The family lived at Nazareth,
his mother, sisters and brothers;
plus all the in-laws, nieces and nephews.
It was where he had been raised,
where he had been taught the law
with his schoolmates
at the feet of the local Rabbi.
They recalled how he had learned his trade
at his father’s workshop;
and everyone agreed he had done all right
with the mallet and saw.
Most people had liked him well enough;
his life had been quiet, uneventful.
He should have taken a wife, by now;
and more than one of the village girls
had eyed him off. And then,
without any apparent reason,
he had simply left town
to set up home in Capernaum.
What was he running from?
No-one had any answers,
and no sign of scandal had ever turned up.
Until now.
The reports from surrounding towns
of a miracle-working teacher
had not struck anyone as that unusual.
They were intrigued, and a little curious,
but there must have been thousands of men
by the same name, and it took a while
for them to realise that he was theirs.
He’d arrived back home affecting the
teacher,
pretending to knowledge and understanding
way beyond his village-school education.
He had the gall to turn up at the synagogue
to regale his captive audience
with his feigned wisdom and insight.
They had to concede that he had spoken
quite well,
but that was beside the point.
He might convince the uninformed
in any of a hundred other towns across Galilee,
but he wasn’t going to fool them.
They knew he was nobody special,
just like themselves, so they told him to
go.
© Ken Rookes 2012
