When we must go away!

Luke 4:24-30

Jesus came to Nazareth and spoke to the people in the synagogue: ‘I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.

 ‘There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijah’s day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.’

  

When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.

Food for thought!

"But Jesus slipped through the crown and walked away!"

Jesus escaped death. The first people to want to kill Jesus were the people who knew him, the people of his home town, Nazareth. The gospel says that "they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff."

Why would the people of Nazareth want to kill Jesus? The question can be put this way, why do the people who know us turn out to be our worst enemies? Look and you will notice that your adversaries, your enemies were once your friends. Why does this happen so often?

Well, it happens because the people who know us think that they know  us. And as always familiarity breeds contempt; the more we know someone the more we tend to despise that person. That's why Jesus said that no prophet is ever accepted in his own home.

I like the fact that Jesus walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Sometimes it is good to get away from the people before it is too late. This makes me remember Pope Benedict's resignation. Was the Pope's act cowardice? No, it was not, just as it was not cowardice for Jesus to walk away from the Nazareens. When the environment becomes hostile to us, or when our ministry or service or our employment becomes ineffective due to whatever reason, we do well to do like Jesus.