Isn't This the Carpenter's Son?

I want us to think together and talk about an event in Nazareth, Jesus’ home. These hometown residents refused to believe in Jesus as Messiah and chose to forego his miraculous signs and wonders.

And you don’t expect it. Mark gives us six questions the locals are asking about Jesus. He could have concluded that list with, “and they all believed in him.” But instead, they were offended—scandalized, upset and angry.

These people are the ones who grew up with him—his longtime friends and extended family. This population of people so familiar with Jesus amazed him with their unyielding unbelief. Mark says, “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (Mark 6:5).

We know that Nazareth was the hometown of Jesus. That is where this incident took place. I have been to modern-day Nazareth. I have also been to a rugged knoll outside of Nazareth where scholars suspect Jesus was taken in the hometown effort to kill him by throwing him off a cliff.

The effort by friends and family to kill Jesus in Nazareth was unsuccessful. But the effort to kill the work of God there was successful.

Maybe Jesus had only one hometown.

Or maybe through the generations, as the name of Jesus has become a frequent part of ordinary conversations, as the religions that focus on Jesus have flourished, Jesus has developed an entirely new group of familiars, people who think they know all about him and thus, do not believe in him. We might call them post-Christian. This term is widely applied to persons who have stopped believing in Jesus as God’s Promised One. They have moved on, usually to a more generic and eclectic spirituality that has no particular savior other than self. 

Here is the problem:

They Think They Heard Jesus:

...but all they really heard was the cacophony of loud opinions.

They never actually listened to him.

His mother and brothers arrived to collect him. They sent someone into the meeting to let him know they were there. They themselves did not go into the meeting. Apparently, they had little to no interest in hearing what Jesus had to say.

Many people who have grown up in “Christianity” have never actually read the Bible. They have no idea what it says. Everything they know about Jesus they have learned from someone else, not the original sources.

• Post-Christians think they heard Jesus in the harangues of preachers condemning others for their sins. They think they heard Jesus in the self-righteous judgments passed down by so-called Christians on people around them.

• Post-Christians think they heard Jesus in the racism and sexism, hatred and bigotry of many voices through the generations claiming to be Christian. Oh, the things said in the name of Christianity.

How surprised these Post-Christians would be to actually read Jesus and hear what he said. If they would simply open the Bible—or the Bible App—and read the words of Jesus, they would be stunned.

No church—and no individual Christian—has ever fully heard Jesus in all that he said. We are too parochial, too captured by our cultures and prejudices, to hear it all. Therefore, we perpetually misunderstand him and misrepresent him in the world.

They Think They Saw Jesus:

...but all they really saw was his flawed followers.

The hometown people think they saw Jesus when he was playing in their streets, drawing water at the well, working with his father in their shop. 

• They think Jesus was merely a carpenter. His carpentry was not something he did. No, it was who he was. He was not a priest, rabbi, or prophet. He was a carpenter. 

• The relatives and friends of Jesus could not see beyond their stereotype—“the carpenter.” 

Post-Christians today think they have seen Jesus in the behavior of Christians and of his church. 

• They think they have seen Jesus in the stone-cold detachment of the church from the need all around it. They think they have seen Jesus in the political alliances of religious elites and our penchant for fawning before the powerful.

• They think they have seen Jesus in soaring steeples that cast their passive shadows on the troubled landscape of human suffering. 

I myself am guilty of giving this false impression of Christ—who he is and what he says.

• Today I acknowledge my own failure to represent the Savior faithfully. I have been bought off too often. Too often I have compromised where Jesus would not have given an inch.

• I acknowledge my own self-centeredness, my failure to lay down my life as Jesus called me to do. I acknowledge my failure to love God with all my heart and to love my neighbor as I love myself. These egregious sins against Christ I have committed flagrantly and perpetually.

• And I plead with the Post-Christian to look past the awful representative I have been to the Savior himself. My words were never intended to replace his very own. My deeds were never meant to block or skew your view of him.

If you would only take an honest look at Jesus, you would be surprised. The stereotypes that blind you would melt away. If you looked closely and truly saw Jesus, you would see his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

They Really Do Not Know Jesus:

That was the whole problem with the townspeople and the relatives. They prejudged Jesus. They never gave the real Jesus a chance to change their minds or their hearts.

The same thing has happened with many people immersed in this quasi-Christian culture we live in. They only know the confusing collage they have put together through their associations with people who claimed to be Christians and causes that were called “Christian.”

Many of those who have prophesied in his name do not know him. “Lord, Lord,” they will say one day. And his reply will be “I never knew you. Depart from me.” What a tragedy it would be on that day to realize that the person you allowed to turn you away from Christ never knew him at all.

Many of those who have sat in church pews for years do not really know the Savior. They have dutifully performed their religious obligations but have never truly heard or seen the One who makes all things new. 

• Many in this Post-Christian culture never followed Jesus. They were never serious disciples. They cloaked themselves in religion because it was good for business and social status. But they never laid down their lives to follow the Savior. They have a “form of godliness.” Paul describes: 

• There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. - 2 Timothy 3:1-5
• We get trapped in our Unbelief. We are taken hostage by the status quo. And ultimately we give Christ a makeover. We make him in our image and after our likeness. When Jesus becomes a household name, we lose him in the furnishings.

And really, we have no idea what to do with that winsome, perplexing prophet who ages ago died naked on a cross. 

Two Things Post-Christians Must Do:

• They must develop better filters about what claims to be Christian. Jesus has been claimed by many pretenders and many unjust causes. The label “Christian” has been glued to a lot of ideas and movements that are no such thing.

• They must get back to Jesus himself and read what the Bible says about him. Only in a return to the original record will the confusion be dispelled.