Hey y'all, you're listening to the Join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma Daughter. To learn more about

today's reading or to read along with us, check out jointhejourney.com. Thanks for joining. Back in

episode 14, we talked all about the beheading of John the Baptist and who King Herod was. So today,

we're going to explore something else. Why was Jesus

rejected in his hometown? When I was pretty young, American Idol was the biggest show on TV.

There were contestants who could impersonate any pop star out there but didn't have their own

voice, people who were super confident but horrible singers, and of course, there was the pants on the ground

guy. American Idol was this big cultural moment. Everybody was following along. And there was always this

really, like, sentimental part in the show where those who'd made it pretty far, maybe to the top

10 or something, would get to go visit their hometown. Or when they made it to the top three, the show would cut

to clips of crowds in their hometowns, cheering them on with posters and whatnot.

The people who made it on American Idol became hometown heroes, so to speak.

So we'd think Jesus, doing all these miracles, healing sick people and teaching with amazing stories,

would be praised as a hometown hero.

But that just wasn't the case. People had been following along. They knew what he was up to,

but they just weren't his fans. It's really interesting, actually. In verse three, we read,

is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? But that first phrase identifying him as the son of Mary is actually incredibly noteworthy.

That's why I stopped and didn't read the rest of the verse.

Even though it might seem like a tiny detail that doesn't really matter, it's significant.

You see, it was traditional for Jews to associate children by their father's name, even if the father was dead.

So they should have said, the son of Joseph.

The mother's name would only be used if the father was unknown.

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