Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary? How come such mighty deeds are wrought through his hands? Familiarity breeds contempt. Jesus and his disciples return home to find an unexpected reception awaiting them. Jesus' reputation had seemingly preceded him, and when he arrived home, instead of being hoisted shoulder high and celebrated as a hero, he is taken offense at and ridiculed. Jesus was no stranger to rejection, but it must have hurt him to be rejected by his very own. He had grown amongst them and had probably fixed one or two broken pieces of furniture for a few of them. They knew Jesus as that fellow at the workshop, and as such did not envision any greatness in him. As a carpenter, Jesus belonged to the blue collar class, and to be labeled as such , therefore, was probably a way of saying that no good could come out of him. Jesus' society was very patriarchal. To be referred to as son of Mary might also have had a demeaning tone to it. To them, Jesus was just Jesus. They closed their eyes and refused to see the hand of God at work in Jesus. And because of this, they shut themselves off the blessings of God. They rejected God's beckoning on account of the "ordinariness" of Jesus. How could God be using someone like Jesus? It was unthinkable.
Many times we tend to be like these people who saw in Jesus a carpenter son of Mary. The ordinary is always despised by us. Unknowingly, in doing so, we end up rejecting God who at times comes to us in the ordinariness of our lives. We have raised the bar for God, forgetting that by raising the bar, we put God where we ourselves cannot reach. We spend our days complaining at the apparent distance that exists between us and God, forgetting that perhaps it is us who have put the distance. God is very close to us, sometimes even closer than we can imagine. All it takes is for us to open our eyes and hearts and experience the God who is present to us wherever we are.