Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue.
He came to the place where people knew him before his ministry began. It was not a large town, and he was not in fact unknown to them. They knew who his family was and so they believed they knew all they needed to know about him. Having seen him grow up they should have been in the best position to receive him when he came back to them.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man (see Luke 2:52).
They had seen and known Jesus to virtuous and wise. Based on this, they ought to have known that he was not the sort of person to come back and put on pretense, pretending to be more than he was.
Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds?
Yet when he returned to them, in spite of the impression he had made among them, they were still unwilling to recognize who he had become. It was as if they were OK with a certain level of wisdom, appropriate to a hometown hero, but were unwilling to see him as anything truly unique, as anyone of more merit than the average Nazarene. In a way, it was as if they themselves believed that nothing truly good could come from Nazareth (see John 1:46), at least not as good as the claims about Jesus implied him to be.
One general problem that prevented Jesus from being recognized was definitely the limited expectations of the people, based on their familiarity him in the past. This is an easy mistake for us to make as well. In general, past performance really is all we have to go on in predicting future results. But this strategy is never effective when we apply it to God's plans.
Everyone in Israel had limited expectations of what a person from Nazareth might be able to offer the world. But why did the people from Nazareth themselves seem to have the lowest expectations, when they might have actually expected more from him, since they had known him the longest? Was it not a problem, perhaps, of self-image, even of self-loathing? Did they not believe themselves and their own humanity to be too limited and tainted to have anything to offer the world? A savior from some distant land, perhaps, they could welcome. But how could one of their own really have anything to offer?
He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (see John 1:11).
This challenge faced by the people of Nazareth is a challenge that we must face again and again. We must learn to not limit Jesus based on past experiences. Our own flawed humanity, our own past failings, none of this needs to limit what he can do in our world, even what he can do through us. Yet, we, like the Nazarenes, assume that we could not be the point where the love of God chooses to break through into the world. Can anything good come from our own cities and towns? Looking around us, we are right to wonder. Looking objectively at the state of our own hearts, we are right to wonder. Yet all things are possible to him who believes (see Mark 9:23).
And he did not work many mighty deeds there
because of their lack of faith.
Let us allow God to come into our midst. Let us allow him to heal those memories of the past that would make us place limits on what he might choose to do in the future. If we do, we will be open to all of the mighty deeds he desires to do for us, in this, his native place.
The reading from Leviticus shows us that being healed and learning to offer right worship to God is not a one time event. It is rather to be renewed with the seasons, with the liturgical life of the Church. Our ability to have great expectations of God and deep faith was not broken all at once by sin. Typically, it is only over the course of time sanctified by the life of the Church that it is healed. This means that, for us, the best place to recognize Jesus and his power and his mighty deeds is actually the one that might seem at first to be the most unlikely. It is in the Eucharist that he seems the most hidden. Yet it is there that his power is most profoundly revealed.
Take up a melody, and sound the timbrel,
the pleasant harp and the lyre.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon,
at the full moon, on our solemn feast.
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