The Familiar Jesus

“When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood to read…”

After his baptism, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness and was tempted by the devil. Following more than a month of fasting and the enduring of temptation, he made his way home.

Once in Nazareth, Jesus returns to familiar ways. As was his custom, he reads the scrolls in the synagogue on the Sabbath. But something about the familiar, homegrown Jesus has shifted.

After his baptism, Scripture refers to Jesus as being “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1). He returns to Galilee, “filled with the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). No longer only a reader of prophecies, Jesus declares himself to be the fulfillment of them. In the midst of an ordinary moment of worship, the Spirit-filled God-made-flesh changes everything. Jesus’s sweet-spoken words, full of grace and truth, compel them until they remember one thing: “Isn’t Jesus really just the carpenter’s son?”

The combined revelation of Jesus’s human and divine identities confound the people who are most familiar with him. Their awe gives way to disbelief. When Jesus challenges their previous understanding of him and their sense of being favored by God, they turn on him. In a moment, they shift from speaking well of him to being full of rage. This is not the Jesus they thought they knew, and they push him out. The people who knew Jesus from birth, those most familiar with him, were the first to try to silence him.

This passage challenges us to consider if our familiarity with Jesus might lead us to question, or even reject, the truth of who he is, too. When the Spirit moves in unpredictable ways, when God teaches us something new or admonishes us, do we push our Lord away? When God opens our eyes to see an uncomfortable truth, especially about ourselves, do we receive or reject his message? Do we receive or reject Jesus?

Lord, in your grace, please help me to trust you and follow you even when the Spirit challenges my preconceived ideas of who you are and who I am. Amen.

MONICA ODLE
Master of Theological Studies Student
Woodway, Texas