Your Undivided Attention

In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus returns to Nazareth, His childhood home, for the first time since His public ministry began. His reputation has preceded Him. His fellow villagers have heard accounts of His revolutionary teachings and his awesome miracles. Now, here He is, in the flesh, back home again, teaching in the local synagogue. And the villagers are “astonished when they hear Him.” “Where did this man get all this?” they ask. “What are these miracles that are being worked through Him? What is this wisdom that has been granted Him?”

Business students at a large university were assigned the task of interviewing a cross-section of the local community and submitting a report on the experience. One student was less than enthusiastic about the assignment. “I considered it to be a complete waste of time,” he said, “until I asked a farmer in his late seventies, ‘How much education have you had?’ and he answered, ‘Well, I had six years of schoolin’ and seventy-two…