Nazareth was small, the kind of village where everyone knows everyone. When Jesus stands up in the synagogue and teaches, the crowd's first reaction is exactly right. 54"they were astonished." They can feel that something extraordinary is happening, wisdom and reported mighty works that do not fit anything they have seen from this man before. For one verse they are asking the right question. 54"Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?"
Then they answer their own question with the only facts they have. 55"Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?" Every detail is accurate. They have watched this family for thirty years and know the trade, the mother's name, and every sibling. And that complete, correct information is what closes the door. They have filed Jesus under a category, neighbor, tradesman's son, one of ours, and nothing this astonishing is allowed to break out of a category so firmly fixed. 56"Where then did this man get all these things?" has already stopped being a question and become an accusation.
57"And they took offense at him." The word underneath the phrase is the one that gives us "scandal," the thing that causes someone to stumble. The evidence that should have provoked worship provokes a stumble. Astonishment and offense look at the same wisdom and the same works. The difference is in what they are willing to let it mean.
Jesus answers with what already sounds like a proverb. 57"A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household." He places himself in the line of every rejected prophet before him. Rejection by the familiar is closer to the rule for how God's messengers are received than to any surprising exception.
Then the last verse, plain and hard: 58"he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief." Read carelessly, it could sound as though Jesus lacked the power in that room. What changed was the room's willingness to receive his unchanged power as anything other than a trick performed by someone they had already decided they understood.
There is comfort inside that hard distinction. Unbelief can close off what a person or a whole town receives from Jesus, and it cannot touch who Jesus is. A hardened room in Nazareth leaves him exactly who he was, and it only limits what Nazareth was given that day. The same holds in reverse. A little faith, even the size of a mustard seed, opens a door that unbelief, however sincere it looks from inside, keeps shut.
The warning lands closer to home the longer someone has been near Jesus. It was the people who had known him longest who rejected him at Nazareth. They thought long familiarity counted as understanding. Years of Sunday attendance and a lifetime of hearing the same stories can produce the same fixed category. We already know who this is, and nothing here will surprise us. Astonishment is available every time this text is opened. Offense is what happens the moment we decide we have finished being astonished.
Prayer
Father, we have known you a long time, some of us since childhood, and long familiarity can quietly become the thing that keeps us from being astonished by you. Save us from filing you under a category we settled on years ago. Give us fresh eyes for what is extraordinary about you, especially in the parts of our lives where we think we already know the whole story. In Jesus' name, amen.