Episode Details

Introduction

How would you describe your hometown? Was it a place filled with warmth, love, and community spirit? Or maybe it was more individualistic, where people just did their own thing and left each other alone. Some of that depends on regional differences, sometimes there are differences based on population density (whether you grew up in the city, a smallish town, or a really small town/rural area can make a big difference).

One common theme, with small towns in particular, is that there is a sense of knowing everyone who is from that place. There is, of course, a literal sense in which you do know a higher percentage of the population when the population is relatively small. And this can be one of the benefits of living in a small place like Remsen, is that after a while you can feel like this is a place where you know people and are known. But the downside of that is that it is fairly easy to be pigeon-holed. For people to get in their head that “this is Mary, the daughter of Bill and Angela, and the thing you need to know about her is that she is really into horses.” Forget the fact that Mary hasn’t ridden a horse since she was in high school 25 years ago. She’s in her forties, and people still know her by who her parents are and how she spent her time a quarter century in the past.

That issue, of pigeon-holing someone mentally, and then not being able to properly assess the reality of the current evidence in front of your eyes, is precisely what we see in the first half of our text this morning. Turn with me to Mark 6:1-6a:

6 He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? 3 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. 4 And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” 5 And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief. 

Double Rejection

Last week we read of Jesus performing two miracles in the city of Capernaum; healing the woman who had a flow of blood for 12 years, and then raising the daughter of Jairus from the dead. In that text we saw the compassion, the contagiousness, and the conquering power of Jesus’ holiness. But not in chapter six, we are told Jesus and his disciples head from Capernaum to Nazareth, about a journey of about 20 miles. A good long walk for a day, though perhaps they broke it up into a couple or three days and did ministry as they traveled, we don’t know. 

We do know that when Jesus came into town, on the Sabbath day he entered the Synagogue. There he began to teach the people. And the curious thing is, no one was upset by what he was teaching (at least not yet). They referred to his words as “wisdom” (v2), and they were astonished by the works of his power, his miraculous ministry of which they have heard (v2). Their question was not, “how can you say something like that?” Rather, they questioned, “how can you say something like that?” 

How do these people know Jesus? Not as a Rabbi. In fact, quite far from it. They say, “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” They identify Jesus with the trade in which he worked from probably close to two decades. He would have begun his apprenticeship under Joseph while he was still young, and then he would have continued to learn the trade until, by the time of his adultho