Your Hometown....

Then Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up...they were all well impressed with him and marvelled at the eloquent words that he spoke. They said, "Isn't he the son of Joseph?"...(Jesus said)You will also tell me to do here in my hometown the same things you heard were done in Capernaum. I tell you this, prophets are never welcomed in their home town."(Luke 4:16,22-24)

It is so easy for us as Christians to think of the church as our 'hometown'. We are the only ones who belong here. We are the ones who have a right to be here. We become preoccupied with our 'hometown'. We worry about security. We concern ourselves with keeping the 'families' of our 'hometown' together in the community we have always known. We assume that God should work within the framework that we have erected as our 'home'.

What happens then is that the mission of the Church becomes simply maintaining the status quo and taking care of the people who are on our books rather that bringing the good news of Jesus to outsiders...to those 'sinners...to those 'gentiles'.

God's mission is different. It is all about the sinner...the outsider...the gentile. God's mission is all about risking everything for the Kingdom. God's mission is about embracing change, challenge and newness. God's mission is facing the future as an unknown.

Luke often uses 'the way' to describe Jesus' ministry and the Christian life. We are a people who are called to be on 'the way'. Not building a secure fortress or even a safe romanticized 'hometown'. We are called to follow Jesus...to walk with him. For the Christian life is very much the journey...but a journey that will take us to our true 'hometown'. The one created for us before time began. For our 'hometown', yours and mine, is not on this earth. It never was. Our 'hometown' is the kingdom in which Jesus is Lord. And as his words to Pilate remind us, his kingdom is not of this world.