Homelessness of Jesus

The gospels suggest that Jesus lacked a permanent home during the period of public ministry that occupied his last years.

[1] He left the economic security he had as an artisan and the reciprocity he had with his family and wandered Judaea depending on charity.

[5] Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58 both record a statement by Jesus in which he describes his homelessness by saying that "foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head".

[10] Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether discusses Jesus' homelessness in relation to the concept of kenosis, the voluntary renunciation of power in order to submit to the will of God.

[11] In a book length study on the Gospel of Matthew, Robert J. Myles has argued that the homelessness of Jesus is often romanticized in biblical interpretation in a way that obscures the destitution and lack of agency that would have likely accompanied the situation.