CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ‘HE CAME UNTO HIS OWN….’

Jesus took his disciples a slightly different way over the hills to Netzerit on this occasion. They came in through the little village of Nain which was only a few miles from Jesus’ hometown. He was traveling with both his disciples and a considerable crowd which had begun to trail him wherever he went, begging for healing and help. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out–the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the town was with her. When the Jesus saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.” Jesus knew very well that if this widow lost her only son, she would likely lose her home and property as well to a male relative of her husband’s. Thus the situation was not merely tragic, it could have ongoing social consequences for the widow, turning her into a dependent on some of her in-law’s wishes and ways.

Jesus went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus took the man by his hand and gave him back to his mother. Both the disciples and the crowd were all filled with awe and praised G-d. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “G-d has come to help his people.” This news about Jesus spread as far as Judea as well as the surrounding countryside in Galilee. Unlike the raising of Jairus’ daughter this action was public and soon enough Jesus realized he would have such a reputation that there would hardly be anywhere to run and hide in most of Galilee and Judea.

The journey to Netzerit from Nain took less than an hour, and it was a good thing as well, since the sun was going down. Jesus first stopped at his family’s home, and Miryam came out to greet him. Giving him a warm embrace, he said to her,”tell the synagogue ruler I am here and would like to address our town’s people.”

Miryam was silent for a moment and said–“Are you sure about this? There is so much gossip about you in this town, some of it very negative, that this may appear to be a provocation.”

“Nevertheless,” said Jesus, “I need to announce publicly what I am doing, which is in fact a matter of fulfillment of the sacred writings. And here is certainly the right place from which to start this process. Send someone over to the ruler’s house and tell him I am on my way. Did you hear that Antipas has taken John prisoner?”

“Yes, the news came just yesterday. And it just added to my worries about you. Clearly, you are in danger if you keep following the path you are now on. And what’s this that Joses just came and ran in the house and told me— that you’ve actually touched a corpse and raised a dead boy just down the road in Nain! That will certainly draw an even bigger crowd, some of them unfriendly. James says that you are beginning to act like a mad man, defying the authorities, and violating our customs about things clean and unclean. And who are these men who are with you? I recognize the fishermen from Kefer-Nahum, but who are these other men? Is it true you have even recruited some Zealots–that will also get Herod’s attention. He already believes your cousin is politically dangerous. Some of what you are doing will raise those anxieties in Herod even higher–after all John didn’t do any miracles!”

Jesus listened to the worries of his mother, and said to her “it is all in G-d’s plan and will, as you must know. I must follow the script of the Scripture in various ways. Besides the reaction in most places in Galilee has been very positive. In Nain I was just hailed as the great eschatological prophet. Had I had time I would have told them no, that is John, but they understood something special is happening. G-d is doing a new thing.” The conversation continued for a few more minutes, with the disciples awaiting Jesus outside his house so they could all go to the synagogue.

The small synagogue in Netzerit could hardly hold all the people, as the word had spread like wildfire through the town that Jesus was back and would speak in the synagogue. Some of the people were anticipating he would do some healings while he was present, for the word about his ‘mighty works’ had spread throughout the region.

Having entered the synagogue quietly and seated himself at the front with the synagogue ruler whose name was David, the service had begun quietly with prayer and a little singing, and then David had handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to Jesus. Unrolling it to a passage near the end of the scroll, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

All began to speak well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. But then Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Kefer-nahum.’ “

“Amen I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon, just as I have recently helped a widow in Nain. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed–only Naaman the Syrian.”

The people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this, because Jesus seemed to be suggesting that they were as unresponsive to G-d and as stiff-necked as those in Israel that Elijah and Elisha had to deal with when they were northern prophets in this very region. Further he was intimating that he was not sent to perform miracles in hard-hearted Netzerit.

So great was the animus created by his words that the decorum of the service broke down. One person shouted from the back “Is this not merely the son of Miryam, of a humble carpenter’s family, and are not his sisters and brothers here with us now? Who does he think he is!”

Some of them had even concluded that Jesus was not merely speaking out of turn, and was claiming to be someone he wasn’t, some thought Jesus’ words amounted to blasphemy. These men got up, and pushed Jesus out the back of the synagogue and grabbing him by his arms drove him out of the town. They took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built to the very spot where Jesus had often come to pray and meditate, in order to throw him down the cliff, for this was the first step in the process of stoning. The victim would be thrown down first, and then stoned. But suddenly, when the men let go of Jesus for a minute, without warning, Jesus ceased being passive, and somehow walked right through the crowd and went on his way, his disciples running after him as they poured out the front door of the synagogue.

Catching up with Jesus, Simon quipped, “That certainly went well! Nothing like hometown hospitality and a warm reception.”

“Too warm” replied a shaken Jesus, “and the wrong kind of warmth as well, but then as I indicated the saying is true–‘a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown, and sadly amongst his own kin, and even within his own home. I doubt I shall ever be able to go home again now without causing a huge problem for the rest of my family.”

On this somber note, Jesus took a left hand turn and headed back towards Kefer-Nahum. He would not frequent this part of Galilee again for a while. The entire walk back to Kefer-Nahum in the dark passed without incident, and the disciples did not dare ask him what he was thinking, for they knew very well how serious the breach was now between Jesus and Netzerit, and probably even with his own family. Just when they thought things couldn’t get much worse, as they were coming down the trail into the vicinity of Migdal, two men came hurrying to meet Jesus, disciples of John who said “John sends word from prison that he may not live much longer. He wants to know for sure “Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another?”

Thinking of Isaiah once more, which was still fresh in Jesus’ mind, he replied–“Go and tell John again those things which you have heard about and have seen. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who shall not be offended by me.”

As they departed, Jesus began to say unto his disciples standing around him “What did you go out into the wilderness to see when John was baptizing? A reed shaken by the wind? A man clothed in royal attire like Herod? Those that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. So what did you go out to see at the Jordan? A prophet? Yes indeed and I would say more than just another prophet, for this is the one, of whom Isaiah wrote, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, which shall prepare your way before you.’ From the days of John the baptizer until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and rejection, and the violent try to take it by force. Look at what has happened to John.”

“You might well expect better of the common people, people like in my hometown, but to what shall I compare this generation– It is like children sitting in the markets, and calling unto us, saying, ‘We have piped for you, and you have not danced; we have mourned with you, and you have not lamented.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a devil’. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold a man gluttonous, and given to too much drink, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’. But Wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

The disciples had never seen Jesus this exercised, this angry before, with the people of Galilee. The differences in John and Jesus’ styles of ministry had confused the people. And now even the disciples were confused and afraid, because John was imprisoned, and Jesus was no longer welcome in his hometown. Where was this all leading? The day had begun with exhilaration, a raising from the dead no less, but it had ended on a dark and somber note.