Today's reading prompts us to reflect on the truth expressed in a well-known saying whose Gospel origin, however, is far from universally known today: no prophet is accepted in his own country (v. 24). By quoting a messianic passage from the Book of Isaiah, Jesus quite plainly identifies Himself as the One of whom the prophet spoke (vv. 17-21). At first glance, His listeners' reaction seems paradoxical: on the one hand they agree with Jesus, but on the other they immediately begin to doubt. How could their fellow townsman, whom they had known since childhood, make any claim to be the Messiah (v. 22)? They demand miracles from Him not as signs of the Kingdom but as proof of His messiahship (v. 23). It is then that Jesus speaks the bitter words about a prophet in his own country (v. 24).

Yet the paradoxical reaction of Jesus' listeners was actually quite understandable, and not merely because “great things are best seen from a distance.” The issue here was ordinary familiarity, which often proves to be one of the most serious obstacles on the spiritual path. Their doubts are justified, not by chance, with the thought that they have known Him since childhood: “Is not this Joseph's son?” So how could there be any question of messiahship? Of course, if Jesus had been recognized by respected people or official authorities and they had directly identified Him as the Messiah, He would undoubtedly have been welcomed with joy and celebrated as a famous fellow townsman. But there was no official recognition, and the townspeople had to decide for themselves. The force of habit weighed upon them.

Fallen human beings tend to see reality not as it is but as they are accustomed to seeing it. Clichés are common and widespread, and they arise for a reason: reducing reality to patterns and using ready-made models to describe it form a kind of psychological mechanism by which human beings adapt to the world—a mechanism without which, after the Fall, they can no longer manage. Yet this same adaptive mechanism often prevents a person from seeing what is new and unusual. It offers ready-made patterns and models where they do not apply, where the realities involved fit no pattern and can be described by no model.

The Kingdom to which Jesus bears witness is just such a reality. It fits no familiar framework. Yet Jesus' fellow townspeople do not want to lose that framework; they are prepared to defend it at any cost, and Jesus simply will not fit within it: an unrecognized Messiah, a disturber of the peace, someone passing Himself off as no one knows whom and claiming what no one in their small town had ever claimed or would ever have dared to claim. This is how He appeared to the people of Nazareth. They were left with only one remedy: to rid themselves of their excessively troublesome fellow townsman. And they would have done so if they could (vv. 28-30).

As we can see, it is not only the hatred of religious rigorists and the maneuvering of politicians that lead Jesus to the cross. He is driven there also by the narrowness of fallen human nature.

The problem of insiders and outsiders has always existed, in every society and every culture. Everywhere and always it has turned out that it is better to be an insider than an outsider. But then the Messiah came into the world, and it turned out that everything was not so simple. It turned out that an insider is not necessarily someone we know. Most often it is someone we think we know. And this is understandable: we perceive our own people as part of the familiar and known world. There is no need to look closely at them, and no need to listen carefully to their words. In general, we already know more or less what our own people can tell us.

Outsiders are another matter. An outsider is always someone you do not know. Someone who is not part of the known and familiar world, and here it does not matter where he is from: another continent or the neighboring village. Outsiders are often rejected, but they are always looked at closely. People listen to what they say. Not necessarily in a friendly way, but always attentively. After all, an outsider has to be understood. Or at least explained to oneself. Explanation is often an illusion of understanding. Understanding presupposes the perception of another person as he is. Explanation begins when we perceive this other person as we want to see him, so that he will fit within the bounds of our perception of the world familiar and known to us.

Christ can and must be accepted as He is. And He can and must be understood too - also as He is. But He does not need to be explained. Not to ourselves and not to others. Provided, of course, that we want to communicate with Christ and not with our images of Christ. And here it turns out that it is easier for those to whom He is an outsider. They know nothing about Him. His own people also know nothing about Him, but they think they know everything. Unlike outsiders, who at least are not mistaken about their ignorance. And it is this way not only with Him.

It is this way with God too. With His heavenly Father. It is no accident that Jesus gives examples from ancient Jewish history of God's not being recognized by His own people. A failure to recognize Him that separates people from God. And from the Messiah too. For God or the Messiah to begin to act, a person must want it. And must turn directly to God. Directly to Christ. But not to those images of God or Christ that he has invented for himself. Otherwise even the Kingdom may turn out to be unreal. Imagined. And so may life in it.

The evangelist notes an interesting nuance in his account: at the sight of the possessed man's healing, his release from the power of dark forces, the people around Jesus are seized by terror. Not joy, not delight, not reverence, not the fear of God, which still presupposes reverence first of all, but precisely terror, terror before a strange, incomprehensible, and therefore frightening power. It would seem that when we are speaking of the manifestation of the Kingdom, of the breath of the Kingdom, and even of the power of the Kingdom, which showed itself in the healing of the possessed man, there should be no question of terror. And yet terror is present; that is the reaction of those who saw the healing. What is the matter? The answer to this question may be found in the talk among those around Him, mentioned by the evangelist: Who is He, that even the forces of darkness fear Him? Evidently, the people seized by terror at the sight of the healing see nothing in what is happening except power, a power surpassing even what was considered irresistible: the authority of the spirits of darkness.

Of course, those around Jesus were religious people; no others were to be found near the synagogue. But, as we can see, religiosity by itself guarantees nothing when it comes to the spiritual world and spiritual life. It is no secret that in every age religious people have often feared the manifestation of dark forces in their lives even more than their nonreligious contemporaries. And one can understand them: unlike nonreligious people, or people who do not believe at all, religious people know something about the spiritual world, at least by hearsay, and sometimes from their own experience. They also know about the existence of dark spiritual forces and have no reason to doubt their reality. But religiosity by itself does not guarantee firm and stable personal relationships with God.

Then the forces of darkness become a reality for the religious person, while God becomes an abstraction. Perhaps the people around Jesus understood the matter in just this way. And in Jesus Himself they saw not the Messiah who had brought the Kingdom into the world, but only the Possessor of a power greater than the one they already knew well: the power of the spirits of darkness. The reality of the Kingdom remained foreign to them; they never sensed either its breath or its love. But they did notice its power.

Without love, however, that power really does become frightening for a person. For a human being, there would perhaps be nothing more terrible than a God who suddenly stopped loving him, if such a thing were possible. But fortunately for humanity, that is completely impossible. Still, a person who does not know God's love, who does not sense the breath of the Kingdom, can quite well imagine God's power deprived of God's love. And that mirage will become terror for him, just as it became terror for the witnesses of Jesus' healing of the possessed man.