Daily Lesson for September 25, 2014

Today's daily lesson comes from Luke chapter 4 verses 22 and 29:

"And all spoke well of him and marveled at jthe gracious words that were coming from his mouth . . . And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff."

Talk about whiplash.

Jesus went back to preach in his hometown synagogue and the congregation ate him up. He spoke about good news to the poor and release for captives and the congregation just ate him up.

But then in the second half of the sermon Jesus talked about how in the Scriptures there was a great famine and there were many widows throughout Israel but the prophet Elijah did not go to minister to any of them; instead Elijah went only to a widow from a foreign country. And then Jesus called attention to how though there were many lepers at a certain time in Israel none of them were cleansed; rather it was a leprous general from Israel's archenemy Syria who was healed.

After Jesus said these things the hometown crowd turned on Him, and those who had just been extolling Jesus' preaching were suddenly now leading him out of town to try to hurl him off a cliff.

It has often been said that the word of God comes to comfort the afflicted and also afflict the comfortable. That makes me think - if what we get on Sundays always comforts us and  leaves us shaking our heads yes, but never steps on our toes and make us question our prejudices and predilections, then we may be hearing only the first half of Jesus' sermon.