Without Honor

Luke 4:24-27

Funny thing about people who really, really know you, like the people in your home town, the ones you grew up with. They never can take you seriously. That’s because people who think they know you stop listening to you after a while.

Nobody’s unchanging. Everyone who is alive is growing and growth means change. Some people stop growing and yet still have a heart beat. These are the living dead, the ones to whom Jesus came to give life – abundant life, which means lots and lots of change. But people don’t like change. It’s too painful. So they (we included) prefer a status quo, even a bad one, to change of any sort.

Such is the situation Jesus faces in his home town of Nazareth. He who grew up among these people looking for all the world just like them. He, who in his first thirty years showed no signs of being other than just like them, now suddenly claims to be the Messiah. It is far too much for them to handle. I think we can all relate to that. We don’t want our buddy to suddenly become something other than what we thought he or she was, better or worse. We want life to go on as it always has, even if we hate it.

Jesus likens his situation to the two Old Testament prophets – Elijah and Elisha – and their parallel experiences of reaching out to people who were outsiders, foreigners no less. In a time of severe famine, Elijah is not sent to minister to all the widows in Israel, but to a foreign widow. With all the lepers in Israel, Elisha is sent to heal a soldier in the enemy army of Syria.

Jesus says this in context of a prophet not being accepted in his hometown. What is the connection? His message that he has come to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy is being rejected by his hometown friends in Nazareth. They aren’t ready to receive that, but they also want Jesus to treat them like he has treated people in Capernaum (town rivalry?), where he performed healings. The good folks of Nazareth are not being schizophrenic in denying Jesus can be the Messiah and yet expecting miracles from him. Healings and miracles were not uncommon among itinerant rabbis like Jesus. Declarations of Messiahship were, however.

And so, like Elijah and Elisha, Jesus recognizes that he will have better reception elsewhere. The only miracle he performs in Nazareth is to walk away unscathed. They are angry to the point of wanting to kill him. Jesus doesn’t return the anger, he just leaves. He goes to those who will receive his good news and there is no record in the gospels that he ever returns to his hometown.

I find people amazingly incurious about each other. People thought they knew Jesus so well, they stopped wanting to know him better. There is an old English saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” I think familiarity can also breed disinterest. We don’t want to know more about others because it may require change in us. So we keep our level of ignorance at a constant.

People who are Believers in places where Believers have been around for a long time look at places where the Gospel is new and are jealous of what God is doing in these new places. Why doesn’t God work here like He does there, they ask? And then they turn around and reject what God is doing here because it doesn’t look like there or what we have come to expect from Him here. We like our God in a manageable package.

Strange thing about God – He is always breaking out of our expectations. And if we don’t accept Him, He just might move on to more responsive audiences.