Our gospel reading at Mass today is from the 6th chapter of Mark. “Jesus departed from there and came to his native place accompanied by his disciples.” (Mark 6, 1)

He came to Nazareth from Capernaum where he brought back the daughter of Jairus from the dead and healed the woman who touched his garment. (Mark 5, 21-43) That news surely reached his hometown before he arrived.

When Jesus enters their synagogue on the Sabbath, the people are initially impressed by his teaching and news of “his mighty deeds” but then they recall he’s “‘the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.“

“‘A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house,” Jesus tells them. “So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith. “ (Mark 6, 1-6)

Over and over we hear in Mark’s Gospel what we wouldn’t expect: that Jesus was rejected in places where he went. In Capernaum, he drives out an unclean spirit, cures Peter’s mother-in-law and, at the end of the day, the whole town is at his door. {Mark 1, 16-34) But the enthusiasm doesn’t last. Capernaum and other towns in Galilee first receive him, then reject him. (Matthew 11,23)

In pagan territory, over the Sea of Galilee on the east bank, he also meets rejection. He casts out the unclean spirit there, as he did at Capernaum, but when the pigs stampede down into the sea the townspeople ask him to leave. He’s endangering their economy, they say. (Mark 5, 1-20)

Jesus doesn’t have continual path of success in his ministry, or an unbroken parade of achievements, Mark insists. Even his own hometown, his family, don’t receive him well. Final rejection takes place on Calvary in his passion and death, but rejection and misunderstanding meet him all through his public life.

Nazareth has a prominent place in the story of Jesus’ rejection. From his earliest years as a child, he was thought little of there, it seems. Later apocryphal gospels that date from the 2nd century relate miraculous stories about Jesus as a child in Nazareth, but they lack credibility. Jesus did nothing remarkable in his “hidden years.” Some blissful modern portrayals in music and art miss this point. They did not watch his every move with expectation as he grew up.

Jesus “was not able to perform any might deed” in Nazareth; he did not impress or convert many there, as far as we know. He was just “the carpenter’s son.”  Like any other human being, he seemed part of the world in which he lived, someone of the time and place. Subject to Mary and Joseph, hardly noticed, “ he grew in wisdom and age and grace before God and man.” (Luke 2,52)

From his time and through the centuries, Nazareth never seems to have accepted the one we call God’s Son. Historians say early Jewish-Christians after his resurrection were expelled from the town. The Christian presence in Nazareth has been small, even till today.

Nazareth is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. The scandal of the Incarnation.