Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Sep­tem­ber 3, 2007

“Who is this guy?”
“Isn’t he so-and-so’s kid?”
“Get out­ta here!”
“Where do you get off com­ing in here and lec­tur­ing us like this?”
“Take a hike!”
“Who do you think you are, anyway?”

Luke tells us: “No prophet is accept­ed in his own native place.”

No kid­ding. (This is not the first time the Gospels men­tion an inci­dent like this; see also Matthew 13:54-58). It’s appar­ent­ly dif­fi­cult for Jesus’ home­town folks from Nazareth to deal with the local kid com­ing in and proph­esy­ing. Imag­ine if the guy from down the street in your neigh­bor­hood, or the check­er from the super­mar­ket, walked in front of your church’s pul­pit and start­ed preach­ing. “Isn’t that Joe and Mary’s kid? What’s he doing up there?”

At first the Nazarenes are “amazed” at Jesus’ “gra­cious words.” Then he tells them that they prob­a­bly won’t believe what he has to say. And he’s right. Angry, the towns­peo­ple rush him out of town and threat­en him with violence.

How often do we hear what we need to hear, but dis­dain it because it’s not what we want to hear? How often have we got­ten upset with a friend or loved one who tells us some­thing that doesn’t fit with­in our com­fort zone, or which makes us uneasy? Per­haps we need to lis­ten hard­er for the voice that tells us what is right, what is true. Truth is often not com­fort­able, or what we want to hear. But if we use the mind we’ve been giv­en, and exer­cise crit­i­cal dis­cern­ment while at the same time leav­ing our­selves open to truth, we may find that our path may be a lit­tle straighter, eas­i­er to walk, and that the her­alds of that truth are eas­i­er to hear.