No prophet is accepted in his own native place. The foregoing words pronounced by Jesus demonstrates that he knew his Scriptures as well as being familiar with the institution of prophecy among his people. He was aware of the challenges that were part of the prophetic profession. Because of being called, among other things, to remind the people of their transgressions against both the covenant and God, the prophets were always perceived as enemies of the community. As Stephen the Martyr would later tell those who were baying for his blood that there wasn’t a prophet whom their ancestors never persecuted (cf. Acts 7:52), being a prophet was a dangerous career. It was a career that even great individuals like Jeremiah were hesitant to embrace (cf. Jeremiah 1:6). And having no option but to choose the side of God, the prophets of God often faced the wrath of their people whenever they prophesied against their communities.    
When Jesus began his career as a preacher and wonderworker, he understood his ministry as a continuation of the ministry of the prophets of the Old Testament. Like the prophets of old, God had raised and appointed him to be his messenger and representative to the people. Like the prophets of old, his was the responsibility of announcing God’s Good News to the people even as he interceded for them before God. It was with such knowledge at the back of his mind that he went about relieving the pain and suffering of those to whom he ministered, giving them hope and encouragement and restoring them to their status as a people created in the image and likeness of God. But Jesus was also aware that his ministry was more than a mere continuation of the Old Testament prophecy. He was also their fulfillment. All the prophecies of the Old Testament had been pointing to his ministry. He made this very clear when he inaugurated his mission in a synagogue in Nazareth (last Sunday’s Gospel reading). It was an assertion that he would come to repeat several times in the course of his ministry. However, this assertion by Jesus, as today’s Gospel reading tells us, did not sit well with everybody who heard it. By saying that he was the fulfillment of the Scripture passage that he had cited, Jesus was implying that he was the anointed one of God (whereas it was the prophet Isaiah who had spoken those words in regard to the restoration of Zion, those words pointed to the Messiah who was to be sent by God). 
Jesus’ assertion raised the eyebrows of those who heard him because what they were hearing did not match what they were seeing. In their eyes, it was such a bold claim that Jesus was making. To them, Jesus’ claim bordered blasphemy since there was no way he could be the anointed one of God. Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah. From the much they had gathered from the Scriptures concerning the coming of the Messiah, Jesus was obviously not a candidate. In addition to the other “deficiencies” which they would later observe as Jesus went about ministering to the people, Jesus failed to make the cut because they knew him. They expected the Messiah to be an enigmatic figure (cf. John 7:27) and not someone known to them. It was a reaction that perhaps Jesus had not expected from them. But rather than being offended by what he was seeing and hearing, Jesus took the opportunity to remind them of the instances in the history of their community’s when God had intervened on the lives of those who were considered unfit for God’s consideration. Just like in those instances (the prophet Elijah being sent to by God to change the fortunes of the widow in Zerephath; and the prophet Elisha cleansing Naaman the Syrian of his leprosy), it was also possible that God had chosen to fulfill his Messianic promise through an unlikely figure as himself. At any rate, a look at their history reveals that God’s chosen people have often been those rejected by the people of their own day.
Those who rejected Jesus’ messianic declaration on account of him being one of them raised an issue that is common to humanity: humanity doesn’t like that which is simple/easy/cheap/familiar. Humanity becomes filled with awe at that which is complex and mysterious while remaining unmoved by the simple and familiar. It is an attitude that also comes to the fore in humanity’s relationship with God. A God who is easy to access and who who appears to be simple and easy to get along with loses respect. A God who assumes the human nature and gets involved in humanity’s mundane affairs is suspect becomes rejected. It was not only the knowledge of where Jesus came from that made the people to reject him. It was also the fact that Jesus was just Jesus, a fellow member of their community who had a name such as theirs. They rejected Jesus because he was a fellow human being who was subject to the very cosmic laws of which they were also subject. They rejected Jesus as a Messianic figure because he was  just like them. How could he help them scale the heavenly/divine heights while he himself was just as ordinary as they were?
The Messiah comes to us as one of our own to make it easy for us to attain salvation. The author to the Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus was able to deal patiently with the ignorant and the erring because he had made himself like them (cf. Hebrews 5:2). God doesn’t want us to sweat or perform nearly impossible tasks in order to attain our salvation. Rather, God lowers the self to our level so that we can access the salvation with which God approaches us. Jesus comes to us as one of us to show us that salvation lies in living our lives without pretense. It is not in living extraordinary lives that we attain salvation but rather in remaining the simple and humble creatures that God created. For Jesus has not come to show us how to become extraordinary, complex beings but rather loving and kind children of the Father.