A Prophet Is Not Without Honor, Save in His Own House

Jesus went home and taught in the synagogue He had grown up attending, and the reaction is one of the strangest things in the Gospels.

They were astonished. That is the word. They said: where did this man get all this, what wisdom is this which is given to him, how are such mighty works done by his hands.

They were not denying anything. They had heard Him teach and they knew it was extraordinary, and they said so out loud.

And then, in the very next breath, they said this.

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?

And they were offended at him.

They went from astonished to offended in one sentence, and the thing that turned it was that they knew Him. They knew the family. They knew what He had done for a living, they could name His brothers, and His sisters were sitting right there in the room.

The information that should have been an advantage was the exact thing that made it impossible.

Familiarity was the obstacle

Read the sentence He said afterward, because He names it as a pattern and not an accident.

But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. (Mark 6:4, King James Version)

Among his own kin, and in his own house.

He lists three rings, and they get tighter: the country, the relatives, the house. And the closest ring is named last, which is the one where it costs the most.

This is not a complaint. He states it the way you would state a fact about weather. There is something about proximity over years that makes it very hard for people to update who somebody is, and He is not surprised by it and He does not take it personally in the way we would.

You are not being rejected because something is wrong with you, and their familiarity has never once been a verdict on your calling. That is not me comforting anybody cheaply. Mark 6:4 names a pattern rather than a personal failure, and it is the Holy Spirit who lets a person hold that fact without it souring into resentment.

He could not do many mighty works there

The next verse is one of the most sobering in Mark and it needs saying honestly.

He could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.

That is a real limitation and I am not going to explain it away. Something about that room genuinely restricted what happened in it, and the text says he marveled because of their unbelief.

But notice what still happened. A few sick folk, and He healed them. Even in the hardest room He ever preached in, a few people got everything.

So it was not nothing. It was less than it should have been, and it was not nothing, and both of those are worth carrying by somebody who keeps going home.

You are still able to do good in a room that cannot receive you, and a hard house has never once made a person useless in it. Mark 6:5 keeps the few healings in the sentence with the limitation, and the Spirit of God is the one who does real work in a place that is not welcoming.

He did not stay and He did not renounce them

Watch what He actually does next, because both halves matter.

The very next verse says he went round about the villages, teaching. He left. He did not stand in that synagogue arguing until they conceded, and He did not spend the rest of His ministry trying to be believed by Nazareth.

And He did not renounce them either. His mother is at the cross. His brother James, one of the men they named in that room, ends up leading the church in Jerusalem and writing a letter that is in the Bible.

So the family that could not receive Him in Mark 6 is not the final state of that family. It just was not going to be settled that afternoon, and He did not stay in the room to force it.

You are able to go and keep working, and leaving a room has never once been the same as writing anybody off. Mark 6:6 has Him go round about the villages teaching, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person moving without bitterness toward the people who could not see it.

What they were actually protecting

I want to say something fair about Nazareth, because contempt for those people is easy and useless.

Those were not bad people. They had watched a boy grow up, they had bought furniture from Him, they knew His mother, and they had a settled and mostly accurate picture of who He was.

Updating that picture would have required them to admit that somebody they had always known ordinarily was something else entirely, and that is genuinely hard for human beings. It is not malice. It is the way memory works, and every one of us does it to somebody.

I do it to people. Everybody has somebody they still see at nineteen.

You are able to forgive them for not seeing it, and their limitation has never once been an attack on you. Mark 6:3 has them name a trade and a family accurately and get it completely wrong, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a person tender toward people who cannot update their picture.