A reflection on Matthew 13:54-58 for Friday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time.
When Jesus returns to his hometown, the people are astonished by his wisdom. Yet their amazement quickly turns into suspicion. They know his family. They know where he grew up. They remember the ordinary details of his life. Because they think they know where he comes from, they assume they know everything about him.
“Is he not the carpenter’s son?” they ask.
Their question seems reasonable, but beneath it is a refusal to see beyond what is familiar. They have already decided who Jesus is allowed to be. Nothing new can come from someone they have known for years. No wisdom can emerge from such an ordinary place. No revelation can come through a person whose family is so well known.
Familiarity can do that to us. It can make us confident that we have understood another person completely.
In families, we sometimes hold one another inside old descriptions. This is the responsible child. That is the difficult sibling. One person is strong; another is too sensitive. We repeat these stories until they begin to feel permanent. Even as people grow, heal, learn, and change, we may continue responding to who they once were.
Parents can struggle to recognize the wisdom of their adult children because we still remember them as children. Spouses may stop noticing the quiet courage, grief, or longing that has developed over years of shared life. In parishes, we may assume that the person who has always arranged the flowers has little else to offer, or that the young person asking uncomfortable questions simply lacks faith.
We can become so familiar with someone that we stop being curious about them.
The people in Nazareth could not imagine that God might be revealed through someone so ordinary and so close to home. Perhaps we make the same mistake. We look for God in extraordinary signs, powerful leaders, or people with impressive credentials. Meanwhile, God may be speaking through the quiet caregiver, the grieving neighbor, the immigrant family, the teenager, the older parishioner, or the person whose views we dismissed years ago.
Prejudice is often a form of false familiarity. We believe we know someone because of where they come from, how they speak, what work they do, their age, gender, race, education, or place in the Church. We turn a human life into a label and then wonder why we cannot see grace at work.
The Gospel says Jesus performed few mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith. This is a sobering thought. Their unbelief did not only affect what they thought about Jesus. It limited what they were able to receive.
How much grace do we miss because we have already decided who can teach us?
Faith requires more than believing in things we cannot see. Sometimes faith means looking again at the people we see every day. It means allowing them to surprise us. It means accepting that no person can be reduced to our memory, our judgment, or our expectations.
Every human being remains partly mysterious because every person is still being shaped by God.
Perhaps today we might consider someone we believe we know very well. What story have we settled on about that person? What gift might we have overlooked? What pain have we failed to notice? What new thing might God be bringing forth in them?
Jesus stood among people who knew his name, his family, and his history, yet they failed to recognize him.
May familiarity never make us blind to the holy presence standing close beside us.
Prayer
God of hidden grace,
forgive us when we reduce others
to what we remember, assume, or judge.
Give us eyes willing to look again
and hearts humble enough to be surprised.
Help us recognize your wisdom
in ordinary people and familiar places.
Teach us to receive each person
as someone still growing in your love.
Amen.
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