How Quickly Things Turn

Today the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, brought me back to some reflections I’ve had before.  This is the part of the gospel where Jesus is first received with amazement and approval by people in his old neighborhood.  He is given the honor of doing the reading in synagogue:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

And he says:  “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”  Everyone is nodding their heads, and smiling at each other.  But then everything changes.  The next words out of the mouth of Christ make the same people so angry they want to kill him.  From admiration to hate, just like that! 

I’ve tried to understand what happened.  What I noticed is that Jesus goes on to say he knows that they are expecting him to do miracles for them, as he has done in other towns.  But instead he talks about the way God reaches out to gentiles (outsiders) and heals these gentiles.  Jesus knows the hearts of his neighbors.  He grew up with them.  He speaks directly to their condition, and challenges them to be happy that God is reaching out to outsiders.  But they are not happy; they are furious. 

In their minds Jesus is a traitor, and his words don’t fit in with their ideas about God.  They are, after all, the chosen ones.  They want to have their beliefs reinforced, not challenged.  They have the old pre-Christian mindset that divides people into “us against them,” and are sure that God is on their side, and against the others.  When they hear what Jesus says, they don’t hear that God is including everyone, they think they hear that Jesus believes God is choosing the other side.  They cannot imagine inclusion of diversity. 

If Jesus is for the gentiles, than he is against them — so they are against him!  From admiration to hate, just like that.

I’ve met people like that.  They are sweet and gentle as long as you agree with their religious views of God, and the way God works.  As soon as you challenge their beliefs — wham!  You can be called all kinds of names, threatened and/or shunned.  Jesus would challenge the religious views of his day up to the end, and the anger of religious people would finally kill him.  It isn’t easy to bring conversion to hard hearts; it isn’t easy to bring conversion to minds that are already made up.   Somehow God broke through the religious walls around my heart, and every day I discover more as I continue this journey with God.  I’ve found I need to be ready to listen, and ready for surprises.  I continue to pray that I will not grow hard of heart, but stay open.