{"id":733,"date":"2016-02-12T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/old.maryology.com\/?p=733"},"modified":"2016-02-12T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T16:00:11","slug":"mansplaining-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/?p=733","title":{"rendered":"Mansplaining Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sermon preached at Christ Chapel, Seminary of the Southwest
\n<\/strong>Mark 6:1-6
\nFebruary 3, 2016<\/p>\n

Open our ears, O Lord,
\nto hear your word and know your voice.
\nSpeak to our hearts and strengthen our wills,
\nthat we may serve you today and always. Amen<\/p>\n

I have a love\/hate relationship with today\u2019s Gospel reading.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, it is a great \u201cepiphany\u201d story that shows us one way Jesus revealed himself and his mission. It shows him returning home in a position of authority and facing a tough audience. And then when Plan A doesn\u2019t go well, he gets entrepreneurial with his ministry and implements Plan B. \u201cThen he went about among the villages teaching.\u201d He took his disciples and his good news out to the rest of the world\u2026<\/p>\n

On the other hand, this story is also revealing about the people who \u201cknow Jesus best,\u201d the people who saw him grow from a boy to a man, who know his family and the kind of work he does. Sometimes, this story is called \u201cThe Rejection of Jesus in Nazareth.\u201d To me it feels a little different from rejection.<\/p>\n

Jesus\u2019 hometown friends and relations are not rejecting his ideas, the content of his preaching. They don\u2019t even outright send him packing. What they do instead is dismiss him, cut him down to size, put him in his place. They are condescending to him.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Now, there is a lot that might make a seminarian like me feel right at home with Jesus in this story. After all, I will be an inheritor of the itinerant ministry he started after this hometown debacle. Like the original disciples, we modern day disciples follow Jesus into places where his message might get a hostile \u2013 or at least dubious \u2013 reception. We are armed with authority to preach. And like them, we will very likely have to be ready with a Plan B and a Plan C, because in the church today, Plan A is already not working as well as it should.<\/p>\n

Like Jesus\u2019 disciples, we are sent from here and from our home parishes to take the Good News to communities of strangers, new parishes, new towns, perhaps even new states. We won\u2019t be going back to the places that know us best.<\/p>\n

So, there is a lot here to identify with. A lot that might validate us as followers of Jesus who are active in the church and know a lot more about him than your average person on the street.<\/p>\n

I really love the story for all of that. It makes me feel inspired and relieved to know that Jesus and his disciples took this message out into the big scary world, to new people, to strangers.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

But I said I have a love\/hate relationship with this story and here is the part that challenges me. That\u2019s a nice way to put it. Here\u2019s the part that rubs me the wrong way and makes me feel really uncomfortable:<\/p>\n

If Jesus has a hometown in the 21st<\/sup> Century, with friends and relations who \u201cknow him better than your average person on the street\u201d \u2013 it is the church. And maybe even worse, it might be a seminary like this one. Who thinks they know Jesus better than we do? Who knows more about authority in the church, knows who can and should teach?<\/p>\n

How often do we, and the church as a whole, say things like\u2026
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You don\u2019t have the authority to say that.
\n– \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0We don\u2019t do it that way here.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Nazareth they said: \u201cWhere did this man get<\/span> all this?\u201d
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat is this \u2018wisdom\u2019 that has been given to HIM?\u201d
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the South, we might simply say, \u201cBless her heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

If this story makes me want to identify with the disciples who followed Jesus home and were willing to follow him out to the villages. It also makes me admit that I am like some of those hometown folks, at least sometimes.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

One of the humbling things about the Incarnation is that in Jesus, God assumes all of human experience, even the most painful, humiliating parts of it. And with the reaction he gets in Nazareth, the painful human experience I see Jesus enduring is that he is being mansplained.<\/p>\n

I am betting that many of you know what mansplaining is \u2013 and have even experienced it yourself. But if you are lucky enough not to know, here is a definition:<\/p>\n

Mansplaining is explaining something to someone \u2013 usually a man explaining to a woman \u2013 in a condescending and patronizing way. And it is explaining something without regard for the fact that the one being explained to knows more about the subject that the explainer.<\/p>\n

(If you have never been mansplained, I bet you might have been teensplained. Or toddler-splained. For many of us, it is part of the human condition.)<\/p>\n

Writer Rebecca Solnit \u2013 who is one of the people credited with first articulating this phenomenon \u2013 says that mansplaining comes from a sense of both overconfidence and cluelessness. Her essay Men Explain Things to Me<\/em>, documents a fabulous case in which, after introducing herself as the author of a book about high-speed motion photography and technology in late 19th<\/sup> C. America (which is a pretty niche subject) her new acquaintance interrupted her and began holding forth on the topic himself, telling her she really should read a definitive new book on the subject. The book she herself had written. And told him about.<\/p>\n

This is a pretty much how the synagogue in Nazareth treated Jesus when he taught them. The hometown folks in Nazareth are both overconfident and clueless, they think they know who he is and what he is capable of, and so they have limited what they are willing to hear from him.<\/p>\n

When we identify with the disciples and Jesus in this story, it is because we\u2019ve been dismissed and put down, too. People who know what to expect of us don\u2019t want to hear or see anything else.<\/p>\n

But we also do it to others. Individually and collectively as the church, we dismiss people \u2013 not because of what they say, but because of who we<\/span> think they are. We do it to individuals and to whole communities. Dismiss them. Reject their preaching. Condescend to their witness. Refuse to see Christ in them.<\/p>\n

We do a lot of \u2018splaining in the church. We \u2018splain to women. And to various ethnic groups. We \u2018splain to people whose \u201cway of being\u201d in the world doesn\u2019t give them authority to teach us because they are poor or gay or deaf or carpenters. We \u2018splain to youth a lot.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of fret in the church about America becoming a nation of unbelievers, that in the realm of religious belief, the \u201cnones\u201d (those with no particular religious affiliation) are the fastest growing segment of the population. But one lesson in today\u2019s story is that it might not be \u201cnones\u201d who are the most resistant and unwelcoming to Jesus\u2019 and his disciples\u2013 it might be the people who claim to be the closest, it might be hometown folks. Like us.<\/p>\n

The Gospel says Jesus \u201cwas amazed at their unbelief.\u201d That is, he was amazed at the unbelief of a congregation of believers. Their unbelief was not a matter of rejecting the content of Jesus\u2019 message. Their unbelief was their inability to see or hear the message from a well-known but unexpected source.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhere did this man get<\/span> all this?\u201d
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat is this \u2018wisdom\u2019 that has been given to HIM?\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a lot about Jesus and his ministry that is outside of what was expected. Familiar, but surprising. But the people in Nazareth could only see what they expected to see. Do we have the same problem? Do we \u201calready know\u201d what Jesus has to say about the problems we face every day? Do we really already know everything the teachings of our tradition?<\/p>\n

For those of us inside the church, the disciples and the hometown folks (most of us are both) the challenge is to share the Good News in the villages outside our comfort zone. For those of us inside the church, the challenge is also to learn the Good News from people we think we know well \u2013 people who might surprise us if we\u2019d let them.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, the one who might surprise us the most is Jesus himself.<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sermon preached at Christ Chapel, Seminary of the Southwest Mark 6:1-6 February 3, 2016 Open our ears, O Lord, to hear your word and know your voice. Speak to our hearts and strengthen our wills, that we may serve you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons","category-spirituality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maryology.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}