THE CURSE OF FAMILIARITY
Jesus had just started his ministry and the power of God was being demonstrated through him to the fullest measure. He soon goes home to Nazareth and at the synagogue he reads from the book of Isaiah and declares what is known as the Nazareth manifesto,
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18,19)
Jesus is saying that all men including the people at Nazareth are fallen in sin- poor, imprisoned, blind and oppressed by sin and that He is their only hope for salvation. Well, that also happens to be the message that people all over the world, through all ages, are least inclined to accept. They immediately respond, trying the usual trick of familiarity to berate the message, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22) This is the son of Joseph who grew up here amongst us. We know him enough not to take his message with any degree of seriousness!
Jesus responds by correcting them and saying that Israel had long suffered for using the ruse of familiarity to shut out God’s message, quoting the examples of the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian. They needed to swallow their pride and despite the familiarity of Jesus, they needed to respond in repentance to God’s message through him. And what do they do? Furious with pride and rejection of God, they drive him by force to the edge of a cliff, intending to throw Jesus down and kill him. Jesus allows them to go far but not far enough. You cannot escape the sense of humor in the narrative, where the murderous mob is on the verge of doing what they want but the story ends quite differently. ‘But he (Jesus) walked right through the crowd and went on his way.’ (Luke 4:30) It is as though the vigilante crowd was paralyzed at that instant and instead of throwing him down, they stood there helpless as the Son of God minimally exerts his power and walks right through them, because it wasn’t yet time for him to die.
Familiarity was their curse and can very well be our curse as well. Our pride does not allow us to accept God’s word through a message we have heard before, from people we know or are not placed above us and from experiences we might have gone through before. And so, while the world around us might be proclaiming God’s word to us, familiarity becomes the curse that shuts out the life-giving message of Christ in our lives.
2 thoughts on “THE CURSE OF FAMILIARITY”
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This is very true in my life. I often was offended by a godly rebuke from people younger than me, and, also from a few people familiar to me (including my wife!).
I should have kept holiness as my aim, instead of people’s “honor.”
Praveen, Thanks for the application. I agree with you that our spouses know us best and yet because of familiarity, we often put aside many a godly correction from them.