Jesus: Homeless or Homeowner?

Much is made of Jesus as a homeless person, particularly at Christmas.

It has to do with the climate... our middle-class consciences ... the Christmas story ("no room in the inn").

The passage cited to support the homeless-Jesus image is most often Matthew 8:20: "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

Jesus said this in response to a man indicating that he was willing to follow Jesus wherever he went. It is actually part of a couplet of encounters between men with excuses - either voiced or implied - that Jesus challenges who don't -seemingly - end up following him.

The point in favour of the homeless-Jesus picture painted by this one encounter is that it does occur in the Galilean region. In fact it occurs in Matthew immediately after Jesus was specifically in Capernaum healing Peter's mother in law.

So if we are to take Jesus' words at face value then one is left asking the question "How can Jesus claim to have no where to lay his head, if he occupies/owns a home just around the lake from where he makes the statement?"

The homeless-Jesus idea is powerfully portrayed in Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz's statute which sits outside Regis College on the sidewalk in Toronto, Ontario.

Lots of pastors - of course - have taken this image to heart and go spend a night on the street around Christmas and then use their experiences to talk to their congregations about the realities of poverty in their community. Matthew 25 powerfully resonates with this idea of Jesus being the one we truly serve when we visit the imprisoned, feed the hungry, clothe the naked or care for the sick. 

But was Jesus in fact simply a borrower or a boarder or a "couch surfer" with no literal house to call his home? 

We know that Jesus was raised in the home of Joseph and was referred to as "the teckton's son". Often referred to as a carpenter, Joseph's trade was actually closer to that of a house builder. He worked with both stone and wood to build structures of all types. Here is a picture of a guide and re-enactor at Nazareth Village talking to a group i was recently there with about Jesus' father's trade. 

Jesus' teachings are full of analogies drawn from his earthly father's trade.  Whether it was the need to count the cost of a building before starting or where to build best Jesus was conversant in the theories and realities behind what Joseph spent his life doing. 

Did Jesus spend his early life in the "teckton" business? We don't know.

Its hard to imagine him NOT at least apprenticing in that business, given the socio-economic realities of the world in which he lived. And if he apprenticed and worked in that business could a man of that trade have NOT built himself a house? We don't know.

The gospels offer us precious little in the way of information about his life prior to his itinerant rabbinical ministry which started in the hill country of Nazareth but quickly found its "home" in the sea side village of Capernaum. 

And it is in Capernaum that the scripture holds out to us the tantalizing possibility that Jesus did indeed have a house. 

There are 2 or 3 verses in Mark primarily that scholars have argued from to prove this Jesus-as-homeowner thesis. 

Mark 2:1 (NASB) When He had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home.

Mark 2:15 (NASB) 15 And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him.

A third verse that holds less promise but nevertheless connects Jesus to a home that - at the very least - he has a great deal of use of is Mark 7:17 (NASB):

17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples questioned Him about the parable.

Mark 2:15 is the least convincing of the 3 as the "his" in verse 15 could apply either to recent convert Levi's home or to Jesus' home. The home being Levi's has the overwhelming weight of tradition behind it. That Matthew would invite his friends to hear his new-found rabbi's teaching fits the pattern of other newfound disciples of Jesus like Andrew and Zaccheus.

Mark 2:1 is the clearest statement that Jesus had a house in Capernaum that wasn't Peter's. Why? For 2 reasons: 1 textual and 1 contextual in 2 parts. First the textual reason. It has to be noted that the english fails us a bit in Mark 2. How? Well the actual phrase in Greek is "He was at/in house". Home carries with it more of a familial/emotional connection in English than house. So when translated "home" in Mark 2:1, it leaves open the idea that Jesus simply comes back to his "base of operations in Capernaum" ie. Peter's house. Rather than to an actual house which of course features prominently in the very next story in Mark 2...the 4 friends of the paralytic that tear open the roof to lower him down to Jesus. Capernaum wasn't Jesus' "home" even-though he may have had a "house" there.  Luke 4, 24  and many other verses make clear that Jesus "home" in the sense of his spiritual and family heritage was Nazareth. So "house" is to be the preferred translation in Mark 2:1 but who's house was it? Jesus' or Peter's?

Well the contextual reason for this being Jesus' house and not Peters comes in 2 parts. The first concerns the story of the paralytic which immediately follows the statement about Jesus being "at/in house". The first thing Jesus does upon seeing his friends tear open Jesus' roof and let down their paralyzed friend is say "Son, your sins are forgiven." What sins were those? Sins that caused the man's paralysis? Could be. His spiritual sins that separate him from God? For certain. Could the sins have been or have also been the destruction of his roof? Its a stretch but would fit both the text if the roof was Jesus' and mesh better with what we know Jesus' taught elsewhere about sickness not being the result of sin as was VERY commonly thought in that day. The 2nd part of the contextual reason concerns the close of chapter 1 immediately before this incident. There in the last verses of chapter 1 we read:

But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere.

This season of intense popularity happens after Jesus' initial days in Capernaum at Peter's house. In looking at the rocks on the ground in Kafar Nahum today and reading what is implied in Mark 1 &2 it is hard to imagine the events of those chapters happening in such a cramped and close-packed community. Homes share walls and stalls and streets run jaggedly between them all. Such a small structure accommodating Simon, Andrew, their wives and their families as well as Jesus healing and preaching ministry seems very unlikely. Hence the need for his own or at the very least for another "house". Here is a picture showing the 4th century "white synagogue", the village of Capernaum and the large church built over Peter's house from the air today:

Tradition has held that the "house" Jesus came "home" to in Capernaum was Peter's house. Peter's house today lies under a large "space-ship-like" Roman Catholic Church in Kafar Nahum Israel on the shores of the sea of Galilee. Here is a close up of it today.

Archaeological evidence shows that it was quickly converted into a small octagonal meeting place, then subsequently larger ones throughout the early-middle history of Christianity. This veneration of the place Peter (and Andrew) lived and where Jesus ministered should also give us pause in our argument that Jesus may have had or owned a home in Capernaum. Why? Because if the earliest Christ-followers... those closest to Jesus in historical terms knew where Peter lived and built successive generations of churches around that spot, how much more would they have done so had Jesus had an actual domicile in Capernaum or its vicinity. 

Why also could the home in Mark 2:1 be Peter and not Jesus' house? Because in Mark 1:29 Jesus is recorded as coming "into the house of Simon and Andrew" to heal Peter's mother-in-law. This home then seems to form his base of operations in Capernaum in keeping with his instructions that he later gives to his disciples in Luke 10 to enter a town, find a "man of peace" and stay with that person until their ministry there is done. 

Mark 7:17 is another incident of Jesus entering "the house" in Capernaum (based on Chapter 6's action) to answer questions from his disciples. Simply referring to it as "the house" implies it was a house easily understood by the 1st century recipients of Mark's gospel as "the house Jesus always entered to teach and meet with his disciples" ie. Peter's house OR his own. 

While there are tantalizing reasons to suppose Jesus had a home either of his own making or at least for his own use in Capernaum, nothing definitely in the context or text of the NT proves that he did. 

But what if Jesus was a home-owner rather than homeless? Would that have mattered? 

In one sense yes it would matter a lot if Jesus was a home-owner rather than being homeless, just like everything Jesus' did and says matters. If he was clearly portrayed as a being a home-owner it would give more credence to the off-the-wall view that Jesus was married as the two were very much more closely linked in his day than in ours. He in fact probably did "own" a home in Nazareth... the home that his mother Mary and her other children his half brother and sisters was technically a house that Jesus would have come into possession of as the eldest male son when his father Joseph died. Given Joseph's total absence from the NT post-infancy narratives it is often supposed that he died somewhere in Jesus' adolescence and so Joseph's house would have become Jesus' but Mary would have lived in it with her children till her demise many years after Jesus own death and resurrection. 

But more to the point, Paul makes clear that what Jesus gave up from a heavenly point of view was far and away greater than anything he could have given up here on earth in order to complete his mission. By the end of his ministry he was clearly penniless, homeless and had been literally stripped of all the accoutrements this world hold's dear. 

If he had owned a home it is likely that he sold it to carry out his ministry in keeping with his many admonitions to his followers to do likewise. That example of his own personal sacrifice would be a helpful tonic to the many "prosperity preachers" of our day. 

Did someone - besides Peter - lend him or let him rent a house in Capernaum? Entirely possible. Jesus certainly had people that donated money to help fund his expenses. Judas was famously in charge of that money and some women were among his largest donors. He used borrowed homes on many occasions. Besides Peter's house he used the home of Mary and Martha in Bethpage, the home of Simon the leper in Bethany and even the home of one of his enemies a Pharisee. But no where does it seem that Jesus was permanently given, built or was lent a home to use over the long term.