Today, I invite you to look and examine for a few moments these words coming to us from the Gospel of St. Luke which describe the Homecoming of Jesus to the Town of Nazareth and his subsequent rejection by them.

As our Gospel Lesson opens it states: "And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day."

I have never been to the Holy Land, but one of my colleagues who has shared with me a slide picture of the actual synagogue where they believed this drama unfolded.

As I prepared for this sermon today, I sat in my office and became very still--and began to imagine all the thoughts and emotions that must have been evoked as Jesus returned to his hometown where he had been raised and nurtured.

It is fairly well accept…