Mark 6.1-13, 2 Corinthians 12.2-10
It's very appropriate, perhaps even providential, that as a new local preacher begins her journey the Gospel reading for this Sunday should happen to be the one about the call of the first local preachers.
Before we come to that we have some rare comments from Jesus about the nature of his call from God. Ironically, the people who know us best - our family, friends and neighbours - are sometimes the hardest to convince that we have something inspirational to say. As the song says, they know us too well. Familiarity breeds not necessarily contempt but at least scepticism.
Perhaps that's only to be expected. All saints or inspiring leaders have feet of clay and those best acquainted with us are all too aware of our weaknesses, which can sometimes conceal our strengths.
However, that doesn't really explain the failure of his family and neighbours to trust the claims of someone as truly inspirational as Jesus. Perhaps they just couldn't believe that someone so immersed in their situation could possibly be so special.
Elsewhere in the Gospels, Luke suggests that the mood turned ugly. People felt offended - he suggests - that Jesus should make such exalted claims about himself when he was apparently helpless to prove his authority to them by doing anything extraordinary. But Mark says only that their unbelief got in the way, and that their refusal to open their minds to him amazed Jesus.
One of the roles of a local preacher is to contextualise their faith - to share what it means for them to be both a Christian and a teacher, or a Christian and a factory worker, or whatever. People may wonder why their context - their daily life - can make a local preacher able to reveal new insights that help to explain what God is like and how God works in our world. But that is the task. Jesus found it challenging, and that's because it is challenging.
Of course, all Christians are called to share in this task. It's not just a job for local preachers. The local preacher is only here to help us all to reflect on what God is revealing to us through our daily lives, so that we too can share our faith with those around us. We're all called to be disciples in our own way.
So, despite his own rejection at Nazareth, Jesus sends his first disciples out across the local region to try again. Some people were just as sceptical as the people of Nazareth, and then the disciples shook the dust off their feet and moved on. But some people were amazingly receptive, and then the disciples were able to do great things among them. They were able to restore people's wellbeing as well as bringing them spiritual enlightenment.
We may think that was all very well for the first disciples, inspired by the example of Jesus as their personal mentor. But it's a bit much to expect us to follow in their footsteps.
Paul knew exactly how we feel. Despite his own strong sense of a call from Jesus he found himself unfavourably compared with some 'super apostles', people apparently endowed with greater gifts and an even stronger sense of call than him. The Christians in Corinth began to doubt his authority, just as some people doubted the first disciples and the people from Nazareth doubted Jesus.
One of the things the Christians in Corinth seem to have said was that, if Paul were truly as super as the super apostles, he would be able to heal his own illness. We don't know what it was, but it may have been something that was gradually making him blind, like cataracts.
To counteract this growing scepticism Paul indulges in a bit of boasting. He too has had very strong and unusual spiritual experiences, which make him just as well qualified to claim super status. But, tempting as it is to rely on these experiences and claim to be yet another super apostle, he is content to boast of his own weaknesses instead, because it's our very real sense of ordinary everyday weakness which will encourage us to rely on Jesus to help us rather than trusting in our own supposedly super strength to overcome all obstacles.
Cleverly Paul turns the tables on the super apostles. Their overwhelming sense of superiority is blinding them to their need of grace. And it's the grace of God made known to us in Jesus which can really equip us to be effective disciples.
'I am content,' he says, 'With weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.'
The thing to remember when we're starting out as local preachers, or attempting to travel the rocky road of discipleship, is that it's all right to be weak and not unusual to fail to convince other people of our sincerity and truthfulness. We don't have to be super apostles. We only have to be good enough. And we can only be good enough by turning to Jesus for our inspiration and guidance.
Comments