at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

Back in the mid-nineties, I joined a number of friends from high school in celebrating the appointment of one of our classmates by Governor Weld to fill the vacancy of the important and highly visible position of Norfolk County District Attorney. Despite the many accomplishments the night’s honoree had achieved in his adult life, we spent the evening regaling him with our memories of his antics as a teenager. Although we were proud to see the successful lawyer our classmate had become, he remained first and foremost in our memories the lighthearted prankster of 30 years before.

I wonder if this happened to any of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence 233 years ago. Were any remembered more for their youthful highjinx when they returned to the childhood homes than for their roles in shaping American independence? Were Hancock or Paine or Gerry or Adams – John or Samuel – received with skepticism or resentment by the home folks here in their native Massachusetts after their important work serving in the Continental Congress?

We read in this morning’s gospel lesson from Mark that Jesus encountered this problem. When he returns to his childhood home of Nazareth and speaks in the synagogue, the townspeople are “offended.” He has gained a following while on a preaching tour in Galilee and has made a big impact in other towns and villages. But back home, he encounters rejection; the home folks are unable or unwilling to understand how he could speak with such authority and wisdom. “Where does it all come from?” they ask. After all, isn’t he just a carpenter, the son of Mary? Don’t some of his brothers still live in town?” You can almost hear them sneering, “Who does he think he is anyway?”

The townspeople of Nazareth don’t believe that he can be the Messiah; after all, he’s a hometown boy. He has no distinguished lineage, no training, no qualifications. He’s only a carpenter!

Like the Nazarenes, many of us may look at people we know in just one dimension. Families and people who have known us our whole lives have a habit of cutting us down to size, sometimes gently, sometimes harshly. You can grow up and mature and have a respectable position in the community and still be remembered as the brat who wouldn’t share your toys. We might still see the neighbor’s boy as the kid who got into scrapes with the law -- rather than the successful doctor he has become. We might see the girl in our class as the one who experimented with drugs -- rather than the clean and successful businesswoman she is now.

And it is a shadow side of human nature that people can take offense at your achievements rather than openings their hearts to someone’s growth and change.

A number of my clergy colleagues can tell stories of the lack of support they received when they first told their families about their call to ministry. An incredulous “You think God is calling you?” greeted more than one of my classmates. “You who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Sunday School? You who dropped out of confirmation class as a teenager? You who didn’t go to church for twenty years? [I was on the receiving end of that one.] You want to be a minister?

Yes, it can be difficult for us to look at someone we know in a new light. And it can also be our loss.

The people of Nazareth, in rejecting the messenger, miss the message of Jesus. Although they hear his words of wisdom, and witness his mighty acts of healing, they cannot accept and comprehend that God is working out God’s purpose in this person they have known since childhood. They have been expecting their Messiah to be a kind of Superman; they have been expecting spectacular signs and unmistakable evidence of divinity. Yet they see only a local boy who has played in the same streets they have.

There is such a thing as being too close to something to appreciate it, and Jesus’ family and friends are too close, too familiar with him to understand the mysterious power of God at work in him. Their expectations prevent them from seeing Jesus as anything more than a hometown kid putting on airs.

If we were those Nazarenes, how would we have reacted to Jesus? Would we, too, have seen him only as the kid we grew up with, as someone unqualified and untrained for ministry, as only a carpenter? Would we, too, have missed his message?

When we see people in only one dimension, when we define them only by the job they work in or by the town they live in, or by the schools they attend; when we look at people only by how they have acted in the past rather than what they have become; when we see people only in terms of their illnesses or their tragedies or their failures; when we are unable to see the whole person –then we miss out on all that they have to offer and teach us.

Fortunately, God has a different message for us. God says to each of us, “I know all about your past, all about your inadequacies. But they don’t matter, because they are not the ultimate truth about you. Whoever you were is not what you are now; whoever you are now is not yet what you will be.”

May we see each other through the eyes of God, who has a purpose for each one of our lives. May we recognize the transforming power of God, who can take our ordinary lives and do extraordinary things through them. Amen.

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