Mark 6

(Jamie)
I was on a walk about a year ago with my kids, and spotted an obviously-homeless guy coming towards me and my pack of kids. We would pass on the sidewalk. He had long, brown, dirty shaggy hair and a nasty unkempt beard....and his clothes were "homeless-person" clothes. Instinctively I lifted my head and made sure to make firm eye contact (like a mother bear, really) and keep my pace brisk. As soon as he passed us, one of my boys said excitedly, "Mama! Was that Jesus?????" You see, we watch "The Jesus Movie"---their name for The Gospel of John dvd---at home fairly often. They know what "Jesus" looks like, and this guy was the closest anybody has ever come to looking like him! Immediately I felt the quiet yet tender rebuke in my heart as I realized that I may not recognize Jesus even if he walked right by me.

It was true for untold numbers of folks.  Mark 6 unfolds the story of when Jesus was in His hometown. It says specifically in verse 3 that they were OFFENDED. Why were they so offended? Because he didn't look, act, smell or talk like the kind of Messiah they were expecting. He was a dirty, blue-collar guy who came from a family of what amounted to construction workers. The dirt under his nails bothered them. He was NOT what they expected. Or wanted.  He was common.  His commonness offended them and they did not recognize Him. Somehow we think that we would have been different had we lived back then. Surely we would have known Him!? The thing is, He did not hang out in palaces and did not seek out the white collar "good people." He went to the Walmart on Blanding low places and reached out to the ones who were swimming in the cesspool of their own sin, and knew it.  I think of this often when I find myself in Walmart on Blanding places where I am around people who I am "better than."  It's painful to me to realize that He came and sought out people like that woman with nicotine-stained fingers who yells profanities at her kids.  And the construction worker caught up in porn who drinks his weekends away and wishes he could patch up his marriage.  And the woman in the ghetto selling her body every night for the next drug fix and selling the food stamps that were supposed to feed her kids.  It really bothers me that He sought out people like this.  Why does this pain me?  Because they do not deserve Him.  And somehow I think I do.  The people of Jesus' hometown were offended because they did not know what He was like---they did not know Him.  How often have I missed Him, and written off what He was doing simply because it didn't look like what I expected......and been offended.......

I will end with that, and I'll end the day asking Him to remind me of my own deep poverty and the dangerous place that my pride has placed me in thinking I somehow deserve Him........  And how beautiful He is that He would descend so far.......so very, very far.......and how His lowliness brings Him to ME.  Even tonight.