This passage is a bit of a surprise because it seems to indicate that Jesus was incapable of doing something. In reality, of course, Jesus is capable to do anything, but the environment in Nazareth was not conducive to Jesus found miracles. The people were not open to the work of Jesus, they were not vulnerable to his truths. That’s something our society should consider. We both look for the work of God and remain hostile to it and cynical about it.
A lot of us have had the experience of going back to a hometown or a class reunion or just running into an old flame. It is in our nature to put labels on people and sort them into categories, and it’s also in our nature to kick against those especially when put back into an old environment or old relationships.
That’s the experience of Jesus here. He has coming off of wild success in other cities, as people have been amazed at his authority and wisdom. In Nazareth, though, the amazement was in reverse. They knew him, they had him in a box in their minds and what he was doing did not comport with that, so they rejected it.
We see this ourselves – people often do not let you change. If they knew you once, they will expect you still to be the same person that you were when they knew you. Sometimes it can be like crabs in a bucket. People resent self-improvement or success in others because of how it reflects on them, and seek to pull them back down. Sometimes we do the same thing.
So we get this apparent power outage, with only a few people healed (which is still amazing). And Jesus is in awe of their lack of faith, the polar opposite of other stories where we see him amazed by someone’s faith.
And Jesus is a gentleman – He does not force His love on us. If we are not open to God’s help, He will not help us. That’s one way to see Hell, the eternal rejection of God. It’s a way to see the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the rejection of the saving power that God offers.
We see that here where the people of Nazareth were so repulsed by Jesus in this new context that they feel into sin. When we lack trust in Jesus, we have the same thing happen.
A lack of trust or faith in Jesus can make us misunderstand and misappropriate Jesus. It makes us dishonor Jesus, even. And perhaps worst of all, it makes us miss out on real change, as we stay in the bucket of our own misery and fail to see or experience the miracles He is doing.
Then we come to the second part of this passage, where Jesus sends out His disciples, whose success stands in sharp contrast to Jesus’ failure in His hometown. He sends them out stripped down to the bare necessities and made to rely on the gifts of God.
This ties back to the story of rejection, because it is that fear of rejection that keeps us from doing new things,. It keeps us from sharing the truth of Jesus. The biggest obstacle for you daring to do great things or braving something new is the fear of rejection or failure.
But Jesus was the ultimate failure, and in that failure was the ultimate victory. And so the disciples too, are set up for this failure. They go out with just a staff and sandals, entirely dependent on God. That also means that the ultimate responsibility for what happens does not lie with them or us. It lies with God and those we speak to.
That is why Jesus tells his disciples not to sweat it when they are rejected as He was. Shake the dust from your feet and move on. It is not about us.
On the other hand, we also need to look at what we actually worship. We worship a hometown Jesus. An American Jesus, a prosperous Jesus. We worship a Jesus we create in our own image. We may not recognize the real Jesus if He does not come in the way we expect. But Jesus is a disruptor, and He will break up and disrupt our conceptions of Him if we let Him. He is so much bigger.
— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 7, 2024