Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”
– Mark 6:4
There is a humorous gesture that sometimes surfaces among circles of clergy. My guess is that it would work among other professions as well. When a pastor is preparing to be relocated to a new congregation, colleagues might jokingly say to that pastor, “Wait ten years and you can come back as a consultant.” If you don’t get the light humor, let me help. It has to do with familiarity, and the ways we subconsciously weigh the input of people. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against consultants or their work. I fully believe that an outside perspective can be valuable. The point is, groups of people sometimes demonstrate a tendency to devalue the advice of those within their own ranks, even if it is sound advice. So, prophet, how do you cure that? Leave long enough to be considered an outsider. Then they will listen to you!
Apparently Jesus hadn’t been gone long enough. We are told in Mark 6 that Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth along with his disciples. On the Sabbath, the people gathered as they normally would, and Jesus was selected to teach. We aren’t told his topic for the day1, but we can already conclude that the teaching was powerful. Listeners were amazed at his teaching, and the experience was supplemented by the miracles they had either seen or heard about. Observing the facial expressions, body language and mumbling among the crowd, the disciples are starting to feel pretty good right now. Their rabbi really has the crowd on the edge of their seat. This would be great for his (and their) public image!
Most of you have been in a gathering where something happened, something was said, and it felt like the air was sucked from the room. The whole direction of things changed for the worse, and it happened in a moment. On that day, in the synagogue of Nazareth, someone spoke up and effectively did just that. They denounced Jesus’ teaching and ministry based on one thing: he’s a local! “We know his father, his profession, his mother, his siblings” (Mark 6:3). The gospel writer puts it in simple and plain language: they took offense at him. A completely objective bystander would look at the crowd’s reaction in bewilderment. It surely must have left the jaws of the disciples agape. Surely this couldn’t be happening. The miracles have been unmistakeable. His teaching had unparalleled inspiration. And all of that gets cast aside for what reason? Because you know him? That must be the most lame line of reasoning ever used!
There is an adage: familiarity breeds contempt. Jesus knew this truth painfully well. In fact, his people already had a proverb of their own: a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown (v. 4). Why is this? Think about it for a moment from the consultant analogy. A consultant is someone you expect to have valuable information. After all, you are paying for that information, which must make it good. (That, also, is questionable reasoning.) If you like what the consultant says, you can treat it as if it came down from Mount Sinai. If you don’t like the consultant’s advice, you can just discard it and move on without any relational fallout. After all, the consultant is only a consultant to you, nothing else. Not so with one of your own.
The pages of the Bible reveal many things with great consistency, one of which being the fact that a prophet of God has a tough calling. It is a tough calling regardless of the audience; it is especially tough with a hometown audience. People of other regions of Israel only knew Jesus as a prophet or a rabbi. People of Nazareth knew him as the kid who grew up down the street. They went to social gatherings with his parents. They had kids the same age as Jesus and his siblings. While that may have been a good thing so long as he stayed just the boy from down the street, that familiarity became baggage when the people needed to hear a profound revelation from God. We can’t say how readily the people would have received the word from an out-of-towner. It is clear that they were not ready to receive it from a hometown boy.
I close this with a personal memory. It was during the period when I was preparing to leave my home congregation and take my first pastoral assignment. Bear in mind, this was almost 30 years ago. Before I say more, let me make clear that I had a great church growing up. They were wonderful people, several of whom I credit with positively shaping my faith. It was not a perfect congregation by any stretch, but a blessing to me nevertheless. The congregation knew that I was prepared to leave and pursue God’s call on my life. It may have been my last Sunday with them when a sweet lady whom I had known for years came up to me and said, “I hope some day they send you back to be our pastor.” It was a kind and sincere gesture, but I knew her expectations were tainted. I gently responded by saying, “I’m not sure everyone would like that.” To this day I believe that statement to be true. It is hard for the prophet to go home.
See you along the winding path.
- This passage from Mark 6 might be considered the parallel to what we read in Luke 4:16ff. If that is the case, Jesus’ text for the day came from Isaiah 61, a messianic prophecy Jesus understood to be fulfilled in himself. ↩︎
The Winding Path 