'And He went out from thence, and came into His own country; and His
disciples follow Him. 2. And when the Sabbath day was come, He began
to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing Him were astonished,
saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is
this which is given unto Him, that even such mighty works are wrought
by His hands? 3. Is not this the carpenter, the Son of Mary, the
Brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon! and are not His
sisters here with us? And they were offended at Him. 4. But Jesus said
unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country,
and among his own kin, and in his own house. 6. And He could there do
no mighty work, save that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk, and
healed them. 6. And He marvelled because of their unbelief. And He
went round about the villages, teaching. 7. And He called unto Him the
twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them
power over unclean spirits; 8. And commanded them that they should
take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread,
no money in their purse: 9. But be shod with sandals; and not put on
two coats. 10. And He said unto them, In what place soever ye enter
into an house, there abide till ye depart from that place. 11. And
whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence,
shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them.
Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and
Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. 12. And they went
out, and preached that men should repent. 13. And they cast out many
devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed
them.'--Mark vi. 1-13.
An easy day's journey would carry Jesus and His followers from
Capernaum, on the lake-side, to Nazareth, among the hills. What took
our Lord back there? When last He taught in the synagogue of Nazareth,
His life had been in danger; and now He thrusts Himself into the
wolf's den. Why? Mark seems to wish us to observe the connection
between this visit and the great group of miracles which he has just
recorded; and possibly the link may be our Lord's hope that the report
of these might have preceded Him and prepared His way. In His patient
long-suffering He will give His fellow-villagers another chance; and
His heart yearns for 'His own country,' and 'His own kin,' and 'His
own house,' of which He speaks so pathetically in the context.
I. We have here unbelief born of familiarity, and its effects on
Christ (verses 1-6). Observe the characteristic avoidance of display,
and the regard for existing means of worship, shown in His waiting
till the Sabbath, and then resorting to the synagogue. He and His
hearers would both remember His last appearance in it; and He and they
would both remember many a time before that, when, as a youth, He had
sat there. The rage which had exploded on His first sermon has given
place to calmer, but not less bitter, opposition. Mark paints the
scene, and represents the hearers as discussing Jesus while He spoke.
The decorous silence of the synagogue was broken by a hubbub of mutual
questions. 'Many' spoke at once, and all had the same thing to say.
The state of mind revealed is curious. They own Christ's wisdom in His
teaching, and the reality of His miracles, of which they had evidently
heard; but the fact that He was one of themselves made them angry that
He should have such gifts, and suspicious of where He had got them.
They seem to have had the same opinion as Nathanael--that no 'good
thing' could 'come out of Nazareth.' Their old companion could not be
a prophet; that was certain. But He had wisdom and miraculous power;
that was as certain. Where had they come from? There was only one
other source; and so, with many headshakings, they were preparing to
believe that the Jesus whom they had all known, living His quiet life
of labour among them, was in league with the devil, rather than
believe that He was a messenger from God.
We note in their questions, first, the glimpse of our Lord's early
life. They bring before us the quiet, undistinguished home and the
long years of monotonous labour. We owe to Mark alone the notice that
Jesus actually wrought at Joseph's handicraft. Apparently the latter
was dead, and, if so, Jesus would be the head of the house, and
probably the 'breadwinner.' One of the fathers preserves the tradition
that He 'made plows and yokes, by which He taught the symbols of
righteousness and an active life.' That good father seems to think it
needful to find symbolical meanings, in order to save Christ's
dignity; but the prose fact that He toiled at the carpenter's bench,
and handled hammer and saw, needs nothing to heighten its value as a
sign of His true participation in man's lot, and as the hallowing of
manual toil. How many weary arms have grasped their tools with new
vigour and contentment when they thought of Him as their Pattern in
their narrow toils!
The Nazarenes' difficulty was but one case of a universal tendency.
Nobody finds it easy to believe that some village child, who has grown
up beside him, and whose undistinguished outside life he knows, has
turned out a genius or a great man. The last people to recognise a
prophet are always his kindred and his countrymen. 'Far-away birds
have fine feathers.' Men resent it as a kind of slight on themselves
that the other, who was one of them but yesterday, should be so far
above them to-day. They are mostly too blind to look below the
surface, and they conclude that, because they saw so much of the
external life, they knew the man that lived it. The elders of Nazareth
had seen Jesus grow up, and to them He would be 'the carpenter's son'
still. The more important people had known the humbleness of His home,
and could not adjust themselves to look up to Him, instead of down.
His equals in age would find their boyish remembrances too strong for
accepting Him as a prophet. All of them did just what the most of us
would have done, when they took it for certain that the Man whom they
had known so well, as they fancied, could not be a prophet, to say
nothing of the Messiah so long looked for. It is easy to blame them;
but it is better to learn the warning in their words, and to take care
that we are not blind to some true messenger of God just because we
have been blessed with close companionship with him. Many a household
has had to wait for death to take away the prophet before they discern
him. Some of us entertain 'angels unawares,' and have bitterly to
feel, when too late, that our eyes were holden that we should not know
them.
These questions bring out strongly what we too often forget in
estimating Christ's contemporaries--namely, that His presence among
them, in the simplicity of His human life, was a positive hindrance to
their seeing His true character. We sometimes wish that we had seen
Him, and heard His voice. We should have found it more difficult to
believe in Him if we had. 'His flesh' was a 'veil' in other sense than
the Epistle to the Hebrews means; for, by reason of men's difficulty
in piercing beneath it, it hid from many what it was meant and fitted
to reveal. Only eyes purged beheld the glory of 'the Word' become
flesh when it 'dwelt among us'--and even they saw Him more clearly
when they saw Him no more. Let us not be too hard on these simple
Nazarenes, but recognise our kith and kin.
The facts on which the Nazarenes grounded their unbelief are really
irrefragable proof of Christ's divinity. Whence had this man His
wisdom and mighty works? Born in that humble home, reared in that
secluded village, shut out from the world's culture, buried, as it
were, among an exclusive and abhorred people, how came He to tower
above all teachers, and to sway the world? 'With whom took He counsel?
and who instructed Him, and taught Him?' The character and work of
Christ, compared with the circumstances of His origin and environment,
are an insoluble riddle, except on one supposition--that He was the
word and power of God.
The effects of this unbelief on our Lord were twofold. It limited His
power. Matthew says that 'He did not many mighty works.' Mark goes
deeper, and boldly days 'He could not.' It is mistaken jealousy for
Christ's honour to seek to pare down the strong words. The atmosphere
of chill unbelief froze the stream. The power was there, but it
required for its exercise some measure of moral susceptibility. His
miraculous energy followed, in general, the same law as His higher
exercise of saving grace does; that is to say, it could not force
itself upon unwilling men. Christ 'cannot' save a man who does not
trust Him. He was hampered in the outflow of His healing power by
unsympathetic disparagement and unbelief. Man can thwart God. Faith
opens the door, and unbelief shuts it in His face. He 'would have
gathered,' but they 'would not,' and therefore He 'could not.'
The second effect of unbelief on Him was that He 'marvelled.' He is
twice recorded to have wondered--once at a Gentile's faith, once at
His townsmen's unbelief. He wondered at the first because it showed so
unusual a susceptibility; at the second, because it showed so
unreasonable a blindness. All sin is a wonder to eyes that see into
the realities of things and read the end; for it is all utterly
unreasonable (though it is, alas! not unaccountable) and suicidal. 'Be
astonished, O ye heavens, at this.' Unbelief in Christ is, by Himself,
declared to be the very climax of sin, and its most flagrant evidence
(John xvi. 9); and of all the instances of unbelief which saddened His
heart, none struck more chill than that of these Nazarenes. They had
known His pure youth; He might have reckoned on some touch of sympathy
and predisposition to welcome Him. His wonder is the measure of His
pain as well as of their sin.
Nor need we wonder that He wondered; for He was true man, and all
human emotions were His. To one who lives ever in the Father's bosom,
what can seem so strange as that men should prefer homeless
exposedness and dreary loneliness? To one whose eyes ever behold
unseen realities, what so marvellous as men's blindness? To one who
knew so assuredly His own mission and rich freightage of blessing, how
strange it must have been that He found so few to accept His gifts!
Jesus knew that bitter wonder which all men who have a truth to
proclaim which the world has not learned, have to experience--the
amazement at finding it so hard to get any others to see what they
see. In His manhood, He shared the fate of all teachers, who have, in
their turn, to marvel at men's unbelief.
II. The new instrument which Christ fashions to cope with unbelief.
What does Jesus do when thus 'wounded in the house of His friends'?
Give way to despondency? No; but meekly betake Himself to yet obscurer
fields of service, and send out the Twelve to prepare His way, as if
He thought that they might have success where He would fail. What a
lesson for people who are always hankering after conspicuous
'spheres,' and lamenting that their gifts are wasted in some obscure
corner, is that picture of Jesus, repulsed from Nazareth, patiently
turning to the villages! The very summary account of the trial mission
of the Twelve here given presents only the salient points of the
charge to them, and in its condensation makes these the more emphatic.
Note the interesting statement that they were sent out two-and-two.
The other Evangelists do not tell us this, but their lists of the
Apostles are arranged in pairs. Mark's list is not so arranged, but he
supplies the reason for the arrangement, which he does not follow; and
the other Gospels, by their arrangement, confirm his statement, which
they do not give. Two-and-two is a wise rule for all Christian
workers. It checks individual peculiarities of self-will, helps to
keep off faults, wholesomely stimulates, strengthens faith by giving
another to hear it and to speak it, brings companionship, and admits
of division of labour. One-and-one are more than twice one.
The first point is the gift of power. Unclean spirits are specified,
but the subsequent verses show that miracle-working power in its other
forms was included. We may call that Christ's greatest miracle. That
He could, by His mere will, endow a dozen men with such power, is
more, if degree come into view at all, than that He Himself should
exercise it. But there is a lesson in the fact for all ages--even
those in which miracles have ceased. Christ gives before He commands,
and sends no man into the field without filling his basket with
seed-corn. His gifts assimilate the receiver to Himself, and only in
the measure in which His servants possess power which is like His own,
and drawn from Him, can they proclaim His coming, or prepare hearts
for it. The second step is their equipment. The special commands here
given were repealed by Jesus when He gave His last commands. In their
letter they apply only to that one journey, but in their spirit they
are of universal and permanent obligation. The Twelve were to travel
light. They might carry a staff to help them along, and wear sandals
to save their feet on rough roads; but that was to be all. Food,
luggage, and money, the three requisites of a traveller, were to be
'conspicuous by their absence.' That was repealed afterwards, and
instructions given of an opposite character, because, after His
ascension, the Church was to live more and more by ordinary means; but
in this journey they were to learn to trust Him without means, that
afterwards they might trust Him in the means. He showed them the
purpose of these restrictions in the act of abrogating them. 'When I
sent you forth without purse ... lacked ye anything?' But the spirit
remains unabrogated, and the minimum of outward provision is likeliest
to call out the maximum of faith. We are more in danger from having
too much baggage than from having too little. And the one
indispensable requirement is that, whatever the quantity, it should
hinder neither our march nor our trust in Him who alone is wealth and
food.
Next comes the disposition of the messengers. It is not to be
self-indulgent. They are not to change quarters for the sake of
greater comfort. They have not gone out to make a pleasure tour, but
to preach, and so are to stay where they are welcomed, and to make the
best of it. Delicate regard for kindly hospitality, if offered by ever
so poor a house, and scrupulous abstinence from whatever might suggest
interested motives, must mark the true servant. That rule is not out
of date. If ever a herald of Christ falls under suspicion of caring
more about life's comforts than about his work, good-bye to his
usefulness! If ever he does so care, whether he be suspected of it or
no, spiritual power will ebb from him.
The next step is the messengers' demeanour to the rejecters of their
message. Shaking the dust off the sandals is an emblem of solemn
renunciation of participation, and perhaps of disclaimer of
responsibility. It meant certainly, 'We have no more to do with you,'
and possibly, 'Your blood be on your own heads.' This journey of the
Twelve was meant to be of short duration, and to cover much ground,
and therefore no time was to be spent unnecessarily. Their message was
brief, and as well told quickly as slowly. The whole conditions of
work now are different. Sometimes, perhaps, a Christian is warranted
in solemnly declaring to those who receive not his message, that he
will have no more to say to them. That may do more than all his other
words. But such cases are rare; and the rule that it is safest to
follow is rather that of love which despairs of none, and, though
often repelled, returns with pleading, and, if it have told often in
vain, now tells with tears, the story of the love that never abandons
the most obstinate.
Such were the prominent points of this first Christian mission. They
who carry Christ's banner in the world must be possessed of power, His
gift, must be lightly weighted, must care less for comfort than for
service, must solemnly warn of the consequences of rejecting the
message; and so they will not fail to cast out devils, and to heal
many that are sick.