Brow of the Hill Near Nazareth
Tissot, James, 1836-1902. Brow of the Hill Near Nazareth, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55366 [retrieved January 27, 2022]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Brow_of_the_Hill_near_Nazareth_(L%27escarpement_de_Nazareth)_-_James_Tissot.jpg.
Rejection
Luke’s report brings the starry-eyed Christian down to earth with a thud.
It previews something that will take place often in Jesus’ lifetime:
His words will fall on deaf ears. Nor is rejection of Jesus’s message a phenomenon peculiar to his day alone. Many Centuries later, Thomas Carlyle wrote: If Jesus were to come today, people would not crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of him. Why haven’t 2,000 years changed things? A high-school boy volunteered his answer: Why don’t I take Jesus’ words more seriously? I guess because if I did, most of my friends would reject me, just as many of Jesus’ friends rejected him. And I guess I couldn’t take that just now.
Jesus left Nazareth with a deeper awareness of not only what lay ahead of him, but also what it meant to be a prophet. To be a prophet meant to expose himself to rejection—-even death.
Mark Link
Luke’s report brings the starry-eyed Christian down to earth with a thud.
It previews something that will take place often in Jesus’ lifetime:
His words will fall on deaf ears. Nor is rejection of Jesus’s message a phenomenon peculiar to his day alone. Many Centuries later, Thomas Carlyle wrote: If Jesus were to come today, people would not crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of him. Why haven’t 2,000 years changed things? A high-school boy volunteered his answer: Why don’t I take Jesus’ words more seriously? I guess because if I did, most of my friends would reject me, just as many of Jesus’ friends rejected him. And I guess I couldn’t take that just now.
Jesus left Nazareth with a deeper awareness of not only what lay ahead of him, but also what it meant to be a prophet. To be a prophet meant to expose himself to rejection—-even death.
Mark Link
Imaging the Word An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Volume 1