joseph was not his ‘real’ father’. Read the whole story for yourself. John+
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M. LUKE 1:26-38 .... ANNOUNCEMENT MADE IN NAZARETH
T. MATTHEW 2 ...... FROM BETHLEHEM BACK TO NAZARETH
T. LUKE 4:14-30 ..... NAZARETH NEIGHBOURS ARE FURIOUS
W. MARK 6:1-6 ....... MEET JESUS’ FOUR BROTHERS & SISTERS
T. MARK 3:20-22 ... MARY THINKS HER SON IS OUT OF HIS MIND.
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MARK - A MASTER STORY TELLER OF GOOD NEWS

Here we have another ‘boating’ story from Mark’s Gospel. Mark is the preacher’s teacher. Mark’s Gospel, the first and shortest of the Gospels moves along at breakneck speed. Mark is short, crisp, to the point - using only an economy of words as he recounts the journey of Jesus from the shores of Galilee all the way to Jerusalem and all points in between.

Today’s Gospel is one of Scriptures great stories - told in such a way as to not only tell the story, but also draws the listener into the story so that we stand there and are aptly and almost subversively become a bystander, transported back in time and space. The Bible is truly a time machine taking us back to a place in history where the Son of God walked among ordinary everyday people.

There isn’t space here to reprint the complete story, so I invite you to read it again, before mooing into this week’s study. In the early chapters of Mark, we discover that Jesus spent a lot of time in and around the Sea of Galilee. It is often described at the ‘boat ministry’ of Jesus, where he criss-crosses the Sea of Galilee, encountering all kinds of people, calling fishermen, to sets of brothers, and a tax collector to be his disciples. It is also on the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus calmed the great storm that caused the disciples to fear for their lives and it was here that Jesus also walked on the sea.

In today’s Gospel however we are given what can only be described as ‘contrasting characters’ and this is no accident that Mark pairs these two characters. As Jesus is walking along the shore, a large crowd is following him. Out of the crowd comes Jairus, whose little 12 year old daughter is seriously ill. Jairus is one of the religious leaders from the synagogue. It would be his job to make sure that the synagogue religious regulations were strictly observed. Remember now that Jesus has already been chased out of his hometown synagogue and run out of town. One of Jairus’ colleagues would have been responsible for that decision. Jairus tells Jesus about his daughter and pleads with him to come and heal her. Jesus must have been Jairus’ last hope.

As Jesus heads off to Jairus’ home, out of the crowd comes a sick woman. She has been sick for twelve years. She has spent all her money on doctors but no-one could cure her. To add insult to injury, because of her illness, she was considered ‘unclean’ and therefore not allowed to worship in the synagogue. Perhaps Jairus was the one who made sure she did not enter the synagogue to worship and thus break the regulations regarding worship. These two contrasting characters - one has a sick 12 year-old daughter, the other has been sick for twelve years are total opposites - yet, Jesus treats them both the same.

M. MARK 1 MINISTRY BEGINS ON THE SHORES OF THE LAKE.
T. MARK 2 JESUS MEETS MATTHEW ON THE LAKESHORE.
W. MARK 3 JESUS WITHDRAWS TO THE LAKE
T. MARK 4 TEACHING AT THE LAKE - CALMING THE STORM
T. MARK 5 JESUS CRIS-CROSSES THE LAKE -
F. MARK 6 JESUS WALKS ON THE WATER
S. MARK 7 THE HEAVIES FROM THE BIG CITY.