A Prophet is Not Without Honor

Because we tend to focus on Jesus' divinity and his very short temporal ministry, it's easy for us to lose sight of the fact that Jesus lived his time on earth as fully human as we. That he was fully human is the real miracle of God's incarnation in Man. 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.” The Word became flesh and  lived among us.

Given all he had accomplished it's hard for us to understand why he was ridiculed and scorned when he returned home to Nazareth and his family. How, they wondered, could this lowly carpenter, Mary and Joseph’s son, possess such wisdom and be capable of such miraculous works! He did not fit into the perceived "caste" and image into which he was born and didn't "live down" to what was expected of him.  They did not trust him. In a culture that measured a person's worth by his place in society, Jesus had clearly raised the bar and exceeded anything one would have been expected from an itinerant carpenter. At that time carpenters were poorly regarded as they often 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 He was in the world at the very beginning of time. His relationship with man was made manifest to the world in the incarnation of Jesus. "We needed a God with skin on" it to help us understand God’s unconditional love for us and he 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.