Fragments

'When Jesus had finished telling these stories and illustrations, he left that part of the country. He returned to Nazareth, his hometown. When he taught there in the synagogue, everyone was amazed and said "Where does he get the wisdom and the power to do miracles?". Then, they scoffed, "He's just the carpenter's son, and we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers- James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. All his sisters live right here among us. Where did he learn all these things?" And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

Then Jesus told them: "A prophet is honoured everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family." And so he did only a few miracles there because of their unbelief.'

Matthew 13, 53-58 (NLT)

As part of my morning reading, this passage really stood out to me. In particular, the striking phrase Jesus tells to his surrounding critics. Whilst it clearly has a specific, linear function, of telling us how Christ, and many earlier prophets, such as Jeremiah, faced opposition in their hometowns, I believe it is also a far broader point about humankind. Whilst we are not all 'prophets' (or any of us depending on your theological worldview), if the definition of a prophet is someone who brings a divine message or instruction from God, to some extent, we are all 'prophets' of something. We carry with us messages and ideologies, whether explicitly or implicitly, which we give out and show to the world around us. Our values and own unique perspectives, are 'divine' to us- we act as though they are irrefutable, for without them, our own self-concept would be slowly wilted away.

None of these ideas are new. They have been conceptualised in one way or another, by many different thinkers, across faiths and cultural backgrounds. However, Jesus' line really stood out to me, for the way it made me think about my life, about what I have to offer, and about where I am even going.

I have a complicated relationship with my hometown. I love the people, the experiences, the rugged northern pride and the alluring buzz of Manchester in the near distance. But, in a simple sentence, Jesus summarises the key inner conflict that has lived within me for sometime (despite it of course not being the true intention).

There is an element of a fragment of something distorting the whole. As a child, growing up in your family and community, you begin to understand your own perspectives of what love is, of friendship, of what it means to be human. And for me, to some extent, it took moving away twice for those ideas and perspectives to be held up against the jury of the broader world, and see whether they could stand the brutal verdict. Some have. Some haven't.

And, in that light, when I return to my hometown fairly regularly, I understand that sense of honour Jesus talks about here. What I know of myself, and what others know of myself, is no longer just confined to the boundaries of a single town. There are fragments of me, which some know and some don't, but when held in isolation, they cannot be sustained by themselves. There are elements of me which are honoured, and some elements of me which rarely are opened to the world, like all of us. Sometimes, on my returns, I can feel the darkened, unrevealed parts of me cower in the face of a world which may not choose to accept them. Or, even worse, to not even notice them. And, maybe, there is just a stark truth that Jesus reveals here. Not all of me is honoured, especially in the places where I may expect or desire it the most, like a hometown. And those fragments have to be held together somehow, to become experienced in their contradiction and, therefore, their imbalanced ugliness. To let the imbalance bring some kind of beauty.