There are good, God-pleasing reasons to attend a Divine Service, but worship attendance can also be an action by which we try to earn or deserve the favor and love of God. This is an ongoing struggle in every worshiping community.
This passage, above all others, speaks most fully about Jesus as the elder brother, the firstborn, of a large family; the family of God the Father, Creator of humankind.
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
The Church becomes anti-church when the new world order Christ inaugurated by eliminating demographic division through the commonality of Baptism is exploded by allegiance to cults of personality.
This is the wonder which is present in the calling of the disciples. Not how they drop their nets to follow Jesus, but that Jesus does not need to go far to find disciples. He chooses the people He lives among.
From all accounts, everyone in Nazareth would have just thought of Jesus as a very good boy who obeyed his parents and worked hard with his father as a tekton’s apprentice in the family trade.