Amazed at what? The people’s unbelief. Given today’s world, is Jesus still amazed? Or given how I sometimes react to disability, is Jesus amazed at my unbelief? That unbelief especially strikes us in this next portion of Mark’s Gospel (6:1-6 below), when contrasted with the faith of Jairus and of the bleeding woman in the preceding portion (5:21-43).
1 Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples.
2 When the Sabbath came,
he began to teach in the synagogue,
and many who heard him were amazed.
“Where did this man get these things?” they asked.
“What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles!
3 Isn’t this the carpenter?
Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?
Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
4 Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown,
among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.”
5 He could not do any miracles there,
except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.
6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith.
Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.
Nazareth. According to archaeologists, Nazareth was an inconsequential village of maybe 500 people. It had been Jesus’ hometown since the family’s escape to Egypt after the slaughter at Bethlehem (Matthew 2:19-23). No one expected anything good to come from nondescript Nazareth (John 1:48a).
Synagogue. On Sabbath Jesus went to synagogue. The hometown boy back for a visit was invited to read Scripture. According to Luke 4:18,19 it was Isaiah 61:1,2. Mark, in his usual bare-bones style, omits the Scripture content in order to focus on the congregation’s reaction. They were “amazed”. In this context, the Greek (ekplayso) is probably best translated “shocked”— shocked at his wisdom and shocked at his miracles. But not good shocked! This was Jesus of Nazareth. The carpenter. Mary’s boy. James’, Joseph’s and Simon’s brother. There were his sisters right there.
Scandal.“And they took offense at him.” The Greek word is skandalizo. They were scandalized. It was shameful, unseemly, outrageous to claim what he did about himself! (See Luke 4:18-21 for those claims.) Who does he think he is?
Nobody’s scandalized by Jesus these days. When Franklin Graham is interviewed on TV and (as he always does) squeezes in a word about Jesus dying for our sins, no one says, “How shameful, how outrageous that Graham should claim that about Jesus!” Only by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit does an unbeliever even give it a thought. Like the trodden-down path in Jesus’ parable, we’ve become so hardened that the seed of the Word doesn’t sink in at all. So Satan steals it without breaking a sweat (Mark 4:14,15).
Rebuke. The synagogue congregation certainly verbalized (probably shouted) their skandalizo. But Jesus didn’t turn the other cheek. Instead he turned the heat higher by answering his critics with a familiar proverb: “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household” (6:4). Just as Israel historically had rejected God’s prophets, so now the people of Nazareth were rejecting him whom God had sent.
Results. That service didn’t end well. Mark observes: “And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.” And he went about among the villages teaching (6:5-7).
What should we make of “And he could do no mighty work there . . . “? Obviously “their unbelief” was why. But are Jesus’ mighty works limited by our unbelief? We’re afraid to say “yes”, because we don’t want to imply that we contribute to Jesus’ miracles. We hesitate to give so-called “faith-teachers” more ammunition: “Let me teach you how to have the kind of faith that Jesus must answer!” But, to be true to the text, we have to say “yes”, their unbelief stopped Jesus in his tracks. But “yes” with this amendment: This is how the sovereign God “set things up.” ” . . . without faith it is impossible to please [God]” (Hebrews 11:6). Sure, Jesus drove the demons from the Gerasene graveyard-dweller without any faith from him—although the demons believed (5:1-8). But normally Jesus responds to faith, even faith as simple as, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (4:38).
Mark’s funny, isn’t he! “And [Jesus] could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.” I’d count a meeting where a few sick people were healed one of my crowning ministry moments. For Jesus, healing just a few was the exception.
But overall, Jesus was “amazed because of their unbelief” (6:6). The tense of “amazed” (or, “marveled”) implies a sudden, overwhelming emotion: Jesus was “slapped in the face by amazement because of their unbelief.” We’re apt to say, “Jesus knows everything. How could he be stunned by their unbelief?” But Jesus was the God-Man. Where deity stops and humanity starts, who can say? But clearly here, the man Jesus was “blown away” by their unbelief.
Sad! How sad that he could do only a few healings there! How sad that he then left to go to other villages, leaving the people of Nazareth stuck in the hardened cement of their faith-lessness!
When we reject Jesus
—when we don’t even trust him enough to go to him and say, “Don’t you care?”—
we close the door to the One with whom all things are possible!
Recent Comments