He went every week. He went religiously. Did he enjoy and endorse everyone who attended? Nope. But that didn’t stop him from being thoroughly involved. Bottom line, it was chalk-full of complexities and bewilderments, AND it was his custom to actively attend. For instance, one time he went to the synagogue (as was his custom) and he stood up to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and after he finished reading he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and confidently declared, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Some folks were like, “What’dyou say sucka!” Then he was like, “Y’all don’t like me because I grew up around here, and you want to put me in box, and you want to think you have me figured out; but I’m giving you the facts …I’m God, I’m the boss of you, and that’s what’s up.”

At this point everyone is bristling, and some so folks are on the brink of complete meltdown.

Things are tense.

Then he says, “There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepersin Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. #Luke 10:21.”

That’s when all hell broke loose. Everyone in the synagogue was filled with wrath, and they drove him out of town and brought him to the brow of a hill so that they could throw him down the cliff!

To be continued…