Fake news, AI-generated content, shock-jocks and click-bait.  Twenty-four-by-seven news from around the globe.  Streaming news feeds on every media platform, curated and calculated to incense us and provoke an extreme reaction.  Our bombardment with the sensational anesthetizes us to feelings of true amazement.  The greater the shock value, the less we are capable of being shocked.

The astonishment that used to require a lifetime of hard earned experience and exposure to curb, is now numbed by media mega doses delivered with each chiming notification on our screens.  Over-exposed to all things bright and beautiful and many things grim and horrific, nothing shocks us anymore.

Social critic, Sy Safransky, wrote.

Nothing shocks us anymore. The line between social truth and social fiction has been erased …Assassinations, race riots, peasant huts burned to the ground — the litany is familiar, terrible, and [yet] boring. We are beyond shock, and thus in peril, because our acceptance of whatever comes next is . . . painful and resigned.  — “An American Dream,” Sy Safransky,

While communication critic, Neil Postman, warned that “news-as-entertainment” would destroy empathy, communication, and culture.

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility. – “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Neil Postman

Nothing shocks us anymore.  We have seen it all, heard it all, and are becoming callous to it all.  Amazement is hard to come by.  The province of small children alone.   And so, it is remarkable to read in the Gospels that there are things that shocked Jesus. The one who saw it all, heard it all, knew it all, yet never became at all callous to our brokenness. 

Jesus was touched by the feeling of our infirmity.  Wept at the tomb of Lazarus.  And marveled at a centurion’s faith.  Friends asked Jesus to heal the centurion’s beloved servant, and we read.

When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  — Luke 7:6-9

But regrettably, in Mark’s Gospel we read of Jesus’ amazement at the lack of faith.

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished… And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.  – Mark 6:1-6

The lack of faith in Jesus’ hometown, among his childhood friends, and even within his family was so shocking that Jesus marveled at it.  Those who knew Jesus longest and thought they knew him best, did not really know him at all.   Their lack of faith in the person and work of Jesus the Christ was all the more shocking because of their familiarity with him.  

How well do you know Jesus? Is it your faith or your lack of faith that is more shocking? Join us as we examine Mark 6:1-6 and consider the amazing unbelief of Jesus neighbors and his family and ask whether it is our faith or lack of it that is more shocking.  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.