It hadn’t been very long at all, but so much had changed.
Not in the town, it was the same as ever, another typical Galilean village; no,
it was his role and purpose that had changed. When he left they had known him
simply as the carpenter’s son, a nice guy if a little ‘different’, who had done
the right thing supporting his mother and younger brothers until the boys were
old enough to assume full responsibility. In the humdrum world of daily work,
the simple world of ordinary people he had simply been taken for granted, and
the oddities of their family history were largely overlooked.
But now his reputation had preceded him, and he could see
the questions in his former neighbours’ eyes. They were remembering how his
mother was pregnant too soon, they were remembering how his whole family had
disappeared down to Egypt for a while, they were remembering little ways in
which he had seemed unusual as a child. The rumours had been flying all round
Galilee: the deaf who could now hear, the blind who could now see, the lame and
the paralysed who were walking again. Wasn’t there something a little bit
strange about that? Not quite sound, not quite ... reliable? And in the
sideways glances their unspoken question shouted, “Who does he think he is?”
Now he looked around at them, gathering their attention as
he stood before them. Then he looked down at the scroll and began to read, “The
Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to
the poor ...” He read through that glorious proclamation of the freedom and
healing that were God’s signs of His Messiah, then he sat down and said, “Today
this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
He could feel their shock turning to anger, and the deep,
resentful scepticism that lay behind it. Their thoughts were written clear
across their hardening faces: Who did he think he was? He was a child of shame;
his mother, who’d always seemed to be more pious than the rest of them, had
been the very one who’d had to move her wedding forward. And what had he ever
done for them? It was all very well to go round healing people in Capernaum
(mere fishermen!) but what miracles had he ever done for the people of Nazareth
all the time he had been with them? Didn’t they have first claim on him?
“No prophet is accepted in his hometown,” he told them.
Hadn’t it always been the way? Men were contemptuous of the familiar, and
resented one of their own claiming to be something more. Also, they always
thought they had ownership. If they had ‘put up’ all those years (as they saw
it) with someone who wasn’t quite one of them, there was an expectation that
they should, at the very least, have a share in the rewards. That the prophets
of God belong to God alone, go where He sends them, and give the glory to Him
alone, was something they had no interest in knowing. In fact, the very idea
enraged them.
His words about Elijah and Elisha only inflamed them
further. How dare he! In one accord, just as a herd of wild creatures turns on
one they perceive to be an outsider, they rose and drove him out of the
synagogue, through the town and up towards a precipice. There was murder in
their hearts, but it was not his time to die, and he slipped through their
midst and departed, leaving them alone with their futile anger in a world grown
mysteriously greyer.