Mark 6: 1-13 July 4, 2021At the Public Square. Rev. Ben Roberts for Foundry UMC

It could be the type of situation where someone goes home, and they just know you too well to take you seriously. The kind of place where any time you start talking about something serious, someone responds with a story like, “I remember when you were just a little feller running around bonking a giant yellow bowl on your head. You’d just run around saying “bonk, bonk, bonk.” Tapping the bowl on your head like a giant hat.” It can be hard to lead those who know you or know you best.

In Jesus’ case today, the problem was less an issue with lovingly nostalgic family members and more an issue of proper place. Dr. Emerson Powery in his commentary on this week’s text reminds us of the functions of honor and shame in Mark’s society. He Points out that the crowd in this sequence question and point to Jesus’ brothers, sisters, and mother. No mention of a father, which is the clue showing the crowd challenges his authority by shaming him based on his perceived illegitimate conception, affirming his low standing in the community. 

This “direct insult” is first and foremost an effort to end the conversation or teachings. Some, or at least enough of the crowd, center their feelings and objections to his teachings and use the insult to scandalize and discredit this otherwise powerful, wise teacher. The community as a function of structured life together has deemed this uncontrollable aspect of Jesus’ identity to be sufficient cause for him to have low standing or no authority.

Overly familiar neighbors or truly scandalous public assertiveness, the point is to stop hearing this prophetic teaching. So often in Mark, it is Jesus’ actions and teachings that are the real offense and scandal for anyone hearing or watching. This is especially true for those holding power and privileged positions of leadership such as the Priests (who twisted systems of purity and debt to their own advantage), Roman colonizers and collaborators (who benefited from the taking of land, labor, and goods, if say tributes/tax weren’t/couldn’t be paid), or even the Zealots (whose efforts were more geared to a militaristic takeover of the system for their own advantage). Jesus seems to have had a very annoying stance of nonalignment with any of those groups and strategies and very often criticized them if not outright undermined them. This is how Jesus brought his faith and message into the intersections of the public square, and I suppose it could have gone better.

Hearing a challenging message this age or any age, does not seem to produce such a different result. A queer voice in the United Methodist Church (if they’re out), a homeless voice for housing (if it means higher taxes), a black voice for police reform (if it’s too loud), latinx voice for citizenship (if they weren’t straight A students), a resident of public housing’s voice (really for anything anywhere), saying anything (if it’s sounds political); while not comprehensive or perfect as a metaphor we still see voices like these muted or not prioritized in the public square. The crowd of the public square is still adept at finding a reason not to act upon or even receive a message from or about the vulnerable, and I am often in the crowd. But the consequences of a lack of openness to prophetic messages for liberation, in any age, remain too deadly to hold our silence or maintain our refusal to receive a word of challenge.

“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house” (Mk 6: 4). 

Again, Powery points out that operating within an honor/shame society, prophets were generally ones who would receive honor, but prophets are usually operating where they are less known. However, for that to be true in someone’s hometown, it likely, and for Jesus in this case, means taking a space or share of honor from someone else and above their appointed or birth share. Or so the