And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing Him were astonished, saying, “Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands! Mark 6:2 (NKJV)
Heroes Worship – Part 1
What makes someone a hero? They don’t have to be a person of good character or have an outstanding moral compass. They don’t necessarily have to stand for anything or try and help anyone. Our heroes mostly are so because they dominate their chosen field or vocation. They’ve risen to the top, defied the odds, worked hard, and are now number one. There’s nothing wrong with that. We need inspiration, stories of courage and tenacity to empathise with our own journeys of the same. I look up to authors who started writing in their thirties for inspiration. We gravitate to heroes that we can relate to and we hang on to their stories to fuel our own desires and commitment to what we feel we’re called to do.
But then, sometimes, our heroes turn into something else… When they start to challenge and speak to situations and issues that we had no idea they supported, and that irritates us because we don’t necessarily agree with their perspective, or it hits too close to home. Especially our hometown heroes… when they start speaking out about things we don’t agree with, their heroism starts to dull, and we can begin to despise our connection with them.
Jesus had this experience in his hometown of Nazareth. His reputation was growing wide and strong, he had been speaking, healing and performing wonders all over the country, and had returned to Nazareth to do the same. He went to the Synagogue on the Sabbath to speak, and at first, everyone was astounded. They asked, “Where did this man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to him, that such mighty works are performed by his hands!” Mark 6:2.
For a moment, he was their hometown hero – one of their own who was now at the top of his game, an inspiration to all. But then something strange happened. Mark doesn’t go into what or why, but the people’s questions of amazement turned into questions of indifference.
They went from asking, ‘Who is this amazing man?” to “Who does this man think he is?”
What changed? What did Jesus say? How did he go from hero to zero in just a few lines?
Jesus said, presumably to his disciples, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.”
Apart from being one of my favourite characters from the TV show ‘Heroes,’ a hero is “someone distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude; who is idealized for possessing superior qualities in any field.”
But a prophet? The word prophet means, “the one who sees” and “one who sees through us.” We box Prophets into being people who can see into the future and make predictions about what it is to come. But they are so much more than that. Prophets are people who see us for who we are and tell us the truth about ourselves.
The distance between us and our heroes is often what makes them so intriguing. We can admire, respect, watch, listen and learn from afar. But to turn that relationship into something more intimate, where the hero sees us and knows us, and we in turn see and know them, and the conversation becomes more personal and challenging, the heroes whom we once asked “who is this amazing person” become the people whom we ask of “who do you think you are?”
What challenges me about this story is that being people of faith, Jesus is our hometown hero. We are his family, and sometimes we’re so caught up in our institution, and our issues, that we are the ones who are most blind to God’s presence, and we are sometimes the least likely to recognise Jesus among us.
To be continued…
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