And [Jesus preached in] Nazareth ... "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor." ... Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. ... I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when ... a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to ... the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." (Luke 4:16a, 18a, 21b, 25b-27)
This is a strange sermon to preach in your own hometown! Oh, it starts well enough, with good news to the poor—until Jesus spoils it all by pointing out who benefited from that good news. In particular, foreigners—people with no claim on the mercy of the God of Israel, but He loves them enough to save them anyway. And Jesus' listeners are enraged. What, a God who gives blessings to foreigners, and sometimes He even blesses them first, instead of me? God shouldn't be so loving! And so they try to throw Jesus off a cliff.
It's a good thing for us that God is so loving—because most of us aren't Jewish, and so we have no rights in God's covenant. We are saved because God's mercy is so wide it stretches even to us. Jesus lay down His life and rose from the dead so that we all could live forever as God's children—us, and every human being who trusts in Jesus, regardless of where they come from, where they live now, or whether they are welcome. To Jesus, they are beloved—and so are we.
WE PRAY: Lord, widen my heart to love ALL the people You died and rose for. Amen.
Reflection Questions:
* What kind of people are hard for you to love?
* Why would God heal foreigners before His own people?
* How can God use you to love unloved people?
Lenten Devotions were written by Dr. Kari Vo.
Today's Bible Readings: Leviticus 23-24 Mark 10:32-52
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