Matthew 13:53-58
“And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:58)
A prophet is not accepted in his hometown is just another way of expressing the old adage that “familiarity breeds contempt.” It is a reminder that one of the greatest challenges is learning how to continue to love people even after you’ve discovered they’re not perfect and/or they’re not going to do everything in their power to make your life perfect. Every form of relationship faces this challenge. The “honeymoon’s over” the minute the young couple realizes they didn’t actually marry the perfect person and that the maid of honor was quite wrong when she tearfully said, “you are perfect together” at the reception. Parents are often quite startled to discover that their child is nothing like the one they had imagined and has developed passions/interests/habits quite different from the ones they had tried to instill in them. Similarly, many children grow up and discover (typically after the 25th billable hour of counseling) that their parents weren’t perfect in the job of parenting. New friendships are often the most exciting because you haven’t heard each other’s favorite and funniest stories yet, but they quickly cool once everyone starts repeating themselves.
Of course, the inverse is true too. Familiarity may breed contempt, but neither do we like it when someone has been transformed or changed significantly. Addicts often share that the first person to bemoan their sobriety are their closest friends and family. That’s because these friends and family had accommodated the addiction in their souls and sobriety means having to change. Since everyone is change averse, it is not uncommon for those close to recovering addicts to actually tempt the addicts back into their addiction.
Elements of each of these are at work in Jesus’ hometown encounters. First, He is so well-known that there is no mystery to Him. Second, He is presenting Himself in such profoundly different and holy ways that some folks are repulsed and think He’s just putting on airs. It is literally a no-win situation.
So, what are we to learn from this story? I think the twin lesson is to learn to love people – warts and all – for who they are and to root for their on-going transformation into someone who is holier and holier. It is to accept their brokenness, while truly anticipating their reform (and not, subtly, working against it). And all of this can be very hard work. We like continuity some of the time and diversity other times. We get ourselves in trouble when we reject the continuity we should want and then turn around and bemoan the diversity (or changes) that are actually good.
Yet maybe the greatest hope we have in how difficult all this can be comes in the last line of the reading. Matthew reports that Jesus did not do “many deeds of power there.” I love that word “many.” It implies that He still did some deeds of power. Like, He just couldn’t help Himself. It wasn’t as much as He would’ve liked, but it also wasn’t nothing. And in that, we have hope for learning to love the ones we know so well, while still rooting for their transformation. We may not get it all right, but we won’t fail entirely either. Amen.
