DEVOTIOIN - THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012

DEVOTION – THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2012-

2010 Holy Land Devotionals

The Precipice of Nazareth

by Steve Herman, Richwood UMC, NJ

Read Luke 4:16-30

^"16He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. ¹⁷The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
¹⁸"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,
¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

²⁰Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, ²¹and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.

²³Jesus 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.' "

²⁴"I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵I 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. ²⁶Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷And 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."

²⁸All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹They 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. ³⁰But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way." ~ NIV

This picture of the precipice of Nazareth takes us back to the day Jesus preached his first sermon in his home town synagogue at Nazareth. The sermon began well, and the hometown crowd was very proud of the local boy Jesus who was quickly becoming famous. However, the sermon took a quick downward spiral when Jesus hinted that God’s love and mercy was extended not just to the children of Israel, but to the people called Gentiles as well. The crowd was so angered by his teaching, they took Jesus to the top of this precipice and tried to kill him by throwing him off the cliff.

Like the crowd at Nazareth, when Jesus comes into our life we are often very excited at first. But when Jesus begins to challenge our prejudices and stretch our understanding of God, or move us out of our comfort zone, we to want to push him away. Lent is a season for giving up our sins, not giving up our Lord when he points out our sins. This Lent when we are challenged to grow, and our faith is stretched, let us not react like the crowd at Nazareth, but let us open our hearts to all the Lord would teach us.