Cultural Jesus
In Luke 4 Jesus began his ministry In the Synagogue of his hometown. He read Isaiah 61 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord”. Everyone loved it, what gracious words, but then something happened. A recognition, “hey wait a minute, isn’t that Joseph’s son?”. Their familiarity with him, gave them a reason to draw the line and stop accepting what he had to say, the next thing you know they want to throw him off a cliff. One of things this teaches us, is that it’s possible to have a preconceived idea of Jesus like these people did. People can have an expectation of what they think Jesus should say or do. It’s possible to have our own Jesus and not the real Jesus, or a Cultural Jesus who is fashioned by secular people, or carnal people. We like what he says up to a point, the nice things and what he can do for us, but the moment he says something that doesn’t fit with our idea of him, is the moment we draw the line and reject him. The true Jesus. That text is an illustration of what took place in less than one week around Passover/Easter time. On Palm Sunday, he was a rock star. They shouted “Hosanna, Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. Then in just a few days, they they shouted “Crucify him”. Here is a link to a great song on that theme that I listen to on my iPod. It’s called “Cultural Jesus” by Curtis “Voice” Allen, he’s got a great testimony, but in this song he really hits a home run. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HXnQ0i4DEY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
