All four gospels tell us that Jesus was rejected by his hometown and home synagogue. They all say that a prophet (or a preacher — the two words are more or less interchangeable in biblical understanding) has no honor in his own hometown and among his own relatives.
According to Mark's chronology, Jesus comes home to Nazareth accompanied by his disciples after the remarkable healing of a woman who had suffered debilitating hemorrhages for twelve years and after the raising of the dead daughter of Jairus. He teaches in the synagogue on the sabbath, and the people are amazed both at his teaching and at the murmured accounts of the healings. For a moment or two it would appear that there is about to be a backslapping good time in celebration of the return of the hometown boy who has made good. "Many who heard him were amazed. ‘Where did this man get these things?' they asked. ‘What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles!' " (v. 2).
But not so fast. "Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" (v. 3) remark the worshipers. The implication is that we know this guy too well to listen to anything he says.
Some interpreters have suggested that Jesus' rejection is a "class" issue. A carpenter is not an upper-crust occupation in ancient society, a situation that might give rise to the reaction we find. Another possibility is the reference to Jesus as "Mary's son" instead of Joseph's son, as might normally be expected (also Matthew 13:55; Luke 4:22 says "Joseph's"). Is there a veiled reference to local speculation about the legitimacy of his birth here? One way or the other, "they took offense at him" (v. 3), says the text. The word "offense" can also be translated "scandal" and some commentators would prefer that. Celsus, a pagan philosopher, wrote True Doctrine sometime between 177 and 180 CE as an attack on Christianity. The great offense of this faith was not the claim that a human could be born of a virgin or that a human could be divine; but the fact that it could happen to a member of the lower classes![1] Hmm.
Neither Matthew nor Mark indicate that the offense came at anything Jesus said or did (in fact, just the opposite), but the account in Luke lets us know that the worshipers were angry about the sermon. Truth be told, in our day prophets/preachers are more likely to get into trouble at home by what they say rather than who they are.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a classic example. Bonhoeffer was born into a well-to-do German family in Breslau in 1906, one of eight children. He became interested in the ministry as a vocation as a boy, making the decision to become a pastor at the age of fourteen. He studied at several universities and received his theological degree at age 21.
Needless to say, all was not roses in the Germany of the young Bonhoeffer: there was growing resentment to the peace of Versailles which had been forced on the nation after World War I; there was considerable social distress as a result of economic conditions; there was enough political unrest to allow Hitler to come to power. Bonhoeffer realized early on the dangers that the Nazis posed and publicly denounced them, and in particular, Hitler's "theology" of anti-semitism, the beginning of what would become a short lifetime of resistance.
In 1939, he was invited to give a series of lectures here in America and, for his own safety, was encouraged to remain in the United States by friends both here and in his homeland. But in a letter to Reinhold Niebuhr, he wrote, "I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people." So Bonhoeffer went back.
Within a year, he was prohibited from preaching. The following year, he was prohibited from publishing. He became active in the resistance movement and was arrested in April 1943. Like the apostle Paul, Bonhoeffer did some of his most memorable work from prison, calling attention in his letters and papers to the necessity for a "worldly Christianity," the kind of faith that is willing to get involved in the great struggles of humanity. He complained that most modern preaching of justification by faith was a kind of "cheap grace." Grace, he insisted, comes only when people step out and follow Christ in costly discipleship. Bonhoeffer had been particularly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, and in his book on that passage, The Cost of Discipleship,[2] he wrote, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
Bonhoeffer was to heed that summons. On April 9, 1945, in the concentration camp at Flossenburg, just a few days before it was liberated by the Allies, he was tried for treason and hanged. An English officer described how at the end of a worship service for the other prisoners a door was opened, and two civilians entered the cell. "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us." Everyone present knew what those ominous words meant. But in the brief moment before he was led away by the guards, Bonhoeffer took the Englishman aside and said to him, "This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life." His body was burned and his ashes spread to the winds. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, just 29 years old, was a soldier of the cross who was willing to give up his life for the Master who gave his own life for us all.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is just one example of a prophet/preacher getting in trouble at home because of the content of his message. Martin Luther King Jr. is another. You can probably think of others. But don't leave it at that; remember what the text says about the result of the rejection — "He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith" (vv. 5-6). Frederick Buechner had it right, no doubt, in saying that miracles do not evoke faith so much as faith evokes miracles.
1. Brian Stoffregen, via Ecunet, "Gospel Notes for Next Sunday," Note #13088.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1959).