Homecomings: you know what they’re like. Parades, choosing a king and queen, a big rivalry game, parties all over town, pop-up reunions at the old hangouts. Lots of fun, right?

Nope. Don’t go near them. Really, so depressing. The only ones who show up are there to criticize, remind you of what you were like, all your young mistakes. They size you up, how you’ve added a few pounds, got some deeper wrinkles, grayer hair or less than what you used to have, noting what you’ve made of yourself which no one ever expects to be much more than what you ever were. Notice how there are more people who stayed home at these things than the ones who left? Who’d come back for this kind of thing?

Understood. Jesus met the same negativity when he stopped back in his hometown of Nazareth. His second career after carpentry had taken off. He’d organized a team for the work, had great success due to healing many people, had some tussles in a synagogue for healing on the Sabbath, told some compelling stories with life lessons about God, and had amassed a pretty big following. Crowds showed up wherever he went. The latest story was he brought a young girl back to life.  Yeah, he was getting noticed.

So he was tapped to be the guest speaker for this week’s Sabbath message. Trouble was though, Jesus delivered. It was good. Too good, really. If he’d bombed, they might have been kinder. The thing is, people don’t like it when you break out of the box they’d always kept you in and think you should stay.

Not only that, but they have long, long memories. From the back of the room, whispered comments begin.

‘Who does he think he is? He’s Mary’s son, just a carpenter. We know his people and what they are like.” They drag up stuff from thirty years or more, knowing looks speaking what’s not said. In this day and age, people are identified by their dad’s family. No mention of Joseph here. Why not? Maybe they still remember how Mary was said to be pregnant before their marriage was finalized. Was his real dad someone else?

Even his mother and brothers had that problem with him not long ago. They’d actually gone to bring him home, worried he may have lost his mind.  Reportedly, he had basically denied them as his own kin. The more these people thought about it, the more offended (nice word there, pissed would be more like it) they became.

Jesus could smell the scandal they wanted. He tells it like he sees it. “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” His summation does two things. He takes on a new identity that fits for the moment. Prophets were known to be countercultural, having relevant messages that were edgy and aimed to bring people back in align with God, sometimes preparing for the future but more often speaking critically to the here and now. He fit that bill perfectly.

But just as much, Jesus noted the impact of their attitude toward him. Low expectations yield diminished results. For whatever reason they latched on to, they couldn’t or wouldn’t believe he was who he said he was. Thinking they knew everything about him limited how he had grown to be what they hadn’t seen in him before. They were majorly annoyed this Home Boy had busted out the box where he should have stayed.

Furthermore, their underestimation of him had its intended impact. So many times Jesus had brought healing and transformation in people’s lives because of their recognition and faith in his authoritative power. But when you expect nothing from a person, that’s pretty much what you are going to get. His hometown’s negativity toward him effectively robbed that power.

So are you saying that Jesus’ power is lost when people don’t believe? Is that what happened? But wait a sacred second there. God is supposed to be all-powerful! What does it matter if people don’t buy into all Jesus says? Not an ever-luving God apparently.

Back up and think about this. Yes, God loves and wants the best for the world. But God is not the Divine Fixer, the miracle man who will fulfill all your wishes. You have to do your part. Negative thinking over a long time will tear down not only your mental but also your  physical health. Poor eating habits, drug and alcohol abuse, tobacco use, etc. will not only affect your life expectancy, but poor health has its toll on relationships. The spiritual life can be similarly short-circuited. Therefore faith, while not absolutely necessary in large measure, needs to be present in some degree for natural order adjustments (fancy for miracles) or the speeding up of what is inherent in a person’s cellular mechanism. So, yeah, ya gotta believe somehow.

At any rate, while Jesus was home for a short while, he did some small miracles, but nothing really mighty. In all, it left him flabbergasted at the great unbelief of these people. He must’ve kept thinking back to all those who had desperately sought him out for healing, believing in his power to change their lives. Lepers,  the paralytic, that woman who had suffered for twelve years, so many more had come to him in that faith and found more than relief. They found restoration in who they were meant to be in God’s love. Why not these who had known him longest? You know he had to feel the hurt.

Yet, this rejection produced an unintended twist. Though his own people wouldn’t accept him, Jesus is compelled to reach even more. The twelve trainees had seen the best and now the worst, or, almost the worst. Some would love and follow and live out the message. Some would walk away in derision. Not that much has changed there, just saying. Jesus gives his disciples their marching orders.

They are to go in pairs, each to support and lift the other. They were not to weigh themselves with baggage, things they’d have to care for and worry about to the point of slowing them down or distracting from the mission. Sandals were fine, likely because they were going to cover a lot of miles. But not even an extra coat. Yes, their message would be for people to reverse their lives and live in God’s will. But just because they had a God-message, they were to make their outpost in homes, not the synagogues where the old traditions would be too restrictive. If they found themselves in a place where they weren’t accepted, they leave and shake its dust off their feet. Don’t wallow in the rejection.

Now you know, when these twelve guys set off, Jesus must have prayed as hard as ever for them. Their success rate wasn’t so great thus far, and then there had been that time in a boat when a horrific storm had come up, and they’d just about lost it.  But it was time for them to try it on their own, practice what they’d absorbed so far, learn what works and what doesn’t when you step into people’s souls. First called to follow him, Jesus now empowers them to make that difference.

Stepping up to the task, the twelve find success beyond what they’d ever imagined. Now, they not only follow Jesus, they do his work alongside him, multiplying the message at the rate of twelve times what he had started and in six times the places he was able to go otherwise.

In another place, it was asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46) More so than its people knew. Even if their hometown boy was not their hero, from this place Jesus brought the good news, and from there it spread. 

 Mark 6:1-13