A Hometown Boy

Mark 6: 1-13

I get off the train at West Worthing and I’m back in my hometown.

It’s a half an hour walk from the station to my childhood home where my mum and dad still live.

I dawdle all the way, flitting like a shadow through places that used to be right at the centre of my life.

The tennis courts where I played every Saturday in the summer.

The church where I was confirmed in a state of some confusion.

A little side road where finally I unscrewed the stabilisers and learnt to ride a two wheeled bicycle.

The house where my  childhood sweetheart once lived. Her Mother is still there.

The woods where we made a camp – now a development of retirement bungalows.

I’m back in my hometown although I’ve long since moved on from there, but these places, these memories become more and more important to me.  For it was here in Worthing, that God , against all the odds, I sometimes think, first looked upon Andrew Cunnington and loved Him.

And loved him in those streets, those churches, those friends. And carried on loving him even when he was not looking.

Is it just me, or do you have a hometown too and whether the experience was good or bad, whether your home town was Redhill or far away, can you see it as the place where God began to love to the very heart of you.

I’ve been to Nazareth several times. The home town of Jesus, and I’m not really very fond of it. Beyond the churches and the shrines – it’s a bit like Station Road, Redhill.

When Jesus came home to Nazareth, I’m sure it was very different. And I wonder what that homecoming meant to Him.

 His house. His school. His synagogue. His friends. His carpenter’s shop – for note in Mark, he’s not the Son of a carpenter – Jesus ran the business…and the place, the most special place where his Mother took him aside one day, sat him down and said – it was here, you know that the angel came, right here and told me that the fruit of my womb would change the world for ever.

I like to think Nazareth was special to Jesus for the same reason as my home town  because God the Father began to love Him there as an incarnate Son. Love Him through Mary and Joseph. Friends. Neighbours and customers.

It seems to me they probably knew Jesus as a fairly ordinary little boy and a run of the mill young man who had disappeared from sight  and then suddenly,  extraordinarily, there’s news of this travelling ministry that’s taking Galilee by storm,  and now he was coming home.

And in his hometown Jesus made an immediate impact. They were astonished at his teaching. What wisdom! What mighty works, they cried! And yet in the same breath, Mark tells us – they took offence at him.

Was this because they could not accept the power of God working in such a way?  That God could step into an ordinary life which had been lived unremarkably  amongst them and make out of that life – Messiah!

And can it be that those we find it hardest to relate to in matters of faith are our nearest and dearest ones, because they, knowing us warts and all, can scarcely believe that God could take a life so unremarkable and full of shortcomings and make of it - disciple.

In the end God called Jesus away from his hometown – and he  set  his face towards Jerusalem, and his disciples were given no alternative but to up sticks and make the journey with Him.

As if to say come away with me from the place where people have got preconceived ideas about you and where you have felt secure and have commanded a certain reputation.

 Accept that for the blessing it was – a huge blessing maybe – but come away now – come away with me on pilgrimage, and leave the trappings of the home town behind.

I don’t know what to think about the life of Michael Jackson – but I am haunted by the descriptions people give of his Neverland Ranch.  What a sad place it sounds. As if a vain attempt was being made to create or recreate a childhood home town and that despite piling in millions of dollars, it was just rusting away at the end,  on dreams of what might have been.

According to Mark’s Gospel – Jesus never went back to Nazareth again, but in leaving his home town he found other places where he was welcomed and made to feel at home. Bethany and the friends who lived there seemed vital to him at the time when opposition grew and Good Friday drew near.

What makes St Matthew’s church so special is that we’ve come from all over the place to be here. Fallen in through the front door for a whole rag bag of reasons – making the journey together from  home town to  kingdom – trying to have less reliance on things and more reliance on God, and none of us finding that especially easy.

 We each must bring with us  the blessings of the hometown because through them we trace the thread of God’s love for us and bringing with us the hometown curses too, those experiences that have scarred us for life and made us feel worse than useless – that on the road together – faces set towards Jerusalem with Christ – we may find healing, and in our less than perfect state we may be a blessing to others.

RH 5.7.09