Labelling

[Jesus] began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked. Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: `Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.' "

"I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian."

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way (Luke 4:21-32).

Computers have certainly changed our desks at the office. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of you don’t even know what a pigeonhole is.

Have you been to a hardware store where the are row upon row of little bins filled with different kinds of nails, bolts and washers? Those are pigeonholes. When you go into the post office and look at the wall of mailboxes, those are pigeonholes. Before we had computers to sort and file documents, people who worked at a desk had all sorts of pigeonholes in front of them. These openings were small—just big enough to fill with papers folded to the size of an envelope. The person working at such a desk used the pigeonholes to sort and store correspondence, bills, and other important documents. The reason they were called pigeonholes was because they resembled the tiny place a pigeon might choose to build a nest.

The pigeonholes in an office were used to keep paperwork organized. An orderly bookkeeper would be very annoyed to come across a piece of paper that defied classification. Every document had to go someplace, so sometimes a piece of paper would be filed in a slot where it didn’t really belong—this practice came to be known as "pigeonholing."

But pigeonholing is not just restricted to old-fashioned desks. We pigeonhole human beings too. Suppose a new kid starts at school; his parents just moved into the community. The other kids are quick to size him up: is he a jock or a geek? They want to figure out which pigeonhole he fits in so they know how to treat him. It also happens at the office—few will open up to a new employee until they determine if she is a team player or a brown-noser. When we find out which political party a man belongs to, we assume that we know his position on every controversial issue. And of course there is pigeonholing based on age, gender and ethnic background—for example, women are emotional while men are logical; young people are lazy while old people are hard workers; the British are cultured and the French are rude.

Call it what you will—pigeonholing, labeling, racial profiling. Whatever name you hang on it, pigeonholing stops us from getting to know each other as individuals. Once we have stuffed someone into a pigeonhole, we believe that we know all that we need to about them, and we stop trying to understand them.

Jesus was pigeonholed by the people of His hometown. They had known Him for about 30 years. He was a nice guy—pretty much everyone liked Him, or at least had nothing bad to say about Him. It was common knowledge that He was an illegitimate child, conceived of Mary before her wedding to Joseph took place. Most probably believed Joseph to be the father, but that only made them think less of both parents, unable to control themselves during their engagement. Some were probably surprised that Jesus turned out as good as He did, being parented by a man and woman of questionable moral character.

They also knew that Jesus was raised in the carpentry business. Certainly He had skill, but it was not a career that led to wealth or social prominence. Jesus was middle class, and as the oldest son everyone expected that He would get married and take over the family business. They assumed that He would use His woodworking skills in service to the community for the rest of His life.

But Jesus surprised them. First of all, He did not get married. This was highly unusual, although with Joseph’s death, perhaps Jesus could be forgiven His odd behavior as He worked to support His mother, brothers and sisters. Then, at age 30, Jesus left the family business—left town in fact. Of course by now, his brothers were old enough to take over the carpentry shop, but where did Jesus go—and why? The answers came in a matter of months—there were reports that Jesus had become a religious teacher and a miracle worker!

Well, now this was remarkable. Jesus had the same education as the other children in town—where did this religious expertise suddenly come from? So they were curious to hear what Jesus would say. And miracles? What had happened during His time away from them? Maybe the reports of His miracles were exaggerated; in any event, they looked forward to seeing Jesus ‘strut His stuff’ when He got home. If Jesus was everything they had heard, what pride they could take in being the town that raised Him!

Jesus joined them for morning worship in the synagogue. He read from the prophet Isaiah, then began teaching them what it meant. Everybody was astounded—they could hardly believe that the wise and educated words they were hearing came from the boy they’d seen grow up in a carpenter’s workshop. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.

Well, actually the answer was no, this was not Joseph’s son. That was the whole problem. The people of Nazareth had pigeonholed Jesus incorrectly. Jesus was not the illegitimate son of Mary and Joseph, He was the very legitimate Son of God, conceived in Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. His morals were of the highest caliber, because His Father was God. He was poor not by accident of birth but by choice; Jesus walked away from the riches of heaven to walk with us in our earthly poverty. His knowledge was God’s knowledge, and His miracles were signs that proved His divinity.

Few people knew the truth about Jesus’ background. I suspect Mary didn’t speak much about her angelic visit from Gabriel—after all, who would believe such a story? It would sound like an elaborate fantasy designed to cover up a lapse in judgment which resulting in pregnancy. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth knew the truth, but she lived in another town. And who in Nazareth would have met the shepherds of far away Bethlehem and heard about their vision of a heavenly host?

No, the townsfolk of Nazareth had Jesus neatly pigeonholed, and the slot they placed Him in was not labeled "Son of God." They were willing to reclassify Him as "the home town boy made good", but that was as far as they were ready to go. So what came next was shocking. Jesus refused to entertain them with a display of His miracles. And the way He refused made them extremely angry—angry enough to try and commit manslaughter.

Jesus spoke of Elijah and Elisha, two of the Old Testament’s greatest prophets. In the case of Elijah, Jesus reminded them of a time when most of the people had abandoned God for other religions. In His anger, God withheld rain for 3 ½ years, causing a severe famine. While this was going on, God sent Elijah to live with a poverty-stricken widow in another country. While the people of Israel starved, the foreign widow and her son were miraculously blessed with unending food while the prophet of God lived with them. Using this bit of history, Jesus made clear that when people don’t believe in God, they cannot expect miracles from Him.

The story of Elisha makes the same point. Elisha was known for performing mighty miracles—he even retrieved an ax head from a well by making it float to the surface! But in spite of this, Elisha lived a hermit’s life—the people of Israel did not flock to him to hear God’s word, they pretty much ignored him. Although many were afflicted with leprosy, the only person Elisha cured of this disease was a man from Syria. Again, those who don’t cling to God in faith cannot expect a miracle from Him.

These words made the Nazarenes furious. Who did Jesus think He was, anyway? How ungrateful to snub His hometown by refusing to do any miracles! What arrogance from a man barely an adult who only last year was covered with sawdust! Even worse, listen to Him suggesting that the townsfolk didn’t have faith in God. He was elevating Himself to the ranks of Elijah and Elisha—in fact, He seemed to be claiming the title of Messiah, the one God would send to free His people from the forces of evil. And He dared compare them to the Israelites who had been punished by God for their faithlessness!

The sense of betrayal by one of their own, the claim that He was closer to God than they were, these things drove the people Jesus had grown up with into a frenzy. They hauled Him out of town to the edge of a cliff, planning to pitch him over the side. But that is when they received the miracle they had requested—using His divine power, Jesus just walked right through the angry crowd, and no one could lay a hand on Him.

Jesus said, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. He knew that they would never see him as God’s Son, even if He did show them miracles. And Jesus is not a circus performer. He is not a stage show magician or a pyrotechnics specialist. Jesus is the Son of God, and His miracles are performed in connection with faith—either to affirm it or strengthen it. If you don’t have faith in God, don’t expect miracles. On the morning of Good Friday, Herod wanted Jesus to perform miracles to entertain his royal court, but our Lord would not even speak to the man. And in Matthew chapter 12 we read, some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you." He answered, "A wicked and unfaithful generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." If a person does not believe in the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, no lesser miracle will stir faith in that faithless heart.

You can’t pigeonhole Jesus—no matter how big, no box can contain Him. He is both man and God. Along with the Father and the Spirit, He created the world, created you. He is the one who speaks God’s words to you. He is the one who heals diseases and quiets storms and raises the dead. He is the one who sacrificed His own life to make the forgiveness of your sins possible. He is the one who prepares heaven for your arrival. He is the one who will condemn unbelievers to eternity in hell. Jesus is all these things, and much, much more.

We like to pigeonhole others because it gives us a sense of control—when we have attached the correct label to others, we know what to expect from them and how to manage them. But we should not label people—instead, we should take the time to explore them deeply, not to manage them but to understand and appreciate them. Jesus refuses to be pigeonholed—He does not perform according to our expectations, just as He refused to perform according to the expectations of His fellow Nazarenes. Jesus demands that you listen to Him with an open mind, and He rewards that listening with faith—a faith that does not demand miracles.