Monday, September 19, 2005

Jesus goes home

This is about when Jesus went back to his hometown and got to be the guest speaker in the synagogue:

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. ‘Isn't this Joseph's son?’ they asked.
Jesus said to them, ‘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.”’ (Luke 4:22-23)

It seems like Jesus is suggesting that they’re going to try and injure him, and see if he can save himself (‘Physician, heal yourself!’). Reminds me of later, when he’s being crucified, and people say, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ (Luke 23:35)

Now Jesus says something they don’t like too much at all, and they do try to injure him:
‘I tell you the truth,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed — only Naaman the Syrian.’
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 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.
(Luke 4:24-30)

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