“He could do no deed of power.” Wait! What?

Well, this is surprising. After calming the storm, curing a person of a legion of unclean spirits, curing a chronically ill person and raising someone from the dead, Jesus goes home and this happens.

He [Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 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! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. Mark 6:1-13 NRSV

This is a little surprising, isn’t it? After all the earlier acts of power- healing, overcoming chaos and danger, even resurrection; at home all Jesus can do is heal “a few sick people”.

If we have been paying attention to Mark’s gospel, we might recall that in chapter one, Jesus goes into a synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath and teaches and the people there were astounded. After he leaves that synagogue, Jesus heals many people. Throughout Mark’s gospel, so far, all sorts of people are amazed by Jesus. Now in his hometown we might expect the same result. But no, Jesus is the one who is amazed.

Mark’s gospel builds this string of powerful actions by Jesus and then Mark slams on the brakes. “He could do no deed of power there.” (Mark 6:5) But that doesn’t stop Jesus. He keeps on traveling and teaching (Mark 6:6). Then he sends out the twelve disciples and gives them “authority over the unclean spirits.” The disciples “proclaim” and “cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (Mark 6:13).

What’s going on here? What happened in Jesus’ hometown? We need to think very carefully now. How we think and speak about healing can have unintended and unhelpful consequences. Sometimes, when people talk about this passage, they say Jesus could not do any healing because of the people’s lack of faith. Or sometimes they talk about Jesus withholding healing because of their lack of faith. To greater and lesser degrees these commentators suggest a link between the quality and quantity of one’s faith and healing. This is problematic. I want to suggest another option.¹ It is important to be clear, right as we begin, to say I don’t think we can fully understand how prayer and healing and miracles occur. Nor can we fully understand why tragedies and disasters occur. However this doesn’t mean that we have no understanding or that we can’t have any sort of response.

Humans, let’s be honest, really like power. We admire people who can “get things done”. People who have power and are not afraid to use it. We long for someone to come and fix things- little things and big things. Fix my car, fix my health, fix my life, fix them, fix our society. Bring peace and prosperity to us. We look for a person who can solve all the world’s woes. A few of us want to be and even claim to be that person. From the Emperors of Rome who claimed to be the savior of the world who brought peace, through a multitude of historical figures until today, people claim to be the one strong enough to save us. The Christian response is to say, that the person who saves us is Jesus. The question is, how does Jesus save us?

If we read the Bible carefully, swooping in as the one who unilaterally fixes everything is not how Jesus does things. Jesus doesn’t strong arm us into safety, health, and peace. Think about a time when you tried to force someone to do “the right thing’. How did that work out? What would it have taken for you to have been successful? How much control would you have needed?

No matter how attractive an all powerful fixer, healer, or savior is, their actions are ultimately coercive. It is one sided action. An all powerful fixer can only successfully act if they are in total control, and can override the agency of others.

Jesus doesn’t do things alone. There is not much in the gospels that Jesus couldn’t have done alone. Honestly, often the disciples were not much help. Jesus could proclaim the good news by himself, but he doesn’t. He gathers people to live with him, to learn from him and to work with him.

The One who acts out of love, not power, by necessity works collaboratively. Love doesn’t coerce. They don’t fix, they don’t impose. Look at how Jesus heals. People ask for help. Or he asks them what they want. Repeatedly in the gospels are stories of Jesus in action, where he heals everyone who comes to him.² Again we need to be careful. I do not believe that people who ask for healing or rescue and are not healed or rescued, are people lacking in faith. Telling someone their prayers were not answered because they lack faith or didn’t pray hard enough- or any variations of this- is wrong. We need to be careful not to blame the victim or their family.

Jesus’ acts of healing and deliverance are deeply collaborative acts. Even his calming of the storm. Collaboration takes place on multiple levels. God’s deep, non coercive love includes humans, but also extends to animals, to plants, and to all the component parts that make up creation. God’s love creates a world that can create itself, that continues to create itself and that at some level has agency. It increasingly appears that the world is a complex web in actions, reaction and interactions. ³

This can be hard to grasp. It’s not how most of us think about how God acts in the world. It is worth spending some time thinking about. What if the world, the cosmos, is more complex and much more interrelated than we have imagined? What if we all and it all matters? What if everything is invited into a deeply relational and collaborative kin dom by the all encompassing love of God? What if?

1. Because of the nature of blogs this will only be a very brief discussion. There is much more to think about and we will return, from time to time to the idea of a deeply collaborative and non coercive God. ↩︎
2. For example, Matthew 9:35, “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.” See also Matt 4:23-25 among many other examples. ↩︎
3. The fascinating fields of Chaos Theory, consciousness, quantum entanglement, give us much to ponder. ↩︎