And he could do no deed of power there

You know how to complete the sentence of the sermon title today, don’t you?

You know the old saying, Familiarity breeds contempt.

Mark tells us how Jesus experienced the contempt of familiarity when he went home that day.

Hey, we know this guy.

He’s Mary’s kid, right?

What makes him think that he is so special?

Most of us have been on one side or the other in that equation, we’ve know someone who has done great things and been hailed by others, but we know her or him so well, we know their flaws, we know their weaknesses and so we disparage them with a casual contempt bred of familiarity.

Or we have dared to step up and out and rise above the expectations that others have had for us, only to be undercut by people who won’t let us forget our old sins and former failures.

Either way it is what Jesus and the people of Nazareth experienced that day.

And he could do no deed of power there

How curious.

And how insightful.

Jesus ability to do deeds of power was directly connected to the faith that people had in him, the esteem that people held him in.

And the more I thought about that the more I realized that nothing has really changed.

I have seen God do great and wonderful things for people.

I have seen marriages that I thought were beyond repair become stronger and more vibrant than they ever were.

I have seen individuals who I thought were lost forever in a forest of self-centeredness or sorrow become sources of strength for others who were traveling dark paths.

I have seen illnesses that I thought were beyond medical hope reversed and bodies made whole again.

I have seen prayers for the impossible answered in the affirmative.

But I have never seen any of these things happen to people who hold God in contempt, I have never seen any of these things happen to people who haven’t opened their hearts and minds and lives to God with the faithful sense that God will be with them in their sorrows and their joys.

I don’t understand, nor can I explain, the mechanics of how God’s deeds of power come to pass, nor do I spend a lot of time worrying anymore about how to explain it, but I do know that faith is as crucial to that work as oxygen is to our lives.

The people of Nazareth and too many people today, kill off the miracles before they emerge by their cynicism and contempt.

And he could do no deed of power there

Familiarity breeds contempt.

And familiarity breeds other things.

Here is a quote from an old sailor who was asked to look back upon his life on the sea. The questioner probably expected some heroic and dramatic answer, but the sailor said this:
When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident ... worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.

That’s how it is for most of our lives, we lead ordinary lives, uneventful lives, boring lives.

Except when we don’t.

You see that quote was from Captain Edward John Smith in 1907.

Five years later, in 1912, Captain Edward John Smith would take command of the RMS Titanic and we can only wonder whether his familiarity bred a casualness that led to disaster.

And we can only wonder about our own lives and the ways we settle into ruts and routines – unprepared for the day when things are different.

So many people let their familiarity with life itself breed contempt or casualness.

But there are other options, besides contempt or casualness, aren’t there?

We need to allow our familiarity to become a comfort to us.

We all have our bouts of trouble, we’ve all been through funerals or failures and we’ve all been through our days of great joy, weddings and births and graduation and all of that.

But we need to know how to enjoy those good things and we need to know how to get through those other, not so good things, we need to become familiar with the things of life, the highs and the lows. This is why parents not only can’t but shouldn’t shelter their children from some of the painful realities, talking about illness and death is important and saying “no” is a lost art in too many households. Only when we are familiar with pain can we face it, confident that we will endure it, confident that God – acting through our friends and family members and co-worshipers and strangers – will travel the hard roads with us.

Familiarity breeds comfort.

And familiarity breeds confidence.

I am just coming off of a week away, a week when Debi and I were able to enjoy our shore house and we were able to putt around Barnegat Bay in our little motorboat and one of the things we like to do is to go across to Island Beach State Park and drop our anchor in a sheltered area, amidst hundreds of other boats. Sometimes – with permission from the Governor - we go on shore, walk across to the beach and sit by the surf, most times we just watch the other boats, read a little, watch the clouds, and talk about the things that there never seems to be time to talk about on land, in the middle of the pushing and shoving of life.

And I marvel, often about our ever-increasing confidence with the boat, when we first went over to Island Beach, a few years ago we would drop the anchor and stay on the boat the whole time, because we had absolutely no confidence that the boat would be there when we returned and the first time we sat on the beach, I squirmed around in my seat so much that after about half an hour Debi realized that I was not going to relax until I got back to the bayside and saw that the boat was still there.

Each summer brings with it a renewed sense of confidence as we become more and more familiar with the boat, the bay and ourselves.

This is what the people of Israel felt, in the lesson from Samuel, with the ascension of David to the throne. It was a good familiarity: we know this guy, we remember him when he was a kid and took on Goliath, we remember him when Saul was King but he was the one who provided us with hope and leadership and we know that he can unite us and hold us together.

Familiarity.

It makes us comfortable; it gives us confidence.

Isn’t that the power of our worship?

We come to this place where, for 17 decades God has met people in the highs and lows of their lives and we know what we will find when we get here.

Not the greatest facilities.

Not the most magnificent architecture.

Not the most committed Christians in the world.

Certainly not the greatest preaching.

But we know that whenever we come here we will find a place where God meets people.

In familiar words, in the memories that these walls hold for us, in fellow pilgrims who struggle as much as we do with life, in sermons that try to point to those glimpses of God’s glory in the world around us, in water and bread and wine and laughter and tears, as we do these sacred things together, in the silly things that we will do together in this coming week, in stories of David and Paul, Peter and Noah, Jesus and Mortimer and – this year – Melvin, Mortimer’s younger and smarter and better looking brother, in all of the comfort and confidence that familiarity can bring to us, God meets us.

And the only thing that can stop this holy and sacred and healing meeting between God and us is our faith, our attitude. What is your familiarity breeding?

Do we hail Jesus as the one whom we know?

Or do we just shrug and say “Oh, him again.”

Do we find our comfort and confidence in knowing that we belong, in all things, to the God who has created and sustained and forgiven and redeemed us?

Or do we view it all with a casual contempt?

What great things is God ready to do in your life?

What great experiences is God ready give you in your family life?

What great deeds of power does God want to do with and through and in us as his people in Clover Hill?

And will we let him?

And he could do no deed of power there