"and they rose up and put him out of the city"

My thoughts in my last entry were not very well-developed, but yesterday I came across a familiar story that stirred those ideas a little more. When Jesus stood and read in the synagogue (Lk 4.16-30). It has Jesus quoting Isaiah 61, "good news to the poor," words that have inspired me too, through him. But there's also something else.

That story gives the one scene I can recall where Jesus plays an "official" role in his community's religious practice. Later we see him often teaching and healing and casting out demons, but in an almost renegade way, in various places, hillsides, seaside, out on the sea, and sometimes in the temple but not apparently in an official capacity. So that eventually he is challenged, "by what authority do you do these things?" And in the story in Luke, where he reads as part of the service in the synagogue, he ends up angering the people so much they drive him out and try to throw him off a cliff.

It reminded me of how alternative Jesus' way of life was. How differently he did things. In a way that makes it apparent how the kingdom of God is different from our human societies and accustomed ways of working and interacting with people. That alternative is what I'm intrigued by and want to live.

The challenge seems to be how to be so different and still be able to engage people in society and be helpful to them. Jesus seemed to operate so much on the margins, and so mostly touched the people on the margins. He also responded to needs that others could not help, like leprosy and demon possession. So people were more open to his very different ways in those desperate cases. Maybe that's something like I was saying before about looking for critical, urgent needs to offer help, and the freedom and love that can be experienced in serving in those areas. Those crisis situations are usually temporary, but what is important is the message communicated by our help, not finding a permanent and secure job for ourselves. Maybe another way to show how the kingdom of God appears again and again in this world, but is not "of the world."