“A Prophet Is Never Without Honour”
- International
- August 3, 2012
As we read the Gospels, sometimes the thought comes to mind: did Jesus have a family ? What did his family think of him, and how did they handle his new-found fame? Today’s Gospel gives us a quick glimpse of this.
When we think of Jesus’s family, the names of Joseph and Mary come to mind, and Catholics believe that Jesus had no siblings. What then are we to make of the names of “his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Jude? And are not all his sisters here with us?”
Scholars have various opinions about this, but one thing is obvious to anyone with some experience of the extended family and its close relationships in Eastern cultures. Cousins and step-relations are considered as “one of the family”, often given the title of ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. So we can safely say that Jesus didn’t live in a modern nuclear family, but rather, he had a large extended family, and many were the claims made upon him because of this.
One such claim was : “Come, work some miracles here, in your hometown. The same kind of miracles we’ve heard of in Capernaum, Bethsaida and elsewhere.” Note, the demand for miracles is not based on faith, but merely on the need to impress, to boast about. Although there was a fair amount of pride that “our local boy, Jesus” is such an eloquent preacher, we can be sure that there was more than a shade of envy and resentment at his popularity – “after all, we know his family – isn’t he the carpenter’s son?”
Jesus never works a miracle of healing just to show off. Every time he cures someone, he invites that person into a deeper relationship with him. He asks the person to trust him, “to believe” in him and in God who sent him. The miracle is only the first step to a closer relationship with God, an invitation to receive “the reign of God” in one’s life.
For his relatives what was important was blood and kinship. For Jesus, that was secondary. What’s important was trust in him and an openness to ‘the kingdom’.
But this his family and townsfolk didn’t want. They refused to see anything in Jesus but a miracle-worker from whom they could extract some benefit. So Jesus concludes sadly, “A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country and among his own people.” And Matthew adds this comment on Jesus’s visit to Nazareth: He did not work many miracles there, such was their lack of faith.
When we think of Jesus’s family, the names of Joseph and Mary come to mind, and Catholics believe that Jesus had no siblings. What then are we to make of the names of “his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Jude? And are not all his sisters here with us?”
Scholars have various opinions about this, but one thing is obvious to anyone with some experience of the extended family and its close relationships in Eastern cultures. Cousins and step-relations are considered as “one of the family”, often given the title of ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. So we can safely say that Jesus didn’t live in a modern nuclear family, but rather, he had a large extended family, and many were the claims made upon him because of this.
One such claim was : “Come, work some miracles here, in your hometown. The same kind of miracles we’ve heard of in Capernaum, Bethsaida and elsewhere.” Note, the demand for miracles is not based on faith, but merely on the need to impress, to boast about. Although there was a fair amount of pride that “our local boy, Jesus” is such an eloquent preacher, we can be sure that there was more than a shade of envy and resentment at his popularity – “after all, we know his family – isn’t he the carpenter’s son?”
Jesus never works a miracle of healing just to show off. Every time he cures someone, he invites that person into a deeper relationship with him. He asks the person to trust him, “to believe” in him and in God who sent him. The miracle is only the first step to a closer relationship with God, an invitation to receive “the reign of God” in one’s life.
For his relatives what was important was blood and kinship. For Jesus, that was secondary. What’s important was trust in him and an openness to ‘the kingdom’.
But this his family and townsfolk didn’t want. They refused to see anything in Jesus but a miracle-worker from whom they could extract some benefit. So Jesus concludes sadly, “A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country and among his own people.” And Matthew adds this comment on Jesus’s visit to Nazareth: He did not work many miracles there, such was their lack of faith.
