Holy Apostle Philip, One of the Seven Deacons; Our Venerable Father Theophanes the Branded, Composer of Canons (845)
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Ephesians 6:18-24; Luke 4:22-30
This pericope doesn’t end like you think it would end. It begins in admiration; those surrounding Jesus enjoy graceful words flowing from his mouth. Imagine someone you love listening to—a podcast series you binge on the way to work, an album you play on repeat—Jesus has his listeners enchanted. But then he begins to worry them. He rehearses scenes from the Hebrew scriptures of Elijah and Elisha—the finest of Old Testament prophets. He points out their solicitude in healing non-Jews. It’s at this point Jesus, the talk-radio host of Israel’s dreams, begins telling them what they don’t want to hear. They end up pushing on him to the side of the cliff, ready kill the one who enchanted them in the first place.
In our tastes in music, our choices in news, we are often selective in what we choose. Do we choose things to inform and comfort us, reminding us of what we already know? Or rather, to we seek to be surprised, and informed, perhaps showing us a side of the story we forgot.
The scriptures are the same. A good prayer before the scriptures would be “Lord, teach me what I didn’t know before.” The bible is a difficult book because we assume we know it since we hear it every Sunday. We have the cliff notes version of the plot floating around in our head. But indeed the Word of God is a double-edged sword—it chastens us and unites us to saving truth. With this approach, let us be surprised by the enchanting Jesus. Let us let him take us by the belt to where we don’t want to go, maybe even toward difficult scriptural passages that remind us of our human failings. Don’t worry though; his grace-filled mouth is waiting to forgive you in confession.