This past month we in the diocesan office have been planning a gathering of Episcopalians across the Southwest in Little Rock this September, including a number of young people. Randall Curtis and I have been trying to figure out what they might want to do. I am afraid that when people come to Little Rock , after a brief drive by the Old State House and the Clinton Library I say, in one way or another, “That’s about all there is to see here.”

Meanwhile, I find that visitors, on the other hand, seem so fascinated by things I never notice, such as the abundance of crepe myrtles that we have now beginning to bloom, and their impression that Little Rock is a city that seems to have staved off, at least temporarily, a complete dominance by fast food restaurants and instead has some local character remaining in its vast offerings of catfish and barbecue. You may laugh, but we are talking quality of life issues here, and those are things that I had never taken that seriously. I take it all for granted and even apologize for it. I must sound like some of my friends in New York City who always whine about having nothing to do, while I as a tourist go there and exhaust myself from trying to do so much.

It seems that we never put much value on that with which we are most familiar. In reading today’s gospel lesson, I had always assumed that the people in Jesus’ hometown were looking down on Jesus because they thought his family was not as good as the rest of them. Remember the quote: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary…?” You know it is; we automatically form our opinion of someone based on family name or occupation or the way he talks. Some people we know to be scoundrels, and their reputation is rubbed off on to their children. People are born with a certain skin color, and assumptions are immediately made about their eventual worth to society. Such prejudices are out there, but it is a sermon for another day.

I am not so certain that the people who did not believe in Jesus (or who did not trust him, to use a better translation of the word “belief”) were looking down on him because he came from the wrong family, but rather because he was a hometown boy, an overly familiar guy, and we never have high expectations of home town boys. It is sort of like me saying, “That’s about all there is to see here,” when I am embarrassed by my own lack of perception of what to do in Little Rock . How could my town ever be special? Or more to the point in today’s gospel, how could this guy ever be special? He’s from here, isn’t he? Those people in Jesus’ hometown could not see something wonderful and powerful standing in their own midst because they had no sense of the incredible worth that someone so familiar might have.

We don’t value that which is nearby, and I think that the problem gets worse the closer to home we get. Foreigners traditionally are always so much more exciting than people who have lived down the street for the last 30 years. Let’s face it; the church is always more excited about doing medical missionary work in a foreign country than among our own poor. We take our own for granted. Or sometime take a look at families. Spouses tend to look so boring after a few years, while the intrigue of an affair with someone different looks so exciting. Or to children of any age whose parents are still living, I can tell you from my own experience that other folks found absolutely fascinating a mother whom I took for granted for years.

As frightening as those possibilities are, we need to get even closer to home, where the real good news must be allowed to take root in our own lives about what is happening inside us. Our too frequent condition is that we don’t value our own selves. Too often we find so little of worth in us that we think and act as if we are worthless. That is the beginning of turning away from God and goodness: when we can’t see God’s image in our own lives. “That’s about all there is to see here,” we say to ourselves when we look in the mirror, and our sense of worth then starts to come from what others think, and that journey usually leads to further disappointment. There is no wholeness in such a life.

What is going on in today’s gospel is that Jesus apparently is able to be an agent of health only to people who are willing to trust that which is familiar, who are willing to trust that even the common and ordinary – the taken for granted. Most people in Jesus’ hometown would not believe that health was possible from looking from within. They wanted only the miraculous that someone from outside could bring about, and as a result they went away without a miracle. Only a few sick people, Mark says, found health.

Sometimes in the midst of all life’s problems, we have to trust that goodness is in our midst and live like it, not acting out of fear that we are not good enough, but acting out of an assurance that yes, God, chooses to remain with us no matter in what condition we find ourselves. The death of Jesus on the cross, and the love for the outcast and poor that sent him to that cross, is our Christian story, but somehow we don’t trust it. We have set up all these external tests to see if we measure up, and sad to say, the church too often has set up tests of its own to see if people measure up, when all along the gospel states that looking toward externals is no way to find healing.

The story of Jesus without power in his hometown takes place even today. I am reminded of all the people raised in the Christian church that these days run toward other religions as if they hold some greater truth. Or how about people who are constantly looking at a previous era in Christianity’s history as better than our own? Yes, I think that it is healthy to believe that Christianity as we practice it has flaws, but we are willing to give other religions or previous ages a greater benefit of doubt than our own Christian faith simply because they are something external to our experience? Isn’t seriously working with what we already have enough?

It is what Jesus did. The writers of the gospels talk about Jesus proclaiming wholeness in an adulteress, and proclaiming healing in the action of an outcast Samaritan, and using the mud on the ground right where he was standing to make a poultice and thus bring vision to a blind person. He could find healing in any number of situations, and his own death was itself a cause for new life. Those same gospel writers ask us to proclaim that truth to others.

We have an invitation today to stop worrying about measuring up to, or judging by, false external standards. As I am fond of saying, God never sends us to any place where God is not already present. Our call as members of Christ’s body is simple: to make Christ’s risen presence known, not to go ask people to find Christ somewhere else. “That’s about all there is to see here,” takes on powerful new meaning when what we begin to see is the resurrected Christ in ourselves and the people with whom we are standing weekday after weekday.

I am beginning to learn a few things. Never again take a crepe myrtle or a catfish restaurant for granted. To recognize them for the amazing things they are is to change how we view our own little corner of the world. And that experience led me to learn something from today’s gospel. Never ignore the risen Christ already standing in our midst. To recognize him is to open ourselves to healing, to begin to feel whole where once we perhaps felt only pain under the perception that nothing good could emanate from here. That’s about all there is to see here on this hot Sunday in July. I trust that it’s miracle enough. Amen.