“Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” Then he said, “You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb: ‘Physician, heal yourself’—meaning, ‘Do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum.’”
It’s amazing how quickly things can go from everyone speaking well of you, to people starting to question your integrity and upbringing. Remember these are Jesus’ neighbors, friends, family, Sabbath School teachers and church family who knew Him, watched Him grow up and probably bought some chairs and tables from His father’s carpenter shop. They’re like, “Isn’t this Joseph and Mary’s boy?” This could have brought up doubts in their minds about His questionable birth and the drama surrounding it that happen in their own little town. And plus wasn’t Jesus an immigrant refugee for a time? Then there was the ongoing reputation, which they had consciously or subconsciously bought into, that their poor little town of blue color workers had nothing good coming out of it, which reveals to us a lot of what they thought about themselves. Who does He think He is? “Please Jesus, don’t embarrass us any further with Your Messiah delusions. I mean, if You really are the Messiah, then prove it by doing one of those miracles we heard You allegedly did in Caperaum.” And here we see that Jesus is rejected by His own people, because…
He Didn’t Fit the Picture of Messiah they Wanted.
Here they had in their midst the real Messiah, the Son of the living God, accompanied with solid evidence, yet they rejected Him because He didn’t fit into the little box of the kind of Messiah they wanted.
So my wife and I love Bible movies. We even have a collection of them at home. One of our favorites to watch is the story of king Solomon. There’s a scene when the queen of Sheba, played by Vivica Fox, is on the road to Jerusalem with a huge entourage of servants and gifts to meet the world famous king Solomon. What she doesn’t realize is that in a nearby field, Solomon, dressed in common apparel, was approaching her caravan out of shear curiosity as to who this huge entourage was lead by. He begins to walk alongside the caravan to talk to the queen of Sheba, but she dismisses him as a poor, confused peasant, when he reveals to her that he was indeed, king Solomon. Then when she arrives in the beautiful court of the king in Jerusalem, she is stunned, with her mouth dropping as if to hit the floor, when she sees king Solomon sitting in all his royal glory. She had previously dismissed him, because he came in a way that didn’t fit her picture of what a king should look like! And this was the same reason Jesus was rejected in Nazareth.
It’s at this time that Jesus says what my previous senior pastor said to me, that “no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.” Luke 4:24 NLT. Think about it for a minute. They knew Jesus. They grow up with Jesus. Jesus, in His humanity, had become so familiar to them, that the mysteriously divine and miraculous nature of His birth, had become a distant memory to them. This should sound familiar to us since this is often the case with how loved ones relate with one another at home. We can take one another for granted and become too familiar with each other, therefore the significance of who you really are can sometimes not be taken as seriously. We do this with Jesus as well. We don’t take the real Jesus seriously, because we’re so used to hearing about Him, many of us from childhood, that we take what He’s really like for granted. And like Him, we too may not be accepted sometimes by those who know us, even family, when we take following the real Jesus seriously.
Another aspect of the real, historical Jesus that we often take for granted, haven’t thought much about or may in fact resist, because it doesn’t fit the picture of Jesus we were brought up with, is the reality of His physical appearance. The greater emphasis is of course His character and work of redemption, but there is relevant significance to how we view His appearance. Based on research and common sense due to the geographic realities of Northern Africa, bordering Palestine in the 1st century, Jesus was in reality a person of color. The Savior of the world was, what we would say today, black or brown, as some suspect. These terms are social constructs that arose out of the baggage of Western slavery, yet for some this may be new, because most of the art you’ve seen has depicted Him as white European, which comes out of middle ages Papal Christianity. So there’s still a work of reformation that needs to happen in order for us to be historically accurate and aware of the established fact that for centuries this depiction of Jesus has been used as a tool of colonial oppression that still affects us today! Some hearing this may still dismiss this, saying that it has nothing to do with our salvation. “As long as His blood was red, it doesn’t matter”, you might say. Well, this is true, except if someone is harboring the sin of racism in their heart and therefore cannot embrace a darker skinned Jesus as the Savior of all humanity, then this could cause someone to reject Him when He soon cracks the sky!
Personally, I think we should avoid trying to portray detailed pictures of Jesus and leave the mystery of who He was, and is, in His humanity to the minds eye, keeping in mind the very likely reality of His historical pigmentation. What we need to do is get to know the real Jesus and the kind of Savior King He is revealed to be in Scripture. This will guard us against a false version of Jesus and thus a false version of Christianity that’s very prevalent right now and we desperately need to know the difference! I am even concerned that many Adventists are getting swept up into a false picture of Messiah, especially in the United States of America.
Jesus understood the false preconceived notions of who He was, as may be with us, that needed to be challenged in order for the hearts of His own people to embrace who He really was. Therefore knowing their thoughts, Jesus said this in verse 25…
CJ Cousins
Follower of Jesus, Husband, Father, Pastor, Author and lover of people.
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