Daily Lesson for October 2, 2020

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 4 verses 20 through 30:

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

The great rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said the prophets are those "one octave too high for our ears."

Jesus was more than a prophet, but not less. And in this brief encounter at his own home synagogue, he speaks one octave too high for his people.

Jesus dares to ask a question about God's judgment upon his own nation. Why was it a widow in Syria who received Elijah in the famine and not his own people? Why was it a foreign general cleansed of leprosy and not our own? The people are left to think on the answers. Because the foreign widow was the only one willing to share in generosity amidst an international emergency? Because Naaman the foreign general was the only one humble enough to get down and be washed in a little creek.

Those were the answers. But the people didn't want to hear the questions. They were one octave too high.

They always are.

NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Over the weekend we'll read John 2-5 and Matthew 8 and Mark 2.