In Luke 4:21-30, Jesus taught in his hometown, speaking eloquently and with authority. However, the people of Nazareth questioned his calling and credentials since they had seen him growing up as a common boy in a lowly carpenter's home. Most likely they presumed that a teacher with real authority would come to them from a mysterious place far away after many years of formal training at the feet of the best scholars. Perhaps they could not fathom that God would work through Jesus, a common boy who grew up before their eyes in an average family.  They had their preconceived notions of how God could work and through whom God would work.

So Jesus addresses this issue head-on with two examples from Hebrew scripture where God worked through, and in, the unconventional and unexpected. He references the widow of Zarephath in Sidon. Elijah was sent to her for sustenance (I Kings 17:1-16). It is interesting that from all the places Elijah's rescue could come, God chose to lead Elijah to an unlikely person and place, a poor person low in society (a widow) in a town which practiced idolatrous religions previously condemned by Elijah. Jesus reminds the hometown crowd that even though there were many lepers in Israel included among the faithful, none were healed except for Naaman the Syrian (II Kings 5:1-15).  Naaman was a sworn enemy of Israel, and as an unclean leper he would have been cast out of society. Yet, God's miraculous healing occurred in this excluded man’s life. Jesus’ fellow townspeople were angered at the audacity of this teaching and drove him away.

Are many people in our churches and denominations today like these people of 2,000 years ago who drove Jesus away? Are there people who think God can only work though a certain type of person, perhaps a person just like them, white, straight, and middle class? Or do they believe God only chooses people with “clean” external lives and the best credentials? We must open our minds to the truth that all of humanity are God's children and that God can, and will, work though anyone and everyone.

The people of Nazareth were very uncomfortable receiving the word of God from a man who grew up in their midst within a humble family. Perhaps we need to be challenged to understand that people in our midst who come from different countries, cultures, races, economic backgrounds, and sexual orientations can equally be called by God into God's house, "a house of prayer for all people" (Isaiah 56:7.). Instead of gay and lesbian people being driven from the church, perhaps God intends that they be embraced. Rather than concluding (like the foreigners in Isaiah 56:3) that they are supposed to be separated from God's people (and wither like dry trees), maybe people of faith should welcome their GLBT brothers and sisters and invite them to be nourished and encouraged within the church and to expand themselves within God's ministry.