I’m lucky!  Lucky to have met all kinds of people in all kinds of situations, from all kinds of backgrounds and all of walks of life.  I’ve met the incredibly wealthy and the incredibly poor.  I have dined with Lord’s and Lady’s and I’ve sat at table with common folks. What’s more I’ve met people who know people.  I’ve never met Sir Arnold Clark but I know people who have known him since he was a wee boy.  I’ve never met Sir Alex Ferguson but I’ve met people who have known him since he was a wee boy.  And somehow they don’t seem to be at all intimidated by the status and success and popularity those men have earned for themselves.  No one is saying that Alex and Arnold have not done well for themselves cause they have and we might admire them for their success but if you can remember them as snotty nosed kids playing in the close then there tends to be a warmth and affection towards them, an ownership of them which removes the need to be totally in awe of them.  The knowledge of their humble beginnings prevents us from raising them to the status of gods.

Many times I have read the passage in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus is rejected in his hometown of Nazareth.  And every time I have read it I have made the same assumption.  The people of Nazareth had known Jesus since he was a snotty nosed kid playing in the streets and because of that there was no way they could accept him as the Son of God and their Saviour.  They could only ever see him as Joseph’s son and if he claimed to be anything other or better than that they were going to knock him down to size.  I have always assumed that as Jesus taught in the synagogue that day claiming that the scriptures were being fulfilled as he read them, the crowds began to think he had got too big for his boots.  And of course that little saying, “ a prophet is never welcomed in his home town” only serves to affirm our suspicions that their minds were closed to who Jesus was.

But now I’m not so sure.  And I’ll tell you why.  In the middle of the story Jesus mentions the things, which were done in Capernaum.  And those things are key to our understanding.

You may recall that in John’s Gospel after Jesus had performed the miracle of turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana; Jesus, his mother, brothers and disciples journeyed to Capernaum where they stayed a few days.  John, however, tells us nothing of what happened during the stay in Capernaum.  But Mark’s gospel does and though Luke records the same story, Luke seems to have it out of chronological order.

Mark 1: 21 > “Jesus and his disciples came to the town of Capernaum, and on the next Sabbath Jesus went to the synagogue and began to teach.  The people who heard him were amazed at the way he taught; for he wasn’t like the teachers of the Law; instead, he taught with authority.  Just then a man with an evil spirit in him came into the synagogue and screamed, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Are you here to destroy us? I know who you are – you are God’s holy messenger!”  Jesus ordered the spirit, “Be quiet, and come out of the man!”  The evil spirit shook the man hard, gave a loud scream, and came out of him.  The people were all so amazed that they started saying to one another, “What is this?  Is it some kind of new teaching? This man has authority to give orders to the evil spirits and they obey him!”  And so the news about Jesus spread quickly everywhere in the province of Galilee.” 

By the time Jesus attended the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth everyone, everywhere was talking about him.  The atmosphere in the Synagogue that Sabbath was utterly electric.  Everyone came desperate to hear Jesus teaching.  The excitement had almost reached fever pitch.  As Jesus sat down after reading from the prophet Isaiah everyone was waiting for that crazy man to burst in at the back of the synagogue just as he had in Capernaum.  They wanted to see Jesus cast out evil spirits too.  But nothing happens. No miracles.  No evil spirits cast out.  Jesus senses what the expectations upon him are and he declines to live up to those expectations.

Excitement turns to disappointment; deep intense disappointment.  Jesus was their wee boy.  He had grown up amongst them and naturally the folks in Nazareth felt they had more right to see Jesus in action than anyone else.  When Jesus goes on to explain that it is not in God’s plan for them to see such miracles, well that’s simply rubbing salt in the wound – people’s disappointment, as it often does, turns to anger.  When the angry mob try to dispose of Jesus he slips away through the middle of the crowd just as cool as ice!

I find myself hard pressed to say that Nazareth rejected Jesus; in some way he rejected them and consequently they were bitterly disappointed in him.  They just didn’t get what they wanted from him and frequently when we are all hyped up and then don’t get what, when expectations aren’t fulfilled we end up disappointed and angry.

Likely we can all tell stories of times when someone close to us has disappointed us.  I suspect a heated argument followed on from that moment of disappointment.

Maybe it’s hard for us to think on Jesus leaving people disappointed.  He is meant to be our loving, forgiving saviour who heals all our wounds and fills our lives with happiness.  And yet we have all experienced disappointment in our faith when we have prayed earnestly during anxious times only to receive the “wrong” answer.  We have had times of excitement and anticipation in our faith, times when we thought we knew what our Lord was going to do but it just didn’t happen.  It seems that sometimes our Lord is unpredictable.

Human nature doesn’t really change.  The people of Nazareth got carried away in their excitement and anticipation.  They truly believed that what they wanted was what they were going to get.  It had nothing to do with faith or devotion.  It was all froth and hot air, all so superficial they just wanted the buzz of seeing something unbelievable happening right before their eyes, something to gossip about in the days ahead.  But Jesus wouldn’t play their game.

I think the times we feel disappointed in our faith are the times when we have made up our minds that what we want is what our Lord is going to give us.  We haven’t listened to him.  We set out to achieve something amazing and God will support us in what we do.  We forget that he is the Master and we are the servants.