Jesus comes back home and the town throngs to hear him. On the road he has been a celebrity. They are amazed to hear his wisdom. Amazed! And then they dismissed him. They are offended by him. They felt threatened.
I bring up the concept of schemas here. When we come to understand how the world works, we set it into a schema, a pattern of predictable interaction with encountered objects or people. When we bump up against new thing we measure it according to predetermined schema. It helps us make sense of the world and when we encounter new information.
When Jesus comes into town, the crowds don’t know where to put him in their schema. I’m sure many were frightened because they didn’t understand. Jesus had broken out of their schema. Here was the little boy that the shop clerk had told to go away, and bother someone else!” Here was the little boy that the town talked about as he passed by and pursed their lips when Mary interacted with the town and whispering behind her back about hearing that Jesus is really her bastard son.
Now he comes back into town that they townspeople are amazed at the wisdom in his teaching. They also must have been frightened. If Jesus was this wise then the town had misjudged him. No one likes to admit they are wrong, so it was easier to attempt to pull Jesus back into the schema of the rambunctious young boy that was running around the town than the articulate voice of wisdom they were seeing. So as a town response they decide to keep the schema they had of him and not update it. They chose being deeply offended. “Who are you to come here and lecture us, you little snot-nosed bastard!”
Instead of forming a new schema that would encompass Jesus the man they were seeing, they chose to stay with their old schema of Jesus the village kid. A good strategy of you didn’t want to admit any wrong-doing on you part.
Schemas are important. They are helpful as we process millions of bits of information every day. But if we are unwilling to upgrade them or renew them when the situation calls for it, when we are unwilling and fearful to say we have made a mistake, those schemas can become a straitjacket, gripping us tight. We might even miss seeing the Son of God.
Prayer: Help me to realize that in order to make room for God, my schemas must change. If they don’t change, I will stop growing and respond badly to the sound of God’s voice in my life.
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