Daily Reflection Memorial of Saint John Vianney, Priest

The Rejection in Nazareth, as it is known, is in all three Synoptic gospel accounts. Today we hear Matthew’s version which is similar to that of Mark. Mark's slightly longer version adds the detail that Jesus was amazed at the lack of faith of the people there. Luke’s account offers a much more detailed view of what happened with a marked twist that is almost shocking. 

Nazareth is, of course, the town Jesus grew up in after Joseph and Mary returned with the infant Jesus from their flight into Egypt to escape Herod and did not want to return to Judea. We recall well the Apostle Nathanial asking Philip in John’s gospel, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” before Jesus called him. Evidently, Nazareth did not posses a very good reputation in ancient Israel for some reason. And indeed, the people there don’t come off very well in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts. They are even worse in Luke’s, where, enraged that Jesus dared to tell them that he wasn’t sent to bring them fame and fortune, they literally try to hurl Jesus off the cliff the town was built upon.

One thing these stories do tell us is that Jesus had a family beyond just Mary and Joseph and that he was evidently rather unexceptional during his hidden life. When he returns to Nazareth after he began his public ministry, perhaps in an attempt to share with them the “Good News,” he is met with incredulity and resentment from his neighbors who thought they knew everything about him and his family. The long and the short of their comments is, he’s nobody from an ordinary family that stood out in no way at all. Yet he’s become famous, a worker of miracles and healings. They simply could not wrap their heads around the enormity of the contrast and thus reject him completely as unable to offer them anything. It may have been a kind of, “Where was he when we needed him?” kind of thing.

Two very significant truths stand out from the Synoptic accounts of Jesus’ trip to Nazareth. The first is that we often think we know people well, especially people we’ve known a long time. But as is true of so many things, it is so true of our relationships with people, that we really know so very little at all. People can and do change, for good or for ill, sometimes greatly from the people we thought we knew. Have you ever experienced the sudden flash of shock at learning something about someone you thought you knew for years, something altogether new and unsuspected? We very much need to ask God for a heart that does not judge, does not label or pigeonhole people into some easy, understandable character. We need to pray to meet everyone with love and acceptance, aware of the depths in every human heart. We need to seek to be open to finding God in everyone, mightily resisting encountering them in the narrow ways of our blindness, for God loves everyone as much as God loves you and everyone else. That is what it means to be humble.

The second truth is from Jesus himself, “No prophet is without honor except among his own people and in his own house.” Do you have people in your family who you’re trying to convert or preach to or bring to Jesus? How has that gone? We would do well to abandon such efforts and simply love them and put them in God’s hands, trusting that God will take care of them. Pray for them, don’t preach to them. They know who you are. They know you have feet of clay. They have seen you at your worst. It is not our mission to convert our families (especially our children or our spouses) so be advised, you might want to give that up. That’s not my advice, it’s Jesus’s. “Let anyone with ears hear!”