While I was in seminary, I was asked to preach at a little chapel at Lake Lanier where my grandparents often worshipped. This beautiful outdoor worship space overlooked the lake, with a cross behind the chancel that appeared to be suspended in mid-air. Over the years, I’d spent a good bit of time up there and had gotten to know most of the people who attended the chapel on Sunday mornings. After the service, the response I received wasn’t “nice job,” so much as “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown up.”
Jesus ran into a similar situation when he returned to his hometown. He had been teaching and performing miracles all over Judea, and I can only imagine that he simply wanted to go home for a few days. Rather than meeting him with the kind of responses that he had become used to seeing, the hometown crowd could only seem to see Little Jesus, the carpenter’s son.
Here’s the problem these people confronted: they were comfortable with their idea of who Jesus was. They looked at him, even after hearing him teach, and saw who they expected to see. When we allow ourselves to become comfortable, we lose sight of what God is doing around us, since we only see what we expect to see.