A terrible storm came into a town
and local officials sent out an emergency warning
that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes.
They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.
There was a certain man in the town who heard the warning,
so he looked out his window at the gathering storm
and saw his next-door neighbors parked outside in front of his yard.
They were concerned about him
and so they had come by his house and said to him,
“We’re leaving and there’s room for you in our car, please come with us!”
But the man declined, saying, “God will save me.”
So they drove on.
As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps,
a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him,
“Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!”
But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.”
The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room
and the man had to retreat to the second floor.
A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window.
“We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted.
But the man waved them off saying,
“Use your time to save someone else!
I have faith that God will save me!”
The flood waters rose higher and higher
and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.
A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder.
A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man,
“Grab my hand and I will pull you up!”
But still the man refused, saying, “No thank you! God will save me!”
Shortly after, the house broke up
and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.
After he died, the man stood before God and asked,
“I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”
And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car.
I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat.
I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”
The man had his own expectations of how God was going to act.
He had put God into a box,
and had missed his chance to recognize God’s saving grace.
The same thing has happened in today’s Gospel.
After traveling around Galilee healing the sick,
driving out demons, and teaching,
Jesus has returned to his home town of Nazareth,
a small, fairly insignificant village
of not more than a few hundred people.
This is Jesus’ home town,
the place where he was raised.
Everybody knows him and his family.
And when he returns and begins teaching in the synagogue,
his neighbors don’t know what to make of him.
At first they’re astonished at what he says,
but then they’re offended by who he is.
To their minds, Jesus is just “one of the guys,”
someone they’ve known all their lives.
When he was younger
they never recognized anything significant about him.
He was the carpenter, the craftsman of the village.
“We know this guy, he fixed my roof, built a gate for my animals,
he’s the local handy-man.
Who does he think he is,
trying to teach us about the Kingdom of God?”
We can imagine one of these neighbors at the end of his life,
meeting God in heaven,
like the man who drowned in the flood.
and asking, “Where was the Messiah?
I put my faith in your promise of a Messiah.”
And God would reply, “I put him right next door to you!
It was the kid next door, your carpenter.
He cured the sick, drove out demons, taught about the Kingdom of God.
What more were you looking for?”
But they didn’t recognize him.
Just as the man in the flooded house didn’t recognize God
in the ordinary people in his life,
so the people of Nazareth didn’t recognize their handy-man Jesus
as the Son of God.