The same villager from Nazareth is shocked and bewildered:

I’m not really sure what just happened.   It felt like the time I went to kiss the girl and got slapped across the face – I’m just as shocked and bewildered.   My hopes were so high… but now?  How could I have got things so wrong?

To be fair I am shocked and disappointed with Jesus – but it’s more than that.  I’m also shocked – frightened, eve -, by the reaction of some of my neighbours.  I’ve never seen them like that before; so incensed and violent.  They could have killed him, you know?!  Would have, I think, if he’d not done the sensible thing and walked away.  To be honest, I think I have some reassessing to do about who I’ll hang around with from now on.  They scared me.  And Jesus?  So much for a grand home coming; I suspect he has done with us completely.

So, why did he have to go and spoil it? 

We were with him!  He had us eating out of his hand!  And then he went and threw it all back in our faces. Why?

Ok, so we were surprised at our local lad come good, but we were proud too.  Everyone was talking about him, and the great things he’d done in Galilee.  Now he was home and surely that would continue.  Nazareth would become the place to be – a new centre for a new Israel.  We were already basking in reflected glory!

But as soon as he sensed our laying claim to him, he turned on us.  You or I might have doen it a bit differently, smiling and keeping us happy for a while before quietly slipping away and letting us down gently.  But not Jesus!  He had to make a point of it… had to make it clear that he would not be owned by anyone.

“No prophet is ever accepted on his own turf” he declared.  “You just do not understand.  I am not here for you, and you can’t claim I am from you either.  I am from God and I have God’s bigger work to do”

He then went on to stick the knife in, reminding us how God sent Elijah to save not one of the countless deserving widows in Israel (as he should have done!) but a foreigner. Twisting the blade deeper, he continued to cut us out, telling how it was Naaman the Syrian that Elisha healed of Leprosy, not one of the many lepers among his own people, here in God’s promised land.

What was he telling us?  That God refuses to show special favours!  That he has come for the outsiders, not his own folk!  That no one can stake a special claim on him, not even here in his home town! 

So, it seems that the good news he’s come to bring is not for us, his kinfolk, but for others.  And the freedom he promises is for those we have held in low esteem. The release for those who, maybe, we have oppressed.  They’re the ones who get his favour; not us.  The words we’d first welcomed as so promising, now struck us hard, turning against us in condemnation. 

All around me I felt the heckles rising.  Blood was boiling – voices murmuring.  They were not liking this – not at all.  It wasn’t what they were expecting. It wasn’t what they would be having.

They rose against him and drove him out of town, so furious (as I’ve already told you) that in an attempt to bring him down off his high horse, they were ready to literally throw him down from the cliff top!   But he just walked right through them, without looking back, and went on his way.

And I just stood there, gobsmacked!   I’m still trying to take it all in.   How could something that began with so much promise, end up like this; here for a moment, then gone, like a puff of smoke, forever?

All I can say is that it’s obvious that Jesus is uncompromising. He will not be owned by anyone nor limited by others expectation.  He’ll plough his own furrow, thank you very much – led by higher things than petty village loyalties.  He’ll walk his own way – God’s way – singly and stubbornly if he has to.  And despite my disappointment, I have to say a big part of me respects him of him for this. But, from what I’ve seen today, I can tell you something for certain; it’s going to end up with him in trouble!