ruffians at Nazareth

• ruffians at Nazareth

150:7.3Thus did the Mas­ter find him­self in the midst of, not a wel­come home­com­ing, but a de­cid­edly hos­tile and hy­per­crit­i­cal at­mo­sphere. But this was not all. His en­e­mies, know­ing that he was to spend this Sab­bath day in Naz­a­reth and sup­pos­ing that he would speak in the syn­a­gogue, had hired nu­mer­ous rough and un­couth men to ha­rass him and in ev­ery way pos­si­ble make trou­ble.

• ruffians at Nazareth

150:8.11It was cus­tom­ary in the syn­a­gogue, af­ter the con­clu­sion of the for­mal ser­vice, for the speaker to re­main so that those who might be in­ter­ested could ask him ques­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, on this Sab­bath morn­ing Je­sus stepped down into the crowd which pressed for­ward to ask ques­tions. In this group were many tur­bu­lent in­di­vid­u­als whose minds were bent on mis­chief, while about the fringe of this crowd there cir­cu­lated those de­based men who had been hired to make trou­ble for Je­sus. Many of the dis­ci­ples and evan­ge­lists who had re­mained with­out now pressed into the syn­a­gogue and were not slow to rec­og­nize that trou­ble was brew­ing. They sought to lead the Mas­ter away, but he would not go with them.

150:9.1Je­sus found him­self sur­rounded in the syn­a­gogue by a great throng of his en­e­mies and a sprin­kling of his own fol­low­ers, and in re­ply to their rude ques­tions and sin­is­ter ban­ter­ings he half hu­mor­ously re­marked: “Yes, I am Joseph’s son; I am the car­pen­ter, and I am not sur­prised that you re­mind me of the proverb, ‘Physi­cian heal your­self,’ and that you chal­lenge me to do in Naz­a­reth what you have heard I did at Ca­per­naum; but I call you to wit­ness that even the Scrip­tures de­clare that ‘a prophet is not with­out honor save in his own coun­try and among his own peo­ple.’”

150:9.2But they jos­tled him and, point­ing ac­cus­ing fin­gers at him, said: “You think you are bet­ter than the peo­ple of Naz­a­reth; you moved away from us, but your brother is a com­mon work­man, and your sis­ters still live among us. We know your mother, Mary. Where are they to­day? We hear big things about you, but we no­tice that you do no won­ders when you come back.” Je­sus an­swered them: “I love the peo­ple who dwell in the city where I grew up, and I would re­joice to see you all en­ter the king­dom of heaven, but the do­ing of the works of God is not for me to de­ter­mine. The trans­for­ma­tions of grace are wrought in re­sponse to the liv­ing faith of those who are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.”

150:9.3Je­sus would have good-na­turedly man­aged the crowd and ef­fec­tively dis­armed even his vi­o­lent en­e­mies had it not been for the tac­ti­cal blun­der of one of his own apos­tles, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, who, with the help of Na­hor, one of the younger evan­ge­lists, had mean­while gath­ered to­gether a group of Je­sus’ friends from among the crowd and, as­sum­ing a bel­liger­ent at­ti­tude, had served no­tice on the en­e­mies of the Mas­ter to go hence. Je­sus had long taught the apos­tles that a soft an­swer turns away wrath, but his fol­low­ers were not ac­cus­tomed to see­ing their beloved teacher, whom they so will­ingly called Mas­ter, treated with such dis­cour­tesy and dis­dain. It was too much for them, and they found them­selves giv­ing ex­pres­sion to pas­sion­ate and ve­he­ment re­sent­ment, all of which only tended to arouse the mob spirit in this un­godly and un­couth as­sem­bly. And so, un­der the lead­er­ship of hire­lings, these ruf­fi­ans laid hold upon Je­sus and rushed him out of the syn­a­gogue to the brow of a near-by pre­cip­i­tous hill, where they were minded to shove him over the edge to his death be­low. But just as they were about to push him over the edge of the cliff, Je­sus turned sud­denly upon his cap­tors and, fac­ing them, qui­etly folded his arms. He said noth­ing, but his friends were more than as­ton­ished when, as he started to walk for­ward, the mob parted and per­mit­ted him to pass on un­mo­lested.

150:9.4Je­sus, fol­lowed by his dis­ci­ples, pro­ceeded to their en­camp­ment, where all this was re­counted. And they made ready that evening to go back to Ca­per­naum early the next day, as Je­sus had di­rected. This tur­bu­lent end­ing of the third pub­lic preach­ing tour had a sober­ing ef­fect upon all of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers. They were be­gin­ning to re­al­ize the mean­ing of some of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings; they were awak­ing to the fact that the king­dom would come only through much sor­row and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment.

150:9.5They left Naz­a­reth this Sun­day morn­ing, and trav­el­ing by dif­fer­ent routes, they all fi­nally as­sem­bled at Beth­saida by noon on Thurs­day, March 10. They came to­gether as a sober and se­ri­ous group of dis­il­lu­sioned preach­ers of the gospel of truth and not as an en­thu­si­as­tic and all-con­quer­ing band of tri­umphant cru­saders.