A Prophet is Not Without Honor

 

Because we focus on the life of Jesus during his ministry, we lose sight of the fact that he lived his life fully human. While we have little knowledge of his formative years, Luke tells us that “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” Like us, he fully entered into the human journey. Yet when he returned home, he was ridiculed and scorned. How could this lowly carpenter, Mary and Joseph’s son, be capable of knowing and doing such notable things. He did not fit into the world of His family and old friends. He was no longer what his home town folks of Nazareth expected him to be. They did not trust him. In a culture that measured a person's worth by his place in society, Jesus had clearly exceeded anything one would have expected from an itinerant carpenter. Carpenters were poorly regarded as men who left their families without economic security to seek work. They did not even have the respect of their own families. (Mark 6: 1-6)

God’s divine revelation in creation is evident everywhere. Needless to say God was not silent for the 14 billion years before Scriptures were written. Although God was  in the world at the very beginning of time, His relationship with man was made manifest to the world in His incarnation of Jesus. "We needed a God with skin on" it to help us understand God’s unconditional love for us and showed us how to share this love with one another. While present one with the father throughout all creation as “Christ,” the second person, Jesus, in all his humanity, enters our world to proclaim the Kingdom of God and our way back to the Father.