Yet, in other ways he is not like themselves. He is one of their own, just like themselves. When Jesus returns to his home town Nazareth, the town people recognize him as the son of the carpenter, whose mother, Mary, and whose brothers and sisters are known to them. The Lord can be powerfully present to others through our own lives, ordinary as they may seem to us and to others. The risen Lord comes to us from within our daily lives, the work we do, the people we meet, our day to day activities. God continues to be present to us in and through the ordinary circumstances of our lives. The carpenter’s son was also the Son of God. To be in the presence of Jesus was to be in the presence of God. Jesus was fully human and yet his public ministry showed that he had a unique relationship with God. All these years living like the other members of his village were preparing him for a unique mission, a mission which made God present to people in a unique way. As he grew from childhood to adolescence, he worked alongside his father, Joseph, helping him at his trade. He spent nearly thirty years of his short life of thirty three years in a small village in Nazareth. How could God be working so powerfully through someone who seemed so ordinary? Yet, that is the mystery of Jesus. He wasn’t all that different to themselves.
They knew his mother and his extended family.
Jesus was too ordinary for God to be speaking and acting through him. However, the people who thought they knew Jesus best could not answer their own questions in this way. God was working through him in a powerful way because Jesus was Immanuel, God-with-us. The answer to the questions that the people of Nazareth asked was that Jesus received his wisdom and his miraculous powers from God. In today’s gospel reading, the people of Nazareth ask important questions regarding Jesus, ‘Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?’ ‘Where did the man get it all?’ We can ask good questions without always being open to the answer to those questions.
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