Wednesday, February 1, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God’s beauty in us all
There are heroes, and then there are heroes in their home town.
Jesus departed from there and came to his native place. He began teaching on the Sabbath.
Thirty years ago Chris Street was killed by a snowplow on his way home after a University of Iowa basketball banquet. At an Iowa basketball game last night his family was honored and he was remembered, a hometown hero unforgotten.
I think the citizens of Nazareth would eventually see Jesus differently, after hearing their neighbors’ stories of healing and preaching, after his death and resurrection, after they began to understand what he was telling them about themselves.
But not yet.
They said, “Where did the man get all this? Is he not the carpenter, son of Mary, brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us?”
This man is one of us, and we aren’t anything special. Is he just being arrogant and acting superior to us?
And they took offense at him.
It’s so easy for me to look down from my lofty heights and think they were fools. But of course I’d have the same problem with a hero from my high school, from my home town. Admire them, sure, with some reluctance. Resent them too, in secret shadowy corners of my mind. Wonder why I can’t be like they are, admired and famous because of their words and deeds.
We have our psychological belittling label for those who think they are very special. They have a “messiah” complex. That’s our escape clause. There has been only one messiah.
But even then receiving him was a difficult, doubting thing.
Jesus said, “A prophet is honored except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
Do I believe in Jesus?
Well, do I believe in the beauty and works of many around me, as they are freed by their Father to be all that they can be? Do I believe in God’s beauty in myself? The jump from Jesus to the rest of us isn’t as far as it might seem.
Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith.
None of them could heal or deliver others from demons, or understand the Hebrew texts like Jesus. None of us can either. But all of us, beginning with Jesus, are filled with God’s power to do all those things in our own way. I think again of the Hebrews verse in both yesterday’s and today’s lectionary:
Brothers and sisters, in your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.
But victory in that struggle isn’t about a good deed-filled life; it’s about the way that life comes about – by fighting through my ego and surrendering it, then by listening to the Spirit living inside me calling out the hero. And loving others when that happens in them.
The Lord disciplines the ones he loves.
(Hebrews 12, Psalm 103, John 10, Mark 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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