verse4today: As the Lord said to Moses may he speak to us: "I have seen..., I have heard..., and I have come to rescue you.... (Exodus 3:7-8).
Posted on 2012-02-01 via Twitter
This past Sunday my sermon series - His Journey. Your Life. - brought me to Luke 4:14-30, where we find Jesus going home to Nazareth to speak in the synagogue on Sabbath day. All began well enough. Jesus stood, as was the custom when reading scripture, and opened a scroll to Isaiah 61:1-2, where he read these words: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He then rolled up the scroll, handed it to the attendant, and sat down to teach, as was also the custom. He began with good news - "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at his words. It seems they were pretty excited to have the "son of Joseph" as a prophet. Perhaps they envisioned special blessings from one of their own.
Then, for some reason, Jesus chose to push the buttons of his home congregation. Scholars have been debating for years what he actually said and why it raised a ruckus, but it did! The people, who moments earlier praised him, got up and drove Jesus out of town. They pushed him all the way to the brow of the hill on which Nazareth was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. In time, however, Jesus walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Remarkably, all this took place on the Sabbath with folk who, as many like to say, "gathered to worship and departed to serve." Well, they gathered and then departed to serve by attempting to kill Jesus. This would be the first of many rejections. In fact, his life, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah (53:3), was defined by rejection. As Philip Yancey wrote in The Jesus I Never Knew, "His neighbors laughed at him, his family questioned his sanity, his closest friends betrayed him, and his countrymen traded his life for that of a terrorist" (160).
What's up with this story from His Journey? How does it inform your life and mine? Some day we will be able to ask Jesus why he chose to rile up the hometown folks, but until then, we may glean an important lesson for life from his journey to Nazareth: when called by God to speak the truth, we may experience rejection from a most-unlikely source - those who profess faith in the Lord! That lessons breaks easily into three parts. First, we may, like Jesus, be called by God to speak the truth into a particular context and, as the apostle Paul notes, will seek to do so in love (Ephesians 4:15). Of course, that's not as easy as it sounds for we, when given the opportunity to speak truth in love, especially the kind of truth that might disturb or disappoint a person or two, choose harmony over truth. Such an approach minimizes threats to our emotional health, as well as our sterling reputation, while allowing us to hold our job or place in society.
Second, when we speak the truth in love, we may experience rejection. This is as Jesus promised (John 15:18-20). Thank the Lord that rejection doesn't accompany every offering of truth in love. Occasionally, a person or a group of people receive truth with appreciation, in the same way they receive a disturbing, but accurate, diagnosis from a oncologist. But often those who receive the truth, motivated most-likely by pride, react with violence. It should be noted, however, that the cause of rejection is the revelation of truth, not the behavior of the one speaking the truth.
Third, and this is the kicker, the rejection comes, not from the pagans, who typically ignore the truth. but from the religious who profess faith in the truth. Notice that it was those who professed faith in God who rejected the gift of God, and, even today, it is those who profess faith in Christ who reject followers of Christ who have been called by Christ to speak truth with love into their lives. It is safe to predict that, in time, every Christ-follower learns that the bitterest opposition to the work of Christ and the movement of the Holy Spirit comes from those who profess faith in Christ but lack the presence of the Spirit in their lives. If it weren't for this periscope in the life of Jesus, as recorded by the apostle Luke, we might ask, "What up with this?" But having been forwarned by Luke, we ask instead that the Lord grant us courage to speak the truth in love and the grace to endure the consequences.
Good call. Rejection from people you think should listen to you is pretty terrible.