Sunday's sermon was based on the Luke passage where Jesus, having used the Isaiah passage about "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news," basically told his hearers 'but none if it is going to be for you!' (quoting various examples from the past actions of the ancient prophets, like Elijah, to make his point even clearer - just in case they missed it).
Can you imagine that kind of an approach to preaching in the church of today. No wonder those people took offense at Jesus' words and tried to throw him off a cliff. Let's face it, we love good news when it comes our way, but to deliberately by-pass us and assign it to some foreigners; well, that's not on. God once spoke to the church through a modern prophet - namely Martin Luther - and several death threats were aimed at him from powerful people and the established religious order of things. You might say that Luther slaughtered some sacred cows. I read that on a title of a book once which suggested that such sacred cows make great hamburgers.
Religion can so easily become the reason for 'taking offense.' Today we have worship wars (if you can believe that this could be the case in a church), over music styles and preferences: traditional hymns verses contemporary songs ... and how quickly they become sacred cows!
Whatever happened to just being good news, identified by Jesus as the reason for his coming into our world? That sort of thing never gets old. It is needed in so many places on our planet, our neighbourhood, our friends and family. But Jesus' point was not about being on the receiving end, but empowered through the Holy Spirit, to be good news for someone else. St.Francis is quoted as having said: "At all times proclaim the Gospel, and when nessesary, use words."
Let's share more of that around this week!
Rev.'D
