The Messiah was there…right there in their synagogue! They had heard stories of his healings. His disciples were right there in the synagogue with them. He read his job description from Isaiah and essentially said, ‘This is it. I’m the guy!’
And boy, they started to get mad! At first they spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious way he spoke as he continued to teach. And then they began to grumble. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”Seeing and hearing their objection he said, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
He called them on it, and likened their demand for proof to the disbelief of their ancestors in the time of Elijah and Elisha, when God blessed Gentiles instead of the stiff-necked Jews.
They were furious! “They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”
It is difficult to accept something new when it collides with our past or with firmly held beliefs. Any church leader knows how hard it is to change the culture of a pre-existing church. We like feelings of newness and evidence of success until it challenges our established patterns of thought or the way we’ve always done things. It seems, from this point on, that wherever Jesus went he irritated the established leaders because he actually got things done…and partly because they actually were the right things!
Many of our churches of today are hollow, with a good appearance on the outside, but without substance on the inside. By that I mean that we have mastered the art of building nice buildings and putting on entertaining ‘worship’ services, but have lost the moral and social high ground that the Kingdom of God calls for by our lack of wholehearted involvement. Were Jesus to come bodily to our cities today, I don’t believe we would find him in the churches, but under the Burnside Bridge, or in the Portland Rescue Mission, or in the Lotus Club, or in all those many places where people who are poor in spirit, poor in the fortunes of life, blind to the path God wants them to follow, and oppressed by poor decisions and past failures, tend to congregate. He would be delighted in the fellowship and mission of Alcoholics Anonymous and other such groups that teach those who are desperate with failure learn that recovery and happiness can be had by giving God control of their lives.
But if Jesus came into our churches and castigated us for our self-indulgence, greed, and lack of zeal for his Kingdom, the fur would soon fly.
It’s pretty neat that in Nazareth he had his say, allowed the people to vent their anger, and then just walked away from them before they did harm to him or themselves. One hopes that as his ministry in Galilee soon came to rivet the attention of the whole region, the people of Nazareth rethought their position. God is always the God of another chance.
Prayer: “Merciful Father, I am too often blinded by my opinion, or by the customary way I’ve always done things, or by my own interpretation of Scripture. But I know that today you are doing a new thing, and I see new things and excited (as well as exciting) people both within and without your church. Please help me to never be a roadblock to something you are doing. For as long as I live, teach me to follow you, however difficult or unlikely the path. Make my spirit so responsive to your Spirit that I remain a flexible soul, and lead me in the way that is everlasting. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”