There is a famous novel by Thomas Wolfe entitled You Can’t Go Home Again. The gist of the book: if you try to return to a place you remember from the past it won’t be the same as you remember it. That works both ways. When you go home again you will be different as well and the homeys will try to fit you into the categories they know. That is what happened to Jesus in Nazareth. The townspeople wanted him to stay the carpenter’s boy when his vocation had morphed into something else. Jesus was not surprised. No prophet is accepted in his own native place. Are we tempted to keep people in pre-determined boxes or do we let them become themselves?
