We see it too often, religious people screaming, ranting, protesting, attacking, their faces contorted, eyes bulging, fists raised. And here is such a scene at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, in the synagogue in his hometown, after he announces he’s unlikely to work any miracles there.
When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
A bit of an over-reaction? Did they feel he had blasphemed, claiming to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy? Or did he offend them, reminding them of times when God’s favor had rested upon outsiders rather than the people of Israel? We don’t know what so infuriated them, but surely it had something to do with their hopes being dashed. I suspect that when people’s religious hopes and expectations are not met, they experience a more profound let-down than other disappointments cause.
Why else would our congregations so often be the ground for bitter conflict? People bring to faith communities unspoken, unnamed, often unconscious expectations of finding the perfect family, the one in which you are perfectly seen and accepted and affirmed, and all your needs are met. God is supposed to do that for us, right? And when people don’t experience that in “God’s house,” they often get angry, and direct that anger at clergy, fellow-congregants, others who share the building. Beneath all that is anger that God has disappointed them.
Jesus’ fellow townsfolk acted out more clearly and obviously the rage many feel toward a God who doesn't intervene as we ask, who allows suffering to go on, evil to flourish, peace to fail. We want God’s miracles, damn it! As well we should. Jesus invites us to pray for God’s power to be unleashed "on earth, as it is in heaven."
The key is to pray and release. Pray with fervor and know there are many factors involved in how the answers to our prayers will be manifest. I do not believe God will undercut his gift of free will. Humans are free to choose their course, and that inevitably inhibits the realization of God's will. We might say the miracles are when people are enabled to choose the good, to choose against their own self-interest. That’s how God’s power to transform gets worked out.
Let’s not judge those rage-filled congregants of Nazareth; at some time or other many of us may have been in their shoes. We can only wish they could have seen past their own desires and expectations to discern the Holy One in their midst. But he was too familiar; they couldn’t see him as God. Let’s not make that mistake.
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