So, there was a time when Jesus was just one of the crowd – an everyman in the everyday; versed in the scripture and the tradition
of Israel.
A good Jew, an ordinary Jew, who fitted into the society that he belonged to. Like us, he had gone to school, learnt to pray and to
worship, he had been shown how to include God in his daily life. Like us, and Luke is very clear about this, Jesus was ‘ordinary’, in his
life and in his faith.
All the wonderful mysticism and prophecy around his birth seems to have been forgotten. How? I often wonder. Why weren’t there
tales of angels and wise men enlivening the words of the storytellers? Why did no-one listen when he was brought to the
temple as a baby?
Whether it was a choice to disbelieve – after all, ’nothing good has ever come out of Nazareth’ – or a smokescreen by God to guarantee
his Son this anonymity – it worked. Jesus was no-one special when he left his village in search of his fortune.
The return is something else; as carpenter and prophet; son of Mary and Son of God. The mission has begun in earnest. Luke promises his reader a well founded account – it begins with the fulfulling of a prophecy – and we call this ‘ordinary’ time. What an understatement!