Frustrated!
Text: Mark 6:1-13 “Frustrated!” Pastor Braun 7-8-12 How many of you remember a movie called “The Wizard of Oz”? I remember this movie from my childhood. There are so many memorable images. You may remember Dorothy from Kansas and her little dog Toto. Then when she went to Oz there was the scarecrow and the tin man and the cowardly lion. They traveled together to meet the all powerful wizard of Oz who in truth, was just a displaced old man from Iowa – ha! It’s not just the images but the sounds and songs and melodies. Who could forget the song (Somewhere over the rainbow – will be played as I continue talking). A song that Dorothy sang that captures the longing of every human heart: that place where there’s no dark clouds, no bad days, no broken hearts – a song that captured Dorothy’s dream. It also captures many of our dreams too. But Dorothy’s adventures in Oz were not without danger or desperation. She was captured by the evil wicked witch of the west. Things looked really bad in one moment for her. Sometimes it helps to see it to remember and let’s look back at a not so great moment in Dorothy’s life. (Play movie where she’s frightened towards the end when Abby M finds her, where Dorothy says “I’m here in my room, I’m locked up in the witch’s castle and I’m trying to get home to you…Abby, don’t go away, I’m frightened, come back, come back…” I’ve got to be honest, that witch still scares me. But there’s no image for me that’s more haunting as a kid than that evil red hour glass of sand ticking away. When life gets hard, when we encounter troubles or a crisis or when we receive bad news, when things feel at their worst – it almost feels like someone has turned over an hour glass – and then suddenly hope is on the clock and our days are numbered and things never are going to get better. We wonder like Dorothy if we’re going to make it through as the sands continue to tick away. But for us, unlike Dorothy, our troubles are not a dream – we cannot magically just kick our heels and go home. Our pain and our stories of pain are very real. Not long ago, I sat with someone not even 30 years old who went through a painful divorce, her life feeling totally shattered! Another person was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic disorder where the immune system begins to attack the joints in the body and there are times when the pain is so bad that he literally couldn’t get out of bed. Talk about feeling helpless and alone wondering if you’ll make it through. Some years ago, a six year old boy named Matt came home from a basketball camp feeling pain in his leg. That led to a doctor’s visit which led to a cancer diagnosis which led to an amputation which led to a three year battle with cancer which led to that little boy dying before his 9th birthday. When I hear about these painful stories or dozens of others, or when I hear of your stories or look at some of the stories of our world, I can’t help but ask the question you may be asking right now: why? Why would a good and loving God allow for so much pain and suffering? No one has a perfect answer for why people suffer, why children get cancer, why tsunami’s wipe out hundreds of thousands of lives and why people you know end up hurting you deeply. The problem with pain is that it hurts! When things happen to us that we don’t understand, it becomes frustrating. Jesus experienced the same kind of struggles or frustrations we do. We see that in our text. We know that He has been traveling the region of Galilee for quite some time teaching about the kingdom of God and performing many miracles. But when He goes back home, He becomes frustrated by several things. The first is their lack of faith. That becomes apparent in verse two: “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?’” This is the first time Jesus goes back home since leaving Nazareth. Instead of being one of the kids sitting down (in the pew), He stands up and begins to teach. He has grown and changed. Imagine former neighbors bursting with excitement waiting to hear Him speak. What He said that day astounded them. He even healed some individuals but they immediately wondered what right this carpenter’s son had to speak with authority and to perform miracles. You can probably imagine them saying to themselves, “Who does He think He is?” We need to remember that these were people with whom He had grown up, they were His family and neighbors. He had probably played with some of them, listened to stories and worshipped in the local synagogue. They couldn’t comprehend how He could have anything profound or inspired to offer them so we’re told at the end of verse 3 that “they took offense at Him.” How could someone who was a day laborer, who grew up in a carpenter’s shop, speak God’s Word with divine insight? They wouldn’t listen to Him!!! They rejected Him!!! Think about the last time you were misunderstood or rejected!!! In verse 4 Jesus responds: “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” The people of Nazareth missed the chance to really know Jesus because they thought they already knew Him. He used to be a little kid. Let’s think of our high school reunions. Imagine being in the high school class of bill Gates. We can’t do college because Bill Gates was a Harvard drop-out. But if you had been in Bill Gates’ 10 year
high school reunion, you’d have talked to a hugely geeky guy, a wannabe working on some weirdo-ideas about some technological wizardry. At this point in his life, he was considered a loser, but now, he’s the richest man in the world worth billions of dollars! Jesus was considered a loser: He went home to Nazareth and lost. He would soon go to Jerusalem to the cross and by the looks of it, loose! He is rejected by them – not because of what He knows, but because of what they know about Him. Notice in verse 5 what their rejection did: “He could not do any miracles there, except lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them.” Because of their unbelief, Jesus couldn’t do anything! Don’t you find it interesting that Jesus, the powerful Son of God who spoke and taught with authority couldn’t do anything? We’re told that He marveled at their unbelief and was frustrated by those who had no faith. 1. THERE ARE TWO LEVELS OF BELIEF OR UNBELIEF. ONE LEVEL IS WITH THE HEAD AND THE OTHER IS WITH THE HEART. Real faith exists at both levels. When Jesus looks at your faith, what does He see? Is He amazed or does He stand in disbelief? Is He as frustrated with you as He was with those people in Nazareth? Is your faith equally at both levels or does one outweigh the other? We need to understand the importance of living out our faith through both our head and heart. Every survey I’ve seen shows that nearly everyone believes intellectually that there is a God. However, only twenty-five percent of our nation will be in church today. If you ask if they believe in God they will say yes but their actions contradict what they say because the desire is not in their heart. Many who witnessed Jesus’ miracles believed, but only a few in Nazareth entrusted their lives to Him. So it is today. Look how individuals say they believe in God but their belief has very little impact because they have been disillusioned with Jesus – either because they do not believe what the Bible says about Him or they don’t understand why He allows bad things to happen to us. Faith always moves forward. It’s more than just believing with your head and it’s more than a weak, pitiful emotion. Faith is a strong and vigorous confidence in the fact that even though we cannot see Him right now and cannot understand what He is doing, yet we know Him personally through Jesus Christ. I find it interesting in verse 7 that (after being rejected) He gathers the 12 disciples together and doesn’t send them out individually or by themselves, but 2 by 2. He doesn’t want them being alone because He knew that traveling alone would have been too difficult. Having a companion would help them overcome loneliness and criticism. In verse 8 Jesus gives some unusual instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. Why were they were allowed to take one pair of sandals but no food or money? He purposely took away almost every physical item of support because He wanted them to completely trust Him for everything. He also was warning them of the danger of materialism, He didn’t want anything to get in the way of their call! Then in verse 10 He gives them a gift: 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.” What was the gift? It was the gift to fail and move on. When they met someone who would misunderstand or reject them, shake the dust off your feet and move forward! I think we forget that not everyone is going to like us or even love you. Not everyone is going to appreciate you. Not every sermon I deliver to you is brilliant and motivating. There are going to be times when you and I will fail and mess up. So instead of getting more frustrated and beating ourselves up, move on in the strength of Christ. In other words, when you fail or when something in life overwhelms you, give it to Him. When you question God’s love or power, fail or fall forward towards Jesus. Jesus understands that we’re all sinners. We’re all in the same boat. The writer of Psalm 130 said this: “If you Lord, kept a record of sin, Lord who could stand?” The answer of course is no one. If God was keeping track of all our sins and the complicated weave of pain and suffering in our world, would there be any place for any one of us to cry “foul”? This is why Jesus came to give His life to put an end to this painful cycle of sin that we are all caught up in and to restore God’s shalom. When we suffer or when we see other people suffer, God does want us to get upset but He wants us to turn to Him instead of others or ourselves. The writers of Scripture didn’t spend their time trying to explain evil, instead they grieved over it. There’s an entire genre of literature in the Bible called “Lament” – a way for real people to express real grief about real loss. In fact, over 60% of the psalms, the prayers of Israel are prayers of lament, prayers of anguish. In these ancient prayers, God is accused of abandonment, falling asleep, and even accused of murder! The Israelites learned to pray their anguish and if you pray the psalms, you will be encouraged in your hurt and grief! Psalm 56:8 says: “Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll – are they not in your record?” In that day, people would actually collect and save their tears as a way of saying: we will not forget. God
has not forgotten a single prayer you’ve prayed or a single tear that has come out of your eye! That prayer about your marriage or loved one in your life, that pain of that person you’ve lost, that ache over a shattered dream or life, God has heard you and will not forget you! God has done something about it through the life of Jesus! Jesus suffered with us! The heart of Christianity is not that Jesus went through life explaining suffering – He shared in it! Just look at his life: Jesus lived in poverty, He was betrayed by His friends, falsely accused, brutally tortured, unjustly executed. 2. JESUS LOVED US ENOUGH TO COME INTO OUR WORLD AND BE WITH US IN OUR PAIN! If you’ve ever gone through pain, you know what matters most is presence. The longer I’ve been a pastor, the more I’ve come to discover that my role is not to have all the right answers, but to be present with others in their grief and pain and to bring Christ into the center of the circumstance. That is why I will hold your hand and embrace you because the presence of Christ draws us together. When Jesus wept, God the Father was weeping with you. The life of Jesus also shows us that God uses our suffering for good. Our suffering that appears to have nothing good attached to it will be used for good. It is not wasted time. In gospel of John Jesus and the disciples come upon a man who had been born blind from birth and they asked Jesus this pointed question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he would be born blind?” They wanted to know what we all want to know: why did this happen? Who can we blame? Let’s make sense of this! Jesus replied: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” JESUS IS NOT CONCERNED ABOUT THE “WHY” BUT FOR “WHAT” PURPOSE! Jesus didn’t say that suffering in and of itself is a good thing but His point is that God the Father uses even the worst pain and heartache for good. He can use it to refine our character and make us grow or to bring people together in authentic community, God can even use our pain to bless others!!! There is no clearer picture of this than the cross – where God turned the ultimate in evil and injustice and turned it into the perfect moment of grace and forgiveness. When the devil came and gave his very best attack Jesus turned it right back on him and said: it is finished. This means the days for sin and suffering and heartache are now numbered. Because of the cross it is not hope that is running out of time. Because of the cross, evil is on the clock. This promise is not somewhere over the rainbow, it was sealed at the empty tomb! One day there will be no more death or crying or pain and the Bible says that God will wipe every tear from our eyes. Which means: He will not have to keep a record of them anymore. Jesus is our only hope! Earlier I told you the story of a little boy named Matt who died of cancer and I asked the question: how can a good God be in something like that. I may never have the words to answer that question but I can tell you what Matt’s own family had to say. These are his parents words: “Five months ago Matt, our eight year old son died. How then can we stand here and confirm that God is good? This may seem strange but we have never experienced God so intimately and so powerfully as we were in the midst of our suffering. Don’t get me wrong, Matt’s cancer and his death brought us profound pain. We prayed hard as many of you did. I turned to Scripture to find comfort but as hard as I looked, I couldn’t find any verse that promised God would take away sickness and death. What I did find whatever were many promises of how He would be with us and provide for us. God kept that promise. Though our pain did not go away, the burden was eased by an abundance of blessings. And God worked within Matt to help him face death without fear and live out his life with complete joy. Even while he knew he was dying, he laughed and sang…he did cannon ball dives. Even with one leg he would ski and play street hockey. In our last conversation before he died, Matt spoke of heaven as a happy place. And then he said, ‘Mom, the angels are singing hallelujah’ and he kissed me goodbye and went to sleep. Those final hours were some of the holiest moments we’ve ever experienced. There was joy among our tears. We could all feel God’s presence and that room felt like hallowed ground. Our lives will never be the same but out of the depths of our misery, God parted the heavens and reached down. He did not take death away but He did take away the sting and in its place He made us feel His faithful and abundant love and for that we rejoice!” How could they rejoice? It wasn’t because they had an easy answer why their son died but it was because God came down and shared in their crisis. Jesus came down and shared in this painful tragedy. He’s done it in your life and in mine!
high school reunion, you’d have talked to a hugely geeky guy, a wannabe working on some weirdo-ideas about some technological wizardry. At this point in his life, he was considered a loser, but now, he’s the richest man in the world worth billions of dollars! Jesus was considered a loser: He went home to Nazareth and lost. He would soon go to Jerusalem to the cross and by the looks of it, loose! He is rejected by them – not because of what He knows, but because of what they know about Him. Notice in verse 5 what their rejection did: “He could not do any miracles there, except lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them.” Because of their unbelief, Jesus couldn’t do anything! Don’t you find it interesting that Jesus, the powerful Son of God who spoke and taught with authority couldn’t do anything? We’re told that He marveled at their unbelief and was frustrated by those who had no faith. 1. THERE ARE TWO LEVELS OF BELIEF OR UNBELIEF. ONE LEVEL IS WITH THE HEAD AND THE OTHER IS WITH THE HEART. Real faith exists at both levels. When Jesus looks at your faith, what does He see? Is He amazed or does He stand in disbelief? Is He as frustrated with you as He was with those people in Nazareth? Is your faith equally at both levels or does one outweigh the other? We need to understand the importance of living out our faith through both our head and heart. Every survey I’ve seen shows that nearly everyone believes intellectually that there is a God. However, only twenty-five percent of our nation will be in church today. If you ask if they believe in God they will say yes but their actions contradict what they say because the desire is not in their heart. Many who witnessed Jesus’ miracles believed, but only a few in Nazareth entrusted their lives to Him. So it is today. Look how individuals say they believe in God but their belief has very little impact because they have been disillusioned with Jesus – either because they do not believe what the Bible says about Him or they don’t understand why He allows bad things to happen to us. Faith always moves forward. It’s more than just believing with your head and it’s more than a weak, pitiful emotion. Faith is a strong and vigorous confidence in the fact that even though we cannot see Him right now and cannot understand what He is doing, yet we know Him personally through Jesus Christ. I find it interesting in verse 7 that (after being rejected) He gathers the 12 disciples together and doesn’t send them out individually or by themselves, but 2 by 2. He doesn’t want them being alone because He knew that traveling alone would have been too difficult. Having a companion would help them overcome loneliness and criticism. In verse 8 Jesus gives some unusual instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. Why were they were allowed to take one pair of sandals but no food or money? He purposely took away almost every physical item of support because He wanted them to completely trust Him for everything. He also was warning them of the danger of materialism, He didn’t want anything to get in the way of their call! Then in verse 10 He gives them a gift: 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.” What was the gift? It was the gift to fail and move on. When they met someone who would misunderstand or reject them, shake the dust off your feet and move forward! I think we forget that not everyone is going to like us or even love you. Not everyone is going to appreciate you. Not every sermon I deliver to you is brilliant and motivating. There are going to be times when you and I will fail and mess up. So instead of getting more frustrated and beating ourselves up, move on in the strength of Christ. In other words, when you fail or when something in life overwhelms you, give it to Him. When you question God’s love or power, fail or fall forward towards Jesus. Jesus understands that we’re all sinners. We’re all in the same boat. The writer of Psalm 130 said this: “If you Lord, kept a record of sin, Lord who could stand?” The answer of course is no one. If God was keeping track of all our sins and the complicated weave of pain and suffering in our world, would there be any place for any one of us to cry “foul”? This is why Jesus came to give His life to put an end to this painful cycle of sin that we are all caught up in and to restore God’s shalom. When we suffer or when we see other people suffer, God does want us to get upset but He wants us to turn to Him instead of others or ourselves. The writers of Scripture didn’t spend their time trying to explain evil, instead they grieved over it. There’s an entire genre of literature in the Bible called “Lament” – a way for real people to express real grief about real loss. In fact, over 60% of the psalms, the prayers of Israel are prayers of lament, prayers of anguish. In these ancient prayers, God is accused of abandonment, falling asleep, and even accused of murder! The Israelites learned to pray their anguish and if you pray the psalms, you will be encouraged in your hurt and grief! Psalm 56:8 says: “Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll – are they not in your record?” In that day, people would actually collect and save their tears as a way of saying: we will not forget. God
has not forgotten a single prayer you’ve prayed or a single tear that has come out of your eye! That prayer about your marriage or loved one in your life, that pain of that person you’ve lost, that ache over a shattered dream or life, God has heard you and will not forget you! God has done something about it through the life of Jesus! Jesus suffered with us! The heart of Christianity is not that Jesus went through life explaining suffering – He shared in it! Just look at his life: Jesus lived in poverty, He was betrayed by His friends, falsely accused, brutally tortured, unjustly executed. 2. JESUS LOVED US ENOUGH TO COME INTO OUR WORLD AND BE WITH US IN OUR PAIN! If you’ve ever gone through pain, you know what matters most is presence. The longer I’ve been a pastor, the more I’ve come to discover that my role is not to have all the right answers, but to be present with others in their grief and pain and to bring Christ into the center of the circumstance. That is why I will hold your hand and embrace you because the presence of Christ draws us together. When Jesus wept, God the Father was weeping with you. The life of Jesus also shows us that God uses our suffering for good. Our suffering that appears to have nothing good attached to it will be used for good. It is not wasted time. In gospel of John Jesus and the disciples come upon a man who had been born blind from birth and they asked Jesus this pointed question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he would be born blind?” They wanted to know what we all want to know: why did this happen? Who can we blame? Let’s make sense of this! Jesus replied: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” JESUS IS NOT CONCERNED ABOUT THE “WHY” BUT FOR “WHAT” PURPOSE! Jesus didn’t say that suffering in and of itself is a good thing but His point is that God the Father uses even the worst pain and heartache for good. He can use it to refine our character and make us grow or to bring people together in authentic community, God can even use our pain to bless others!!! There is no clearer picture of this than the cross – where God turned the ultimate in evil and injustice and turned it into the perfect moment of grace and forgiveness. When the devil came and gave his very best attack Jesus turned it right back on him and said: it is finished. This means the days for sin and suffering and heartache are now numbered. Because of the cross it is not hope that is running out of time. Because of the cross, evil is on the clock. This promise is not somewhere over the rainbow, it was sealed at the empty tomb! One day there will be no more death or crying or pain and the Bible says that God will wipe every tear from our eyes. Which means: He will not have to keep a record of them anymore. Jesus is our only hope! Earlier I told you the story of a little boy named Matt who died of cancer and I asked the question: how can a good God be in something like that. I may never have the words to answer that question but I can tell you what Matt’s own family had to say. These are his parents words: “Five months ago Matt, our eight year old son died. How then can we stand here and confirm that God is good? This may seem strange but we have never experienced God so intimately and so powerfully as we were in the midst of our suffering. Don’t get me wrong, Matt’s cancer and his death brought us profound pain. We prayed hard as many of you did. I turned to Scripture to find comfort but as hard as I looked, I couldn’t find any verse that promised God would take away sickness and death. What I did find whatever were many promises of how He would be with us and provide for us. God kept that promise. Though our pain did not go away, the burden was eased by an abundance of blessings. And God worked within Matt to help him face death without fear and live out his life with complete joy. Even while he knew he was dying, he laughed and sang…he did cannon ball dives. Even with one leg he would ski and play street hockey. In our last conversation before he died, Matt spoke of heaven as a happy place. And then he said, ‘Mom, the angels are singing hallelujah’ and he kissed me goodbye and went to sleep. Those final hours were some of the holiest moments we’ve ever experienced. There was joy among our tears. We could all feel God’s presence and that room felt like hallowed ground. Our lives will never be the same but out of the depths of our misery, God parted the heavens and reached down. He did not take death away but He did take away the sting and in its place He made us feel His faithful and abundant love and for that we rejoice!” How could they rejoice? It wasn’t because they had an easy answer why their son died but it was because God came down and shared in their crisis. Jesus came down and shared in this painful tragedy. He’s done it in your life and in mine!
