Jesus while teaching in the synagogue in Nazareth mentions that no prophet is welcome in his own native place and proceeds to give examples of prophets who were in exile from their own people and staying with and helping those who were least of the others. The people were really angry with Jesus because he was kind of calling them on their hypocrisy. Why did he do this? He already knew where their hearts lay, but he also wanted to challenge them, shake them up: were they complacent in their faith like the people of old to whom God sent the prophets whom they ignored? Those examples usually led to an overthrow by a foreign king. The Jews listening to Jesus would definitely not have liked that, and thus like his predecessors, he had to leave them.
A young man asked recently about why Jesus had to die at the time he did. Here within this Gospel reading we are told that it was not his appointed time, and so he slipped through their midst and left. Although we have free will to choose, there seems to be an a time for all things:
"There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. Time to give birth, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. " Eccl 3:1-2
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