What do we want from you Jesus?
We want you to be ours,
we want to keep you
to ourselves,
to be healed
and blessed
and supported by you.
We want to live a life
free from discomfort,
and pain,
free from challenge…
We want to be comfortable,
settled,
and, well..
we'd like to have everything explained,
tied up neatly,
and presented in a way
that we understand,
and enjoy.
But you come,
tipping us out of our cosy
reveries,
and demanding
that we leave everything behind
to follow you.
You tell us that our
treasured possessions
are not important,
and our personal wholeness
should not be our
first concern.
You call us beyond ourselves,
and our limited vision,
and offer us a glimpse of the
vastness of God breathed
possibilities…
What do we want from you Jesus?
Now don't be
offended,
but,
perhaps you could
leave us
alone…
I have been pondering the Gospel reading for next Sunday, considering the way that Jesus peers and neighbours reacted to him; it seems that he deliberately provoked them, saying a prophet has no honour in his own town, and pointing to the way that both Elijah and Elisha were sent beyond Israel to Naaman who was leprous and the widow at Sarpeta in Sidon.
Was Jesus being deliberately contentious? I think he was, his friends and neighbours had been delighted with his teaching but he was pointing out that it was not just to them that he was called. Did he overdo it? Maybe so, for it certainly provoked a strong reaction…. but maybe we have forgotten the impact that the gospel should have on its hearers; it is shocking and disturbing and challenging, and ifwe say that it isn't then maybe we aren't really reading it!
