God of mercy free your Church from sin and protect it from evil. Guide us, for we cannot be saved without you. Amen
Luke 4:24-30
Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth: “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.
Jesus tells his fellow Jews of two instances in which God’s prophets ministered miraculous acts of grace to Gentiles while Israel was in unbelief. Jesus is doing God’s work… abandoning those who have rejected him and turning to those who are ready to receive him. These seem like harsh words and actions from a loving God. The Jewish hearers proved themselves to be unworthy of God’s blessings and so the gospel would also go to the Gentiles. This pattern is seen throughout the rest of Jesus’ ministry: Jesus went to the Jews; they rejected Him. He told them of Gentile participation in the kingdom and some Jews wanted to kill Him. But He was not killed until the proper time, when He chose to die.
What does this story mean to us today, on our Lenten journey? Pastor Janet tells us of the wounds of Christ. We wound Christ every time we sin or turn away from him. But we plead we are only human. Martin Luther continually whipped himself in an attempt to make him worthy of Christ’s love. Now we understand we are loved unconditionally by God and thus because of his love for us we are free to shine as a sunbeam, showing Christ’s love for others thru our actions. Our focus is on spreading the love of Christ to everyone-not just those who attend our church or denomination, but to the unloved, the poor and the destitute.
Merciful God, Free your Church from the sins of this world and protect us from evil we see and the evil we prefer to ignore. We need your guidance, Lord for we cannot do this alone. Only with your help can we be saved. Thank you for your desire to save us and love us. Amen
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