Friday Focus, July 31, 2026
“Coming Home”
Christina (Tina) McKinlay
July 31, 2026
Smiling Jesus
Friday Focus, 31 July 2026
“Coming Home”
(Matthew 13:54-58)
When people have been away from home for some time, coming home again is not always easy.
The people at home may have changed in the meantime; those who come home may also have changed. There can be an expectation that things will be as they have always been, and when that does not happen, it can lead to misunderstanding and frustration.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus comes home to Nazareth.
He left Nazareth the carpenter’s son; he returned a preacher of God’s kingdom and a healer of the broken.
The people of Nazareth could not accept this change.
‘This is the carpenter’s son, surely?’ they asked. ‘Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?’ they wondered.
The people of Nazareth would not accept Jesus because he was not the person they once knew.
It seems to have been Jesus’ very ordinariness that made it difficult for the people of Nazareth to see that there was much more to him than they thought, to see him as he really was, in all his mystery.
God was powerfully present to them in and through someone who was, in many respects, as ordinary as they themselves. In the end, Jesus left his hometown as a prophet despised.
God continues to come to us today in and through the ordinary, in and through those who are most familiar to us.
Like the people of Nazareth, sometimes we too can fail to recognize the ways that the Lord comes to us — through the ordinary and the familiar.
Today’s Gospel reminds us that the people we live among can reveal the Lord to us in powerful and surprising ways and that the holy ground where God is present is never far from us.
Norman+