It started off so well.* Jesus was back in Nazareth not long after beginning his ministry, and was warmly received in his hometown synagogue: “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.”
And then, in a matter of minutes, everything changed. The adoring crowd became an angry mob, intent on driving Jesus off a cliff. It would seem unbelievable if it weren’t entirely familiar: that whoosh of all of the air being sucked out of the room when someone speaks an unwelcome truth. Two millennia apart and six thousand miles away, I imagine that tension feels exactly the same, a curtain of anger and shock falling over the faces that were smiling and nodding just a moment ago.
On some level, I understand their reaction; the fact that Jesus always spoke the truth in love does not mean it came without an edge. His words were often pointed, a scalpel sharpened to cut out a malignant tumor. And indeed, the expectations of this crowd were metastasizing, fed by rumors of the wonders he’d done.
Lest they believed that they were owed great miracles, Jesus pointed to history. Not the history they were used to hearing – of God choosing them as a special people, of God delivering them over and over again – but instead the times when God chose the outsider, when God delivered the outcast.
Though the crowd was furious, it seems to me that Jesus’s hometown sermon was far from the harshest thing to ever come out of his mouth; after all, this is the man who said, “Get behind me, Satan,” to one of his closest friends. It occurred to me that maybe the difference between those who loved Jesus and those who wanted to drive him off a cliff was their willingness to hear the hard truth. But that begs the question: what makes one willing – or able – to handle the unvarnished truth? I think of my own life, times when the honesty from a loved one has been tolerable versus the times when I didn’t handle it so well. To be honest, I’m not sure I can put my finger on the difference.
I do know that hearing the truth is always hard. But Jesus also promised that it would set us free. May we be brave enough to hear it.
–Erica Lloyd, Seekers Church
Question for reflection:
- When was the last time someone tried to tell you a hard truth?
- How did you react?
- Have you had an experience of being set free by the truth?
