Mark 6:3

Then they scoffed, “He’s just a carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us.” They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

This was an agonising moment. Jesus was rudely dismissed by the people of Nazareth. They couldn’t work out how someone they’d known for nearly 30 years had such an amazing ministry. Some of the people may have gone to school with Jesus and others would probably have known him and Joseph through their business. Through the centuries, it has been believed that Joseph, and presumably Jesus, were carpenters, although we can’t sure. The word in Greek describes people who worked with stone and metal as well as wood. However, whatever their precise line of work, they would have had customers. Jesus was being rejected by people who knew him well, and their rejection was brutal – they wanted nothing to do with him.

The problem that the people of Nazareth had was that they could only see Jesus in human terms. They knew his family and everything about him. They couldn’t bring themselves to believe that a local boy could be anything special, and that continues to be the challenge with Jesus. People are happy to see him as a remarkable human being. They warm to his teaching; they love how he reached out to every kind of person; they are amazed by his miracles and impressed by his consistent love for people. However, they want to leave him there. They are resistant to the idea of him being the Son of God, but Mark’s Gospel is good news only because Jesus was both human and divine at the same time. Only in that way was he able to bring salvation to the world and so, however dismissive people might be, we need to be absolutely clear that Jesus was both God and man.

Question

Why do you think the people of Nazareth were so reluctant to accept that Jesus was the Son of God?

Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, I worship you and praise you for entering into the life of our world so fully. Amen