Tuesday, December 10, 2002
On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and 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!" Mark 6:2

Does Jesus create "cognitive dissonance?" God come to earth as an infant born of a virgin, does not get the hero's welcome in his own hometown that we expect. What the home townies saw and heard simply did not match up with they knew or thought they knew about Jesus. He was a hometown nobody from an era and a place that did not buy into Cinderella stories. Even if they did, it was certainly from the standpoint of the ugly stepsisters -- Self-absorbed, jealous, and incredulous people. (Perhaps they are more like us than we care to know.) Jesus is just fine as long as he sticks to the image in which we made him, sweetly sleeping on the hay in a crèche on the mantelpiece. Cinderella too was just fine as long as she was a slave of her sisters who asserted no authority or power. Yet, in claiming a new authority and new power, her sisters were threatened. So it is with the rejected son of Nazareth. It is easy to accept the coming of Christ as the holy infant tender and mild, but how are we to accept him as man of Mark's gospel? By the end of the first chapter, he is already recruiting disciples, teaching in the synagogue and healing lepers. By chapter 2 he is forgiving sins and reinterpreting Sabbath laws. How are we to accept this Jesus who topples oppressive systems we are comfortable in supporting? When he loves our enemies and teaches us to do the same. When he gives us magnificent gifts that we can never repay? It is only in giving up our very self that we can accept, rather than reject this Jesus, the rejected son of Nazareth. This is the gift we should prepare ourselves to accept this Christmas.

Kate Jones


All contents copyright 2002 by the Wisconsin Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Permission is granted to United Methodist congregations, individuals and groups to reproduce and distribute this devotional without charge. All other use requires the advance permission of the editor.