In today’s scripture readings we hear about two great prophets and the challenges they faced.

In the Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 1:4-19) we hear God’s calling of Jeremiah and Jeremiah’s concerns and fears about delivering God’s word to the Jewish people.  In this instance Jeremiah was being called by God to communicate some bad news – he needed to tell the Jewish people that they were about to be conquered by the Babylonians due to their unfaithfulness to God.  Jeremiah seemed to need some reassurance from God that the people would not “shoot the messenger”.

In the Gospel (Luke 4:21-30) we hear about Jesus being rejected in his home town by his own neighbors as he delivered God’s good news and announced his mission.  They just could not accept one of their own as a prophet from God, and they rose up against Jesus with “fury”.   His neighbors really missed the boat, for as we know not only was Jesus the greatest of prophets, he was God-incarnate – the visible image of our invisible God.

And maybe the message for us is that since we, as disciples of Jesus, are also called to be prophets in our world – blessed by God, able to see our world from God’s perspective, and called by God to deliver his good news to the people around us – we sometimes might be rejected or mocked because of our beliefs and how our beliefs inform how we live our lives.  Our wisdom (God’s wisdom) often goes against the conventional wisdom of this world.  But we don’t need to shrink from a fear of rejection.  Just as God was there to fortify Jeremiah and Jesus in their respective missions, God is there to fortify us as we continue steadfast in our mission – the same mission that Jesus initiated 2000 years ago – to bring God into our world, and to bring people to God.