Nazareth Rejects Jesus 

Jesus returned home to preach at the Sabbath service in March, 29 CE, and all Nazareth, friends and foes, turned out to hear this former citizen speak in the synagogue. Many of the people were pleased with the discourse, and they marveled at his graciousness and wisdom. As was customary after a formal service, Jesus stepped down into the crowd to take questions.

In this group were many turbulent individuals whose minds were bent on mischief, while about the fringe of this crowd there circulated those debased men who had been hired to make trouble for Jesus. Many of the disciples and evangelists who had remained without now pressed into the synagogue and were not slow to recognize that trouble was brewing. They sought to lead the Master away, but he would not go with them.

Watching Jesus being pushed about and treated poorly became too much, and some apostles and friends angrily demanded that his enemies depart. The crowd turned into a mob, and under the leadership of hirelings, crude individuals laid hold upon Jesus and forced him to the edge of a cliff. To everyone’s surprise, Jesus quickly turned around, folded his arms, and walked safely through the crowd.

Jesus grew up in Nazareth in a house which had been built by his father, Joseph, with the assistance of two of his brothers. Given his origin city, Jesus was often referred to as Jesus of Nazareth.

Nazareth was a caravan way station and crossroads of travel, which allowed Jesus to meet people from other parts of the world. The city was largely gentile in population; at the same time it was widely known as a center of liberal interpretation of Jewish traditional law. The people of Nazareth were not highly regarded for piety and righteous living. And all this gave rise to the common saying in Jerusalem, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

When Jesus became certain that his sacred obligations of care and support for his family were being met, Jesus left home. He did not return to Nazareth until his third preaching tour which focused on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Although Jesus had strong emotions walking through the remembrances of his childhood, his return to Nazareth was hardly a homecoming. Many became more critical and unfriendly towards him. Resentment grew when he moved to Capernaum. He never included his native village in any of his earlier preaching tours and he did none of his great works here.

Most of the older of Jesus’ friends, including the doting chazan teacher of his youth, were dead or had left Nazareth, and the younger generation was prone to resent his fame with strong jealousy. His enemies, knowing that he was to spend this Sabbath day in Nazareth and supposing that he would speak in the synagogue, had hired numerous rough and uncouth men to harass him and, in every way possible, make trouble.

After conducting the Sabbath service, Jesus stepped down into the crowd which pressed forward to ask questions. But they jostled him and, pointing accusing fingers at him, said: “You think you are better than the people of Nazareth; you moved away from us, but your brother is a common workman, and your sisters still live among us. We know your mother, Mary. Where are they today? We hear big things about you, but we notice that you do no wonders when you come back.” Jesus answered them: “I love the people who dwell in the city where I grew up, and I would rejoice to see you all enter the kingdom of heaven, but the doing of the works of God is not for me to determine. The transformations of grace are wrought in response to the living faith of those who are the beneficiaries.”

Jesus found himself surrounded in the synagogue by a great throng of his enemies and a sprinkling of his own followers, and in reply to their questions and sinister banterings, he half humorously remarked: “Yes, I am Joseph’s son; I am the carpenter, and I am not surprised that you remind me of the proverb, ‘Physician heal yourself,’ and that you challenge me to do in Nazareth what you have heard I did at Capernaum; but I call you to witness that even the Scriptures declare that ‘a prophet is not without honor save in his own country and among his own people.’”

If not for the tactical error of one of his own apostles, Simon Zelotes, Jesus would have managed the multitude with good humor and disarmed even his violent adversaries effectively. Simon, with the assistance of one of the younger evangelists, Nahor, had gathered a group of Jesus' friends from the throng and, assuming a hostile stance, warned the Master's enemies to depart. Jesus had taught the apostles for a long time that a gentle response dispels anger, but his disciples were not accustomed to seeing their beloved teacher, whom they so readily referred to as Master, treated with such discourtesy and contempt. It was too much for them, and they found themselves expressing impassioned and vehement resentment, which only served to inflame the mob mentality of this ungodly and uncivilized assembly.

And so, under the leadership of hirelings, these ruffians laid hold upon Jesus and rushed him out of the synagogue to the brow of a near-by precipitous hill, where they were inclined to shove him over the edge to his death below. But just as they were about to push him over the edge of the cliff, Jesus turned suddenly upon his captors and, facing them, quietly folded his arms. He said nothing, but his friends were more than astonished when, as he started to walk forward, the mob parted and permitted him to pass on unmolested.

This turbulent ending of the third preaching tour had a sobering effect upon all of Jesus’ followers. They were beginning to realize the meaning of some of the Master’s teachings; they were awaking to the fact that the kingdom would come only through much sorrow and bitter disappointment.