Like prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus did not come to align with their expectations. He did not come to promote their positions or status or actions.
He came to do the will of the Father who has sent Him.
And their anguish was great and they did not believe that a messiah would come from the family of a carpenter. It didn’t make sense to them and didn’t fit their ideas of who he should be.
So, no miracles were shown to them. No lepers cleansed and the blind were not given sight.
He did not fit into the box they required him to fit into.
What box are we trying to out Jesus in within our own world.
What do we require of Jesus right now, today so we finally give him our heart and soul and proclaim I am all in for Jesus Christ?
That’s what he requires from us. Not a luke warm assent. Not just attendance at the mass but to realize the mass has always been about the true body and blood of Jesus Christ given to us out of love. We do not worship to be entertained but to be united once again with his flesh and divinity. And for that to transpire we must give up everything else in our life. Nothing else can be the center of our life. Nothing above him. As we heard yesterday, we must thirst only for the Lord.
Who is Jesus to us? Are we hanging on to some self inflicted obstacle that stops us from giving Him everything? Maybe there is someone or thing here we can’t let go of and it is first in our heart. Maybe it is a fear or sin we keep going back to and cannot break free.
Our singular goal today is to ask Jesus Christ to help us. Confess our sin and seek once more only his way to guide us and keep us on his path.
Our Gospel today sees the local leaders rejecting Jesus Christ. Where are we today in our faith? What do we thirst for?
Gospel
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Rolling up the scroll,
he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”
He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,
‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’”
And he said,
“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
Deacon Tony Pynes 
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