Jesus walked into his hometown synagogue and began to read from the scroll of Isaiah promising liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, and good news to the poor.
Then he said:
'Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
— Luke 4: 21
A hometown boy, now a famous rabbi, comes home and is about to speak at their synagogue. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” But minutes later want to throw him off the edge of a cliff. What in the world happened?!
They wanted him to do the miracles they’d heard about and tell them what they wanted to hear.
But instead, he tells them a couple of stories from the Old Testament about all the hungry widows in Israel and how God sent Elijah to a Gentile widow in Zarephath in southern Lebanon between Sidon and Tyre.
Then he reminds them about all the people in Israel with leprosy and how God healed Naaman the Syrian in their Jordan River.
Naaman was upset because he had to wash in the Jewish Jordan River and the Jews were upset because God healed a Syrian commander!
The people in Nazareth wanted a Jewish God.
Instead, Jesus gave them the God who created the heavens and the earth and everything else.
The people in Nazareth wanted a little God to help them with their problems.
Jesus gave them a big God who created and set fire to the sun, hung the moon and the stars in the sky, and who created and loves everybody because he created them in his image.
J.B. Phillips wrote the book on this, “Your God is Too Small!”
Imagine a massive oak tree in the forest. Did you know there’s an underground fungal web that connects the trees in a forest?
Botanists have discovered that our massive oak tree uses photosynthesized sugars to feed itself, but they use the underground fungal network to send energy out to any of the struggling young trees of every species on the outer edges of the forest.
The tragedy of Nazareth was they wanted a small, comfortable, tribal God rather than a wildly expansive and extravagant God who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
The love of God doesn’t mean we love Jesus, it means we love Judas!
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. He and wife, Mary Ella, are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
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