There's this account in the bible.. it comes after Jesus has been travelling around the area teaching, healing and loving on people. Everywhere He goes, the crowds follow Him wanting to get close to Him, to hear Him and be healed.
But now He's heading home to Nazareth, the back country hick town He grew up in, where everyone knows the local goss, where Mrs Miller still lets her dog poop on the neighbours lawn even after ten years, where Mr Granger sits on his porch to relay the local news to everyone who walks past and where if someone has an affair, the whole street knows within 24 hours.
It's that kind of place.
After travelling around and gaining national attention with His miracles and teaching, you'd expect a decent homecoming.
Here's what happens.
'The next Sabbath, He began teaching and those who heard Him were amazed. They asked "where does He get all this wisdom and the power to perform such miracles?" Then they scoffed, "He's just the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Judas and Simon, and His sisters live here amongst us." They were deeply offended and refused to believe in Him" (Mark 6: 2-3)
God was sending something the world had never seen before, the kingdom of God, the breaking in of eternity, the freedom from sin and death and He was RIGHT THERE WITH THEM.
And they felt it, they saw something different but they immediately rejected it because it came in the form of what was familiar. They knew the vessel that God was using so they rejected Him in the expectation of a glorious, fresh, politically powerful Messiah figure to break on the scene and make everything right.
How often do we miss what God is doing because it comes in the form of what we think we already know? The places, people and activities we're familiar with, do we reject them as normal because we're searching for something new and exciting? Do we miss what we're desperately searching for because it looks like that which we're used to seeing?
