Is This Not the Carpenter?

In Mark chapter 6, we find that Jesus has come back to his hometown of Nazareth.
And I kind of wonder what that would be like. Here’s a guy who had grown up there. It was a small town, and people knew him as a child. They probably watched him as he apprenticed in his father’s shop, and most likely had benefited from his work as he applied the trade himself.

But when he comes home, instead of going back into the shop, Mark tells us that he goes into the synagogue and begins to teach. This was not the role the town’s people were accustomed to seeing him in, and they seemed to be taken aback. They say, “Is this not the carpenter?”

Mark then tells us “he could do no deed of power there…”

Is this not the carpenter?

I don’t know if you have ever had that kind of experience, where when you return home after a long period of time, people still seem to see you in the way you were years ago. Perhaps even they still seem to see you as a child, and maybe even treat you that way.

I know with my own daughters, when they come home from college I so easily revert to viewing them as they were in High School. But when I pay attention even for a few moments, I am amazed at how much they have changed and grown.

Sometimes we see people only as they are on the surface, or only as we once knew them, without taking the time to get to know them in a deeper way. When we do this, when we size up or judge others, or make assumptions, we so quickly miss the richness and depth of what they have to offer…

Think about it. What if the town’s people, had truly listened to Jesus? What if they had made the effort to get to know him in a new way, on a deeper level? What if they had given him a chance to reveal all it was that God wanted to reveal through him?

What blessings might they have encountered? What healing might have taken place? What transformation and growth might they have experienced?

What wisdom, what connections, what blessings are we missing when we judge too quickly, or when we think we know someone before we really do?

Let us pray: God of grace, at this time when the social fabric of our nation is torn and quickly fraying, at this time when so many are lonely, starved for connection, hungry to be known, empower us to be the kind of people, who are curious about others, quick to listen, slow to judge. We look to Jesus, who shows us the way. Amen.