This past weekend I had the privilege of speaking at a local Catholic conference that I've attended since I first became Catholic. This year, they asked me to be a keynote speaker. To be honest, I was slightly apprehensive, and quite nervous to accept this invitation for fear that I wouldn't be well received here.

The gospels tell of the time Jesus spent in Nazareth early in his ministry in which he declared that the prophesy in Isaiah had been fulfilled in him - at which point the people threatened to throw him off a cliff. During the episode the people had remarked that he couldn't be the Messiah because he was Mary and Joseph's son. Our Lord notes that a prophet is never welcome in his hometown.

We have this tendency to think of "big" or "historic" people and events as something so remote from our own experience that we couldn't possibly witness it ourselves. This skeptical reflex prevents us from admitting anything from our "everyday" lives could be remarkable. But this is illusory. The reality is that every remarkable person or event only appears that way in hindsight. History is easily mistaken for ordinary while it's unfolding. The individuals who act in history making ways usually appear unremarkable until after the fact when we can all look back and act like we knew they "had it in them the whole time."

I imagine this is why the people of Nazareth refused to listen to Jesus' declaration about himself. Their familiarity with him made it impossible for him to be anything other than ordinary in their imagination.

When my own notoriety became apparent, I noticed that certain acquaintances, and even friends, started to treat me with a certain measure of hostility. Some stopped talking to me altogether while others would express themselves, sometimes harshly, in the comments on my channel.

I can't say what their motives were, for sure, but I expect that something like the attitude of the people of Nazareth had taken root in their hearts. I'm not trying to say that I'm a prophet or anything like that, but I think it did create difficulties for them to have to reconcile the idea that I had become a "public" figure with the ordinary person that they were familiar with.

"Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was just a kid?" might be substituted with, "But he's just one of us - there's nothing special about him."

And they'd be right, but resentment over the fact that God can (and usually does) use a nobody to do something special is very tempting. They were familiar with me as the ordinary and flawed person they had interacted with and now they had to reconcile that with me occupying a role as an "influential" person.

I believe that something like that describes the psychology of those who do not accept a "prophet" in their home town. They might think, "A prophet is supposed to be remarkable, and the people from my home town are just like me - and I can't abide any of them being given a status greater than that."

I knew that speaking at a local conference would aggravate some - and I believe it did. But that also compelled me to prepare a talk that would be as gentle in its persuasion as I could.

My nervousness and apprehension also led to a deeper reliance on God through prayer as the date approached and I think this helped soften mine and my audience's hearts.

In the end, the lecture was extremely well received and I can only pray that it will lead to renewal/reform in my local church. As soon as I can get copies of the audio, I'll post them here.

What do you think? Do you have any experience of this phenomenon? Do you think it's an accurate explanation for why "prophets" are not received in their home town?