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Sunday, January 31, 2016

Luke 4:21-30 Rejected at home

In today's Gospel we hear of how Jesus reads the scroll from Isiah, then as soon as the people of Nazareth realize what he said, they turn on him with derision.  He is merely the son of the carpenter, Joseph, what makes him better than they?  They are trying to put him into a stereotype of sorts.  Don't we try to do that too?  When we meet people or get an impression of who they are, don't we tend to expect them to act a certain way?  That is what they are doing with God.  They can't accept that Jesus is the Christ, and may actually start to believe that he is blaspheming.  This is punishable by death.  He reminds them that even Elijah and Elias both showed God's salvation to those who sought it whether they were Jewish or Samaritan, or something else.  God is not bound by human laws or thoughts.  Jesus was challenging how they believed.  It was dangerous.  Look at our own history in the United States to civil rights leaders and presidents who challenged the way people have thought:  Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy.  Perhaps these correlations will help make sense a little more of today's reading.  It is also striking too that Jesus never returned to Nazareth after this.  Their hearts were too closed for him to fill it. 

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