Yesterday there was a great fanfare. The trumpets were blowing, Jesus was proclaiming his manifesto and it all seemed to be going down very well. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. Whispering to each other they asked "Isn't this young Jesus, Joseph the carpenter's son? Where did he learn to speak like this?"
They thought they knew him. They thought they had got the measure of him. He was a tradesman, someone you'd call on if you needed a door fixed, or a new table and chairs. They weren't expecting political reform, health care and prisoner release schemes.
So they were sceptical, and Jesus could sense it.
Who does he think he is? Telling us what to do? He's a carpenter. We pay him to fix wood, not repair souls.
They'd heard he'd started doing miracles up in Capernaum, where he'd set up home. Thinks he's too good for us, does he? Well he's not doing any miracles round here!
So Jesus reminds them of two uncomfortable stories from their past. God sent a prophet, not to a good Jewish family for shelter, but to a despised Gentile widow in Zarephath. He did miracles for her, while people in Israel starved. Then there was another story about a foreign general, who was cured of leprosy while good Jewish boys stayed ill.
I'm afraid this went down about as well as a speech advocating immigration at a UKIP conference. Worse in fact. I can't imagine the good folk of UKIP decided that a lynching was in order. But Jesus was hustled out of the synagogue and they made for a cliff, intending to push him over.
What happened next sounds like a miracle. Sounds like something a Jedi might do. There they were, angry crowd, shouting and jostling, storming their way to the cliff's edge. But Jesus calmly passes through the mob, and walks away, leaving them wondering where he had disappeared to.
Jesus goes where he wills. He can't be forced any more. Only followed.
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