Amen, I say to you,
no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Jesus had returned to Nazareth, a place which more than any other ought to have accepted him. But although he "came to his own, and his own people did not receive him" (see John 1:11). This verse described not only of Nazareth but of all the people who rejected him. But for Nazareth in particular the closeness of people to Jesus in his early earthly life seemed actually to make it more difficult to recognize who he truly was. Those with greater familiarity with him were also those with the most rigid expectations of him. They thought they knew him. Therefore any pretense at claiming that he was a prophet proclaiming the year of Jubilee had to be false. Did it stem from mental instability or the desire for fame? If they knew him they ought to know that it was neither of these. He was extremely humble and eminently reasonable. But precisely because his childhood was so unremarkable they now couldn't accept this new aspect of his character.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Outsiders brought less baggage to the idea of Jesus. Those who knew him were closed to his message in the way that the land Israel had been closed to rain in the time of Elijah. During that time God was only able to use Elijah to assist a widow who was a Gentile. She didn't know the Lord and therefore had no sense of presumption, no sense that she deserved anything from him. She didn't know Elijah, and, while she wasn't overly credulous, she was at least willing to hear him out.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.
Sometimes God made choices that seemed baffling to Israel, God's chosen nation. They couldn't understand how God might choose someone who was a Gentile when there were so many lepers in within their own borders. Naaman wasn't even particularly receptive to Elisha when he heard what he must do in order to be healed. But he was able to ultimately let go of his own expectations of precisely how his healing would come about. He was able to accept a rather humble solution, for which Elisha himself wasn't even present.
In the great mystery of God's providence he sometimes bless the Gentiles "so as to make Israel jealous" (see Romans 11:11). When they witnessed God's gifts bestowed on the Gentiles then hopefully they too would long for those gifts. It was provocative, but the end goal was that the hearts of all people would return to God.
One question for us is whether we have become so familiar with the Jesus we have known thus far that we are unwilling to accept when he wants to do something new, that we are unwilling to let him surprise us. Is our expectation such that we will only let him heal us if it is precisely thus and so? We thought he would stand, invoke God, and wave his hand, when the cure he did in fact offer was through the cleansing water of baptism. Were we in fact hoping for something else? If so it must mean that we have not yet fully experienced and appreciated the effects of baptism in our own lives. And if we haven't this is nevertheless a hopeful thing, because it means we still can.
A second question is whether we can tolerate when God seems to choose someone other than ourselves. Are we able to be happy to see others being blessed, particular when we ourselves are in a period of spiritual drought and famine? Are we able to bless God for healing someone even while we ourselves need healing? The Lord is trying to teach us to leave behind are expectations and to embrace his goodness anywhere he delights to demonstrate it.
Send forth your light and your fidelity;
they shall lead me on
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