Your hometown is only a memory

When I was sixteen, our family moved from southern California to southern Oregon. This was good and bad. The good part was I wasn’t happy with who I was in California and needed a way to reinvent myself. The bad part was the person I became was even worse. Let’s just say you wouldn’t have wanted to know me back then, and leave it at that, ok?

Pretty soon I had burned what few bridges I had and was a loner, this time of my own doing. In my adolescent brain I became convinced that my entire town hated me. This, I felt, was deserved. It took several years of not living there to realize that most people neither knew nor cared about me or my lack of moral fiber. Even today, when I return home, I still have lingering fears of meeting someone who knew the Ryan of the past.

Mark 6:1-6
“Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. "Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! 3 Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. 4 Jesus said to them, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor."  5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith.” 

I recently heard someone speak who grew up in a town of 98 people, most of them related to him somehow. My own hometown runs around 3,000. Nazareth was probably similar in size. Small towns, like mine and maybe Jesus’, are often touted in nostalgic terms. People remember the close-knit community of their childhood, where everyone had time to sit out on the front porch and lean over backyard fences to chat with the neighbors. I imagine Nazareth being this way.

Unfortunately, that kind of town only exists in memories whitewashed with time. While there are undoubtedly many good things about living in a small town, there are many problems too. One of these problems is that a person can never really escape their past in a small town. No matter how many years go by or whether you stay or move away, you remain to a large degree who you were before. This is exactly what Jesus is facing here. The Greek word for the townspeople’s reaction to Jesus the Messiah is the same word we use for scandal. They considered it a scandal that this carpenter’s son comes home all high and mighty with notions of being One with authority. They found it offensive to their definition of who Jesus was.

The text says Jesus was unable to perform many miracles there, outside of a few healings. He was amazed at their lack of faith. He didn’t come back very often after that. I suspect that is one reason so many today don’t either.