Mark 6:1-5: Jesus returned to Nazareth to speak in his hometown Synagogue but rather than a warm reception what Jesus gets is anything but warm. These are the people who knew him within the family context and they hadn’t seen anything special in Jesus for him to be preaching at them that day. This intrigues me because we would think that Jesus had had an exceptional childhood and young adulthood but it appears that as Jesus grew up he didn’t draw anymore attention to himself after his encounter with the Temple priests (Luke 2:47).

The unbelief of this town isn’t the fault of Jesus, he brought the same message to Nazareth as he did to Capernaum and the other Galilean towns. The fault lay in the hearts of those who heard the message of the Kingdom of God as they allowed thoughts of social status, family reputation and personal relationships to get in the way. It’s not hard to make the connection with how people respond today because very often it’s the same issues that keep people from becoming followers of the Lord Jesus. It would have taken a very humble group of neighbours to accept the teaching of the eldest son of Joseph the Carpenter but humility doesn’t seem to have been their strongest characteristic. Likewise it still takes a humbled heart to accept the message of the Carpenter’s son of whom Isaiah prophetically says “he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). It’s only when we look at the message and not the messenger that we discover the majesty of the man. The message he brought and still brings to us is filled with hope and power offering the most broken life the pathway to becoming all the we were created to become. People like Jairus (Mark 5:22) and the friends of the paralytic (Mark 2:3) all got over the social issues surrounding Jesus as the heard his message of hope.

Hope had come to Nazareth but hardened hearts seem to have won the day. Has hope conquered your heart?