Returning home is not always the warm, Hallmark channel ad brimming with nostalgia and domestic aroma that it promises to be. Perhaps one’s room has been rearranged, or the family has moved locations altogether, or the loss of a loved one brings silence to a previously laughter-filled space.

At times, a place you once left might not feel like home at all.

In the stressful years of college, there were times I eagerly anticipated returning home for breaks, only to find a place I didn’t recognize. Whether it was the dwindling health of loved ones, frantic house repairs requiring upheaval of furniture, or deeper wrinkles in the eyes of those who once carried you to bed, the gradual changes of home are made starker after periods of absence.

When Jesus is admonished in the synagogue, it is not by a close-minded community weary of an outsider’s teachings. It is by the ones who knew him as a boy: a young carpenter raised by Mary and Joseph in a tight-knit Nazarine community. Jesus’ critics once saw him as a child playing amongst friends and studying carpentry with Joseph. By holding onto their preconceptions of a home they once knew, Jesus’ own community is blind to his teachings and divinity.

Despite our desperate clinging to memories of a perfect home, the demand for adaptation to new circumstances is characteristic of our time on Earth. Jesus’ admonishment in his own native land serves as a reminder of the only home that awaits us with unchanging perfection—unity in God and the communion of saints.