Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 13 verses 54 through 58:
54 He came to his home town and began to teach the people* in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? 55Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ 57And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.’ 58And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.
In a profound sermon the great theologian Paul Tillich once preached titled "The New Being" he said:
"If we are often horrified by the unconscious or conscious hostility people betray toward us or about our own hostility toward people whom we believe we love, let us not forget: They feel rejected by us; we feel rejected by them. They tried hard to make themselves acceptable to us, and they failed. We tried hard to make ourselves acceptable to them, and we failed. And their and our hostility grew."
Tillich says the answer to this problem is not to try to force a false reconciliation upon others. He says the deep call of our conversion is the acceptance of ourselves in a true reconciliation with God and with all the world. This means, we may have to accept temporary hostility with others and the anxiety it produces in ourselves and open our hearts in ultimate faith towards a deeper and truer reconciliation which though we cannot see we can trust, believe, and hope in.
Deep stuff, I know. But the point is that we can be at peace with ourselves and others even when peace seems impossible.
Remember, beloved, Jesus could do no miracles amongst those closest to him. Yet he accepted this about his people and he accepted it about himself.
And this was the beginning of the Serenity Prayer which is a deep call to accept all as they are even when all disappoint -- including ourselves and even God.
Think and pray on these things and, as the latter part of Serenity Prayer says, be reasonably happy in this life and do not give up hope for supreme happiness in the next.
May it be.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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