Mostly, people like to go home. Mostly. I've been fortunate enough to travel widely, often overseas. The times I miss my country most are those times I am away on the 4th of July. Five times I've missed the 4th. A couple times I was in Japan, but since I was on a military base, we did celebrate our nation's birthday. Three times I missed the 4th in Israel. Truth in advertsing: Israel does have a 4th of July on the calendar ... but it is just another ordinary day. Whether I miss the 4th or not, and wherever it is that I am away from my homeland,  I always appreciate my return to American soil - it is a homecoming.

Mostly, people like to go home. Mostly. In our text for today, Jesus has returned to the town of his upbringing. His mother still lives in Nazareth. Since there was not much mobility in the land of Israel in the time of Jesus, it comes as no surprise that the younger brothers of Jesus, as well as his younger sisters too, still live close to home. Maybe even by this time, some nieces and nephews. Can you imagine having Jesus as your favorite uncle?

If it's true, "you can take the boy of Nazareth, but you can't take Nazareth out of the boy," well it's a wonderful feeling to be home. Actually, Jesus has not been out of Nazareth all that long - several months at most. This is at the beginning of his so-called public ministry, and during his time away, he began to make a name for himself. He was curing all kinds of people of all kinds of things; just prior to the homecoming, he even cured a little girl of death. A cure for death - it would be nice to bottle that, wouldn't it? And just prior to that, he had stilled a storm on Galilee. Sometimes at a picnic or outdoor wedding, people will say to me, "Pastor, please use your influence to make it a nice day." Most of you have heard my stock reply, "That's Management; I'm just in sales." Well, more-and-more, it appears Jesus is Management! "Who is he?" his own friends wondered. "Good God, even the wind and the waves listen to his voice."

And though this is a pre-Blackberry world, this time of Jesus, the news has gotten around. Since Nazareth is only a handful of miles from Galilee, and Capernaum, and Bethsaida - sites of some marvelous miracles - the hometown folks are in the know. And now Jesus is home. On the Sabbath he is invited to share some thoughts in the synagogue ... and we can imagine it is as hard to get a ticket as for the Michael Jackson memorial.

Jesus was home, but whatever he said that day in the synagogue caused the welcome mat to be withdrawn. "Who is he?" wondered, his own followers. Now his neighbors make a subtle shift, "Who does he think he is?" In reality, the hometown folks know who he is - they know his brief biography, and so they think they know him. He is Joseph's son, the boy who played in the streets with a bit of saw dust in his hair, the son any mom would be proud of, and who most moms would use to try to motivate their own sons, "Why can't you be more like Jesus?" That probably did not endear him to his classmates!

With a brilliant insight into the text, Father Jude Siciliano makes the point that we tend to take pride in our children and we even hope they achieve more than we did. We applaud their successes and proudly bumper stick our cars with the likes of, "Proud parent of a (fill in the blank) Lakeland, Panas, Mahopac, Somers) honor student." In fact it's rumored that some parents push their kids a bit to get better grades. Not so in the Mediterranean world at the time of Jesus. Quite the opposite is true. A son is expected to follow in the footsteps of his father ... but not go beyond them. If a boy's father is a carpenter, then the day his son is born, everyone understands that his destiny also is one of hammer and nails.

And so, when Jesus began talking about God with a knowledge and a wisdom that far exceeded any carpenter they ever met, his former neighbors recognized this fact and were on the verge of applauding him, but they didn't. "After all." muttered the naysayers of Nazareth, "he is the son of a carpenter; how could he be anything more?" And then there is this subtle insult. They call Jesus, "Mary's son," and not the son of Joseph. A catty way of suggesting, "Ahem, and we're not really quite sure who is father is." If they only knew, if the world only knew, what role would be played, on our behalf, the role played by hammer and nails.

Oh yes ... the welcome mat for Jesus is withdrawn. The ultimate irony is this: Jesus was not trying to recapture his past in Nazareth. Jesus was trying to point his Nazareth neighbors toward the future ... a future in which God was about to do a new thing. Through Jesus himself, God in the flesh, God was about to save the world. Again, think hammer and nails.

How sad that when Jesus climbed into the pulpit, the naysayers of Nazareth felt obliged to put him down. Mark the Gospel writer, who should know, never again records Jesus visiting Nazareth, never again mentions Jesus coming home. The most famous son of Nazareth ... never returned. After this experience in the synagogue, who can blame Jesus for steering clear of Nazareth?

Do you recall that bestseller by Thomas Wolfe? You Can't Go Home Again. In some sense, it is true for us all. Why is it that so many people spend less energy trying to come to their childhood home, and more energy trying to overcome their childhood?

As a result of frequent visits to the Holy Land, I can sympathize a bit with the people of Nazareth. When I visit a small town in the Galilee region with dusty streets and little children with dusty feet running to and fro ... I try to turn back the clock of my mind some 2,000 years and imagine, "One of these youngsters, perhaps the one with the scrape on his knee and dirt under his nails, one of these youngsters could be the boy Jesus!" And to think that Almighty God chose to come to earth in the frail flesh of that lad ... it is almost too much to comprehend! The people of Nazareth were so close to God that they could not see God - the proverbial forest from the trees.

And you know what? If I can understand this ... surely Jesus could. Still and all, it must have saddened him greatly to be in the town of his upbringing only to be rejected by the very people who knew him best - and simultaneously, knew him least.

But good news Nazareth ... and good news for us. Those golden words of the Gospel: "For God so loves the world." Not only did God love Nazareth when Jesus was a famous son; God loves the world. And not only America, a land blessed so richly by God. God so loves the world. In spite of rejection - God so loves the world. In spite of unbelief, God so loves the world. In response to thorns pressed upon his brow, nails through his flesh and a sword piercing his side, God so loves the world.

If you've been worshipping much at Grace the last thirty plus years, you've heard this message of God loving the world from a familiar voice: mine. And sometimes a familiar voice can be discounted. Maybe that is part of the dynamic of Nazareth. The voice is too familiar. Nevertheless, it is not false modesty that I recognize I am only in sales; for what a privilege it is to point to Management - to point to Jesus.

And though my voice might be overly familiar, when the parson in the pulpit points to Jesus, it is not his words or her words, it is the Word of the Lord. A word promising: God so loves the world. A word of hope that when we one day leave this familiar world - we know a home has been prepared for us. Do you recall my off-handed remark about the cure for death? Yes, he bottled it.