After Pentecost Devotional - Day 68

“'Isn’t he the laborer, the son of Mary? Aren’t James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon his brothers? Don’t his sisters still live here in our town?' The people were very unhappy because of what he was doing.” Mark 6:3

The term we find translated as “carpenter” would be better-translated as day-laborer. Jesus was not the son of a skilled tradesman. Instead, he was the son of a tekton, one who works with his hands. As such, Joseph would have built walls, gathered grain, or done whatever job was needed by whoever would pay for a day's work. He would have been a simple man by economic standards of his day.

What that means in this passage is that Jesus was of the lower working class of Jewish society. He would not have had access to the kind of education that would allow one to become a rabbi. Jesus would have grown up doing the same kind of work as his father, learning from an early age the ins and outs of working in accordance with the needs of the day. He would not have lived in the circles of the educated class of Jewry.

Jesus returns to the scene of Nazareth and encounters hometown prejudice. He no longer fit with the expectations of those who knew him. His presence made them uncomfortable. Much as the effect Jesus had on the people of Gadara after healing the man with so many evil spirits, the hometown folks could not accept Jesus on his own terms. They wanted him to fit in with their paradigms of life. They did not want him to rock the boat.

It might be one thing for a stranger to enter life's stage in the limelight, but it is quite another for the hometown boy to stand out as something special. He did not come from the right stock to be special. He was not rich enough. He was not educated enough. He was not religious enough. He was not elite enough. He was none of the things that make people worthy of standing out from the crowd.

With all the reasons not to credit Jesus with being anything special, Jesus was acting as though he had something extraordinary to say. He was doing things he was not supposed to be able to do. He was destroying their paradigms of what to expect of people and how to classify people according to their relative worth. Jesus had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, and yet he was back acting as though he were as important as the mayor, rabbi, and priest put together.

That did not sit well with them. It made them angry. It forced them to question the validity of their social structure, their notions of valuing people, and determining how God grants acceptance to people of different categories.

The claims made by Jesus' life and ministry were that God was not impressed with social standing. Jesus' reaching out to others who were outcast by the larger society added fuel to that same fire. Jesus had just returned from Gentile territory, where he had ministered to a Gentile possessed by foreign deities that were anathema to Judaism. None of that sat well with the people of his hometown. His presence and ministry were in too direct opposition to the many social structures they held so dear.

Reflect on what social structures might hold too much meaning in your life, such as to cause rejection of Jesus' priorities.


"Lord, grant me the confidence to trust you above my social constructs and values."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin

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