Texts: Ezekiel 2:1-5, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Mark 6:1-6                                7^th Sunday after Pentecost

Comfort and Contempt

            In the name of Jesus, dear friends in Christ: There’s an old proverb that says, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”  Like all old proverbs, it rings with a certain amount of truth that’s based on personal observation.  For example, you could take your favorite meal, whatever it is:  if you had to eat it every day, three meals a day, for an extended period of time, it wouldn’t take long before you began to hate it.  I recall that when I grew up, at our house “spaghetti again” was just one word:  “Hey, what’s for supper?”  “We’re having spaghettiagain.”  I might add that my mother’s spaghetti was never a favorite to begin with, so we learned to hold it in something more than just contempt.  (But I should be careful though, because sometimes my mom reads these sermons.)

            The saying familiarity breeds contempt has much broader application of course, and it does so for several reasons.  One is that we are creatures that are inclined to appreciate a certain level of newness and change – not too much, mind you – but we like the sense of freshness or perhaps even wonder we get when we experience something different. This is why our wives insist on replacing perfectly good curtains and wallpaper, why we trade in cars that work just fine to get ones with all the latest gadgets, and why the kids must have the newest, coolest video games.  What’s wrong with the old stuff?  Nothing really – but we’re tired of it.  We’re sick of looking at it.  We’re too familiar with it.

            And I think another reason that familiarity breeds contempt is that the longer we are exposed to something, the more its faults become evident.  This is especially true with the people you know.  When you first meet someone, you might be quite impressed with any number of outstanding qualities they possess; but as time goes on, you begin realize that they’re not perfect after all, that they have some faults …which can sometimes become irritating … and with time and exposure, minor irritations can easily grow into major ones.  And so end many once promising romances.

            And then working in sort of the opposite direction, part of the problem with being overly familiar with someone is that their behaviors become predictable.  That can be good and bad.  On one hand, we need predictability in the people we know.  That’s how we know what to trust them with.  It’s the basis of friendships and relationships.  On the other hand, knowing what someone is going to say or do all the time can make that person extremely irritating and boring. It’s also a person’s predictability that allows us to manipulate and take advantage of them.  So we want a certain level of innovation and change in people – as long as it’s not too much.  We get really uncomfortable or even angry when someone who’s very familiar acts too far outside our expectations.

            Well, the reason I mention all of this is that the “familiarity breeds contempt” idea seems to be the common theme in today’s three Scripture readings.  Take this morning’s Gospel in which the hometown crowd at Nazareth rejects Jesus. Why?  It’s because they know him so well.  From the time Jesus was about four years old to the time he launched his public ministry at around age thirty, he lived and worked in Nazareth.  He learned carpentry from his adopted father, Joseph; and presumably made his living making furniture, and wooden plows and ox yokes, and other items of wood.  And since Nazareth wasn’t a very big town, it seems logical that most people would have known him pretty well – probably as a fairly quiet, honest, hard-working fellow.  You could likely find in just about every household one or more things Jesus had made or repaired – I suppose you could really say that Jesus was as familiar to them as their living room furniture.

            That was until about six or seven months ago when he left town.  He said his goodbyes, and then he was off to the Jordan River where John was baptizing. He hasn’t been back since.  But you wouldn’t believe the reports about him that have been coming back to town.  Apparently he’s suddenly decided that he’s some kind of religious teacher. Can you imagine?  Jesus the carpenter now fancies himself a rabbi. He’s been teaching all around Galilee – been drawing huge crowds.  He’s even got a small following of permanent students.  On top of it all, it’s being reported that he’s been doing miracles and healing people.  Jesus the carpenter is now doing miracles.  Yeah.  Right.

            Comes the day when he returns to his hometown. He’s been invited to speak in the synagogue this Sabbath.  The place is packed.  Everybody turns out to hear the local boy who’s become some kind of celebrity sensation. Their expectations, however, are not very high – after all, it’s just Jesus, the guy who used to live down the street. That’s why they are so surprised by what he has to say.  His thoughts are so simple and yet so sublime.  There is deep wisdom in his words … and great authority.  He talks about God as if he knows him personally.  They are really quite amazed.  His teaching is unlike anything they’ve ever heard.  They feel the pull of its truth in their hearts … and yet, they resist.  The power of his teaching notwithstanding, it’s still just Jesus.

            “You forget, Jesus, that we know who you are. We remember when you were just another snot-nosed kid playing in the street.  You’ve got a basic education, same as the rest of us.  Now we’re to understand that you’re a Bible scholar? Here’s the fellow who taught you how to read the Bible.  Now you’re a healer?  Here’s the doctor your mother took you to see you when you were sick.  We don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, Jesus; but you’re not going to fool us.”  And so they reject him and his message.  And in the process they end up like someone who throws away a precious and valuable gift because of the plain, unremarkable way it’s wrapped.

This same sort of thing happens frequently with new converts to the Christian faith.  When the light of the Spirit finally begins to shine in their hearts and minds, there’s an exuberance released.  The burdens of guilt and despair are gone.  And there’s this glorious realization of God’s super abounding love in Christ.  They know the joy of salvation.  And it’s only natural that they want to share this joy with others, especially their family and friends who do not yet know it.  But very often they run up against a stone wall.  Oh, these folks see the enthusiasm and happiness, they hear the powerful message that has made all the difference, they may even see remarkable changes in the new convert’s life; but they dismiss all of it.  “You?  Of all people, you’ve got religion now?  No way.  You forget: we know who you really are.  We know how you live and what you’ve done in the past.  This is some kind of joke, or it’s a passing fad, or maybe you’ve gone completely bonkers, but there’s no way:  this isn’t who you really are.”  And they too reject the gift because of the familiar way it comes packaged.

And long time believers too can become contemptuous of what they find overly familiar with respect to the faith itself.  In today’s Old Testament lesson we see the call of the prophet Ezekiel, who was charged to declare a stern message of warning to people whose contempt of the Lord sprang from a misguided sense of being too familiar with him. How is that possible?  Well, understand that for the ancient Jews, the temple of God in Jerusalem was quite literally “the House of the Lord.”  God’s abiding presence was in the building.  And so God was for them, in very real terms, the guy who lived down the street.  And the Lord had taken residence in his temple because he was their God and they were his people.  He had chosen them above all other peoples for this special privilege.  Why? Well, according to the Scriptures it was for no other reason than because of his amazing and unexplainable love – but in the popular imagination, it was because “we’re a substantial cut above all the other people on earth.  God chose us because we’re the best.  No one else is close.  That’s why he loves us.  And that’s why he’s given us all the covenants, and the temple worship, and the sacrifices to offer.  And that’s why he’ll always forgive us, no matter what we do.” 

And even if you’re only vaguely familiar with the Old Testament, you know that that attitude was responsible for getting God’s people in lots of trouble.  The history of the Jews is little more than repeated cycles of the people rejecting the Lord and his commands; the Lord sending warnings through one of his prophets that dire consequences would result if the people didn’t turn back; those warnings going unheeded; the Lord then making good on the threats and bringing about some disaster to drive his people to repentance; the people, in trouble now, recognizing their sin and calling out for help; and the Lord forgiving and restoring them.  That was the all too familiar pattern:  We sin.  We ignore the warnings.  Bad things happen.  We repent. God forgives.  Over and over again.  And because it was so familiar, the people grew contemptuous of God himself. They despised and abused his grace and forgiveness.  In each cycle they’d push the limits of their rebellion even farther, stepping across the line knowing full well that, “God loves us.  He’ll forgive us – he always does.  We can count on it.  So we can get away with anything.”  They really thought they could – and they made the mistake of trying one too many times.

The prophet Ezekiel was called to deliver the Lord’s unexpected and shocking words, “No.  Not this time.  This time the Lord is going to do something really different.  You’ve grown so familiar and comfortable with God’s forgiveness that it’s turned into contempt for him.  So now he’s going to shake things up.  He’s going to pull out the foundation from under our feet.”  Well, most of the folks who heard Ezekiel figured that this was the part of the cycle in which they were supposed to ignore the dire warnings.  “Yeah, yeah, Ezekiel.  Keep on talking, we hear you.”  They figured they didn’t have to actually do anything about it because they had an ace in the hold, so to speak.  That was the temple.  It was God’s House.  He was their reliable neighbor in a crisis.  They knew they could always go there, knock on his door, and make their appeals directly to him.  “But that”, Ezekiel told them, “is precisely what the Lord is going to take from you. He’s going to leave his temple. He’s going to allow an enemy army to capture the city and destroy his House.  And when it happens, you can cry and weep and beg all you want, but there won’t be anyone home to hear you.  And when you cry to heaven, you’ll get no answer.  The Lord will turn his back and say that he doesn’t know you.”  The people responded, “No.  We know the Lord too well.  He would never do that.”

In the reading we heard, the Lord tells Ezekiel, “Say to them, ’This is what the Lord says.’  And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them.”  They did indeed discover that Ezekiel was a true prophet, and that his warnings were absolutely on target.  Trouble was that they found out too late.  They didn’t know the Lord as well as they thought, and they suffered the consequences.

But let’s bring all of this home, shall we?  We recognize that it is our goal as Christians to pursue a deeper and richer relationship with our loving Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Our desire is to know him better.  But I wonder if it’s not the case that sometimes we’re just a bit too familiar with him – familiar in ways that lead to contempt.  What do I mean?  Well, for starters, I think it true for most of us that we grew up with Jesus. As far back as we can remember, we attended church and Sunday School, and we learned and relearned the standard stock of Bible stories.  Now, when we hear them again, there’s sometimes some irritation:  “Here it comes again, same old boring stuff.”  We feel we know Jesus pretty well.  And yet, most of us have an awareness that very often there’s a whole lot more going on in these stories than first meets the eye – and not just in the stock stories that we know so well, but also in a bunch of other stories that we know are in the Scriptures but that we never bother to investigate.  Through them all the Lord would like very much to reveal more of himself and vast his wisdom to us.  He’d like to be better known.  But I think that often we are very much like that crowd at Nazareth who only thought they knew Jesus so well.  And when he tried to give them more, they rejected him.

That’s one way our familiarity makes us contemptuous; but even more problematic is our over familiarity with God’s grace and forgiveness.   Like the Jews of Ezekiel’s day, it’s easy for us who know the Gospel of Jesus Christ so well to fall into repeated cycles of sin and repentance that become so routine that we lose the sense of guilt for our sin, and consequently we lose the sense of release and joy we should have upon being forgiven.  The grace of God that should be the cause of motivating us to be more like him, full of goodness and grace, we misuse to the opposite effect – we abuse it, with a cocky sense of “Oh, the Lord is always loving and forgiving to me – I can get away with anything”.  And thus we hold the Lord Jesus and his sacrifice for us in complete contempt. 

St. Paul was a man who understood the danger in this.  Probably no one understood the Gospel of God’s forgiveness in Christ better than he – and so probably no one was more susceptible to the danger of treating it with disrepect.  So, how did he avoid doing that?  The answer is that the Lord did it for him.  In today’s Epistle, Paul explains that he was sent a “thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan” that tormented him.  Apparently it was some kind of painful, chronic condition in his body, but we don’t know what exactly.  And it really doesn’t matter.  Three times Paul prayed to God to take it away; that is, he asked to be healed.  And you can imagine how Paul would have prayed completely relying on the Lord whom he knew loved him so much.  “Surely, Father, I know you well enough to know that you don’t want me to suffer like this.”  The answer he got was not what he was expecting:  The Lord told him, “It’s precisely because I love you so much that I won’t take it away from you.  I know you well enough to know that you need this to keep you from over-relying on my forgiveness in a way that makes you think you can sin with impunity.” Paul’s constant pain served him as an ever-present reminder of sin’s terrible consequences and his continuing need for God’s grace and forgiveness.  He went on to say that when he understood that, he rejoiced all the more in the hardships and suffering he faced.  He knew that his afflictions helped keep his familiarity with God’s grace from treating it with contempt.

Which is good news for all of us, because at times we all do the same thing. We allow our very limited familiarity with the Lord to cause us to treat him and his forgiveness with utter contempt and disrespect.  But here’s the amazing thing: The Lord does not allow his total familiarity with us as an excuse to treat us with contempt – even though it should.  You know, he doesn’t have to look very hard to find our faults.  They’re as countless and the sands and he still knows every one of them.  He certainly knows them better than we do. He knows us so well that he knows exactly what he must give us in order to keep us reliant on him and his grace in Jesus Christ.  And so, like he did for St. Paul, he sends us what we need:  his law to accuse and show us our sins, his word of absolution to assure us of his forgiveness, a complete library of history, poetry, and proverb in the Scriptures by which he reveals himself to us in fuller measure, and as is needed, hardship and discipline to keep us from abusing his many gifts.

His goal throughout is to renew in our hearts the joy of his salvation.  And because we so readily become sated, bored, and distracted, he causes us to spiritually hunger and thirst so that he can fill us again with his love.  There are new wonders to discover every day.  May he then increase our appetite and open or eyes to see that it’s not “spaghettiagain” that he would serve us, but a vast feast of the richest foods: old comforts and new delights with which he would fully satisfy our hungry souls.  May he grant it to us for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!