What Can't Jesus Do? (Mark 6)

When we think about heros returning to their hometowns, we typically imagine celebrations and rejoicing. Soldiers returning home from a tour of duty may be met with applause at the airport and tearful hugs at home. A championship-winning team may enjoy a parade down Main Street in their honor. This is not the case for every hometown hero, however. At the end of Tolkien’s famous saga The Lord of the Rings we find four hobbits returning to their homeland after an arduous journey (that nearly killed them on multiple occasions) wherein they quite literally saved the world. In the movie adaptation, they return to the Shire to find that, because of the ways their journey has changed them, they no longer quite fit in among their neighbors and extended family. In the book, however, their homecoming is much worse. They arrive at the Shire to find the bridge into town blocked by a large gate and they are informed that a new “Chief” will not let anyone in after dark. After climbing the gate anyway, a group of hobbits attempts to arrest them. Our returning heros are later accosted by a group of Men who threaten them. As things unravel, they discover that their old enemy, the evil wizard Saruman (whom they thought defeated by Gandalf), has taken over the town. Hardly a hero’s welcome at all.

While our passage today is much shorter than The Lord of the Rings and includes approximately zero evil wizards, we find Jesus receiving a cold welcome in his hometown, Nazareth. As we spend some time in Mark 6 today, we’re going to consider three things together: why the people of Nazareth dismissed Jesus, what Jesus did in response to their dismissal, and how we might avoid repeating their mistake.

The People Put Jesus in a Box

Mark begins this paragraph with travel: “He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.” This hometown is Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up after his family returned from Egypt after fleeing Herod’s infanticide (Mt 2.16–23). Upon his return, “on the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue” (2). The people of Nazareth respond with amazement at Jesus’ words mixed with an unwillingness to see him as anything more than the young man they knew before he took on the role of a traveling rabbi. Mark puts it this way in vs 2–3:

…many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

The word “astounded” means a bit more than just positive amazement; it carries the idea of being “overwhelmed” as well. Mark records that the townsfolk were shocked by both Jesus’s “wisdom” and his “deeds of power.” Together, these shocking things summarize the earlier stories of his Gospel. Mark gives his readers a rapid-fire account of miracles and messages. Jesus heals diseases (leprosy, paralysis, immobile limbs, chronic hemorrhaging), casts out multiple demons, raises a dead girl, and quiets a storm. He proclaims God’s kingdom, teaching about Sabbath observance, fasting, true spiritual family, telling stories about sowers, seeds, harvests, and lamps. And now in Nazareth, the people know what he’s said and done, but they don’t accept it.

Rather than welcoming their hometown hero as a well-known rabbi and miracle worker, they get stuck on how they remember him from before he began his public ministry: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” With these labels, the people justify their conclusion that Jesus is less than who he truly is. In their eyes, he’s still Jesus from the block.

Familarity breeds contempt and the people of Nazareth have become too familiar with Jesus. Their rejection of Jesus is conclusive. We may overlook the significance of Mark’s words, “And they took offense at him.” The word Mark uses here has almost nothing to do with the lighter way we use “offend” today to mean “strongly bother.” This is the same word translated “stumbling block” or “cause someone to fall away” throughout the New Testament. To be “offended” in this way means to choose not to follow Jesus in faith. Elsewhere in Mark, Jesus warns against your hand or foot or eye causing you to stumble: it’s better cut it off and enter eternal life injured. He also warns that being drowned with a millstone necklace would be better than causing a little one to stumble, to reject faith. The Nazarenes’ rejection of Jesus is quite serious.

The Consequences of Putting Jesus in a Box

Jesus’ reaction in vs 4-6 is complicated, to say the least. Immediately, he has a reply: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown.” Jesus appears to be unsurprised here. After all, back in Mark 3, his family had already demonstrated that they didn’t understand who Jesus was becoming. After casting out demons,

Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind” (3.20–21)

And Jesus shortly confirmed that a rift had indeed formed.

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (3.31–35)

So Mark has been foreshadowing this; he’s telling us a story that leads up to the rejection. But Mark’s very next words may catch us off-guard, not because this is a big twist in the narrative, but because the next sentences seem to cut across the grain of what we might consider “orthodox theology.” While we affirm the overarching conclusions of systematic theology that God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere-present), when the Gospels (Mark especially) describe the genuine humanity of Jesus, those attributes get a little “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey” on us; they don’t play out how we expect. Let’s turn to the details of Mark’s words.

And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.

We’re startled at first to read that there’s something Jesus “could not do.” He is God, after all! It’s completely understandable to feel an urge to defend Jesus’ power and perhaps suggest that “could not do” might really mean “chose not to do.” In other words, we might say that Mark meant that Jesus was limited by his own intentional response to the people of Nazareth, not limited by their unbelief. As well-intentioned as the re-interpretation might be, the word Mark chooses for “could do” is not a word of choice or intention: it’s a very common Greek verb that means “to be able” to do something. Roughly 60% of the time this word appears in the New Testament, the NRSV committee translates it as “can” / “cannot.” Another 20% of the time, the translators used a form of “able” / “unable.” The most straightforward translation of this clause is “he was not able to do not even one act of power there.” Nerdy note: yes, I used a double-negative in that translation, on purpose. The Greek sentence has two negatives (not able to do, not even one act of power) and in NT Greek, double negatives serve to intensify the negative aspect of the sentence; they don’t cancel out like in modern English. Mark is both clear and emphatic here; we would need to make a really airtight case for interpreting this as merely “Jesus chose not to do miracles.” Incidentally, the impulse to interpret that verb creatively in order to defend Jesus’ autonomous power is not bad and it’s not new. Not only have most English Bible translators picked the slightly broader “could not” instead of “was not able,” Matthew drops the word “be able” and the second negative word, writing simply “he did not do many acts of power there.” Matthew’s more neutral wording, however, does not mean we should reduce Mark’s wording accordingly. God gave us four unique gospels and the Church has received and honored those individual perspectives for almost two millennia. If we rush to flatten out any differences of wording or tone, if we take a beautiful work of four-part harmony and reduce it to a single unison chorus, we risk losing all the things God wants to reveal to us and we impair our ability to experience and live in all the stories told the way God provided to us.

I hope I’ve made a good case for letting Mark’s bolder wording stand here. Even further confirming his emphasis on the real humanity of Jesus, Mark next writes that Jesus was amazed at their unbelief. Mark uses this word four times. In chapter 5, Jesus commands a demonic legion out of a man and into two thousand pigs; the people are “amazed” as the man who had been rescued tells his story. Pilate is “amazed” that Jesus remains silent in the face of the greatest legal travesty the world has ever seen. Later that evening, Pilate “wonders” whether Jesus has died and asks a centurion to confirm. This is a word of genuine surprise, amazement that comes from learning something one previously didn’t know.

The lack of miracles creates an uncomfortable tension with omnipotence; the amazement creates an uncomfortable tension with omniscience. Theologically, how should we think about this tension? How can we avoid the mistake made in Nazareth?

How Do We Avoid the Same Mistake?

I want to begin this final movement by observing that this passage provides all its readers with a warning about overfamiliarity leading to rejection of Jesus. And also, I think in our context, it may provide us with an immediate test case for evaluating how willing we are to admit complications to our understanding of who Jesus is. (I don’t think Mark wrote this specifically for 21st-century, Western Christians, but providentially, we may have something special in this passage.)

Wrestling with Discomfort

I just spent a good bit of time working out the possibly surprising way Mark describes limitations on Jesus. Let’s simplify the logical construct that creates the discomfort.

Power

  1. God is omnipotent.
  2. Jesus is fully God.
  3. Jesus is omnipotent.
    But here, Jesus is currently unable to do what he’s done in dozens of other cities.

Knowledge

  1. God is omniscient.
  2. Jesus is fully God.
  3. Jesus is omniscient.
    Yet Jesus is genuinely surprised the unbelief of the Nazarenes. Also, Jesus appeared to not know who had touched his cloak and been healed. Also, Jesus doesn’t know the hour or the day of his return.

Presence

  1. God is omnipresent.
  2. Jesus is fully God.
  3. Jesus is omnipresent.
    Yet Jesus is only in one place at one time for 30+ years.

As we progressed through those three attributes, we got less and less surprised by the tensions, and increasingly realized that, indeed, we have processed this tension before. Mark’s strong wording about Jesus’ inability is not as unusual as we may have first thought.

Understanding the Tension

So, how should we understand these tensions? Let me state first we’ve entered the realm of divine mystery, so I don’t have a single, comprehensive, logic answer for you. I do have some considerations to keep in mind, however.

Story

First, these three attributes of God, the divine perfections are tricky. While theology books can cite Scriptures that teach God’s unmatched power, knowledge, and presence, the “all-” / “omni-” expressions of these attributes have some internal contradictions of their own. You may have heard the dilemma, “can God (or any omnipotent being) create a stone so big he can’t lift it?” Either God can’t make such a stone or God can’t lift such a stone: either way there’s a “can’t” involved. To avoid the dangers of such philosophically driven theological claims, I’d advise that we ground our understanding of who God is in what Scripture shows God being and doing, not in a logical / philosophical idea pushed to the nth degree of internal contradiction. Most of Scripture is written as narratives; I believe God’s plan is self-revelation through stories.

We should recognize and value “Scripture as story” in the abstract, but what story is the Bible telling us about God?

Incarnation

Second, the primary reason that this tension exists is because Jesus is fully God and fully human. To be fair, saying that only moves us from one mystery (the tension between the Gospels and the "omni-"s) to another mystery (the Hypostatic Union). I’m OK with that. Once we start dancing around divine mystery, it is indeed turtles all the way down. While I’m happy to offer the observation that when God is incarnate, those three “omni-” attributes don’t apply as rigidly, that’s only a signpost. It’s not a map; it’s not a detailed explanation of the route. I can point and say “this is the kind of mystery we might expect to find in this kind of situation,” but beyond that, I got nothing! Adding some explanations to a mystery just brought us to more mystery.

We can’t comprehend how Jesus’ incarnation works, but can we consider, why incarnation?

Love

Again, a quick review of where we’ve been:

And third, at the core of incarnation is authentic relationship: genuine love. Jesus intentionally steps into constraints in order to be close to us. He willingly accepts external restrictions for the sake of genuine relationship with us. Jesus welcomes inability and surprise and limitation in order to authentically be one of us, so that he can ultimately rescue all of us.

Is anyone more powerful than God? Can anyone outmatch Jesus? No, not remotely. But at the same time, I would affirm God’s ability to willingly submit to a situation or context that entails genuine constraint and the back-and-forth of authentic relationship. It would be a sad thing for us to promote a lofty, exalted view of omnipotence in a way that implies that God isn’t allow to condescend. How impoverished is a theology of sovereignty that would prohibit God from sovereignly choosing to experience the genuine constraints of authentic relationship. To the contrary, is there a better testimony to true power than the willingness to set power aside, become one with the powerless, and rescue them to share in that perfect power? In God incarnate, we see that the truest kind of power is love.

Mark has shown us how the familiarity of the Nazarenes led to their contempt toward Jesus. His description of Jesus’ response to that unbelief has provided us a test case for evaluating our willingness to consider surprising things about Jesus. In response to that tension, we must learn who God is through story (Scripture’s default genre), recognize the mystery of Jesus’ incarnation, and finally, see the genuine relationship love of God for us in every description of constraint or limitation. These things, especially revelling in the boundless, humble love of God will keep us in a place of constant delight and joy, protected from our inclinations toward over-familiarity and contempt.