We tend to think that Jesus was able to do everything he set out to do, that his ministry was super successful but today’s Gospel shows us that Jesus too had his ‘bad days’. After much success around Galilee Jesus goes home, but his own village does not give him a ‘ticker-tape’ welcome. No sign up saying ‘Local boy makes good’. Instead, the very fact that he is a local is an obstacle. Can’t you hear them say, ‘He can’t be that special, I was better than him in Hebrew classes!’ So this village missed out. No miracles there. The text doesn’t say ‘Jesus would not work any miracle there’, but that ‘he could not’. The lack of openness and scepticism of these villagers blocked God’s power in Jesus’ life. They didn’t want God in the form of Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph; they wanted something more special. Jesus was just too ordinary, too familiar to them to be taken seriously.