But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

I have always been fascinated by that sentence. It comes to us from Luke, who explains almost everything that he writes in detail, and here we get no explanation at all.

What actually happened that day when the people of Nazareth tried to toss Jesus off of a cliff?

How did he manage to simply pass through the midst of them and walk away?

Well, hold on to the questions for a few minutes and let me start at the end of the verse.

Whatever happened, Jesus knew it was time to go: He went on his way.

How do you know when it is time to go?

How do you know when it is time to move on to a new stage, a new chapter, a change in your life?

How do we know as a congregation, in this season of Epiphany, when we search for the star that God has hung in our skies, where God is leading us?

How do we know when it is time to take all of our careful plans and preparations and toss them in the recycling and start to dream new dreams?

Sometimes the knowledge comes with the changes are thrust upon us.

A birth of a child, that changes things, doesn’t it?

I get to watch a bunch of people, including for almost two years now, my son and daughter-in-law, go through the remarkable discovery process of what it means to be a parent in the 21st Century: the awe, the wonder, the sleeplessness of it all. And I will say this without any hesitation, the fathers of today are far better at being fathers, and far more appreciative of the sheer joy of it, then I ever was, and the same is true for most of my generation. Today’s fathers seem to know, from the first time they hold their child, that life has changed for the better and they are going to be moving in new directions, and off they go.

We were slow learners, we who were fathers of the 20th Century as we were dragged, kicking and screaming, to changing diapers and changing schedules and changing lives.

But, and this is just a sidelight, but it is to our credit that we are far better at being grandparents then we ever were as parents, so there is hope for the future.

Sometimes, though, the changes that are thrust upon us are less joyous then a birth.

A death occurs, a diagnosis is given, a divorce is sought, a job is lost, all of these things seem to happen all around us, don’t they?

And when they confront us, even if we have dodged the bullets, they hit people we care about and when that happens, we lose our compass, don’t we?

We plod our way through the days that become weeks, the weeks that become months and we think, and we assure each other, that tomorrow or next week the tide will turn and the gray fuzziness in our hearts will go away.

Until it doesn’t and we realize that life has changed and we need to change, not change who we are, but change who we are becoming; not change where we have been, but change where we are going.

We need to walk through the very things that threaten us in order to move on with our lives and we discover, as Winston Churchill said that “many of the things that we fear never come to pass.”

But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

And as we go on our way we discover our companions on the journey. We travel with family and friends, people who are important to us in life, sometimes they are born into our lives and sometimes they have just lived their way into our lives, but we travel with people who have shared the intimacies of our successes and our failures and our everyday routines, people who have shared the changes, good and bad, that drive us to move on in life.

And sometimes the changes aren’t forced upon us, sometimes we choose the changes, as Jesus did that day in his hometown. He had to know what was coming.

The people of Nazareth, his neighbors, were willing to listen to Jesus as long as he read the good and wonderful words of Isaiah, the prophecies that applied to their forbearers.

It’s like us listening to a reading of the Declaration of Independence; no one is going to boo.

But what happened when Dr. King took those words and those dreams and pointed out their application in our society? People did more than boo.

That’s what happened to Jesus, when he began to criticize them and their understanding and their expectations and their limited dreams and visions, then things changed and the very people who praised him were ready to throw him off a cliff.

That’s what Jeremiah was worried about in the OT lesson, he didn’t think people would take him seriously because he was so young, and it was gloomy message about the impending exile that he had to deliver, but God’s good news is not always happy news, God’s word can come from the young, from the old, from the rich, from the poor and from those who have changed.

Jesus had changed.

Yes he was still the son of Joseph the Carpenter, but he was different now and they wanted to freeze him in place, they wanted him to act and speak and just as he had always acted and spoken and been.

One of the hardest lessons of parenthood, and this is not to discourage you who have younger children, but one of the hardest lessons of parenthood arrives during Christmas break of a college student’s freshman year. They come home with bodies that are running on dorm time, where nights end at about the point where most of our days are beginning and going out at 1:30 in the morning for something to eat is normal and no one asks where you are going unless they are trying to decide whether or not to go with you. And they bring those bodies and time values – and I won’t even mention those table manners - into homes where the 10:00 news is watched from bed, with the timer on, so it goes off when you doze off.

They changed didn’t they.

And you may think you don’t know them anymore, but you can if you invest the time and effort and patience and vision that are required.

Or, as with the people of Nazareth, you can try to force them to be who they were, until you are practically driving the reality of their identity off a cliff.

That’s what the people of Nazareth were doing.

That’s what too many of us continue to do to Jesus, we love him when he speaks about lilies and birds and forgiveness that we receive, but when he speaks about the rejects of society, the Samaritans, or about money or about the forgiveness that we are expected to give, we are ready to toss him off of the nearest cliff.

But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

I still don’t know exactly what happened at that moment, Luke doesn’t tell us.

But he does tell us that Jesus simply turned and passed through the middle of the hatred and fear and ignorance that surrounded him and he went on his way.

And I can’t help but think that this is what we need to know, that this is a model for us.

When you and I are confronted with hatred and fear and ignorance, we don’t need to let them have their way, we can walk with Christ right through the middle of them and then be on our way.

And where are we going?

Home.

Always home.

From Eden to the Throne of Revelation, scripture’s story is that of going home to God, and our own individual stories are the same. Home, where my thought's escaping; Home, where my music's playing;

Home, where my love lies waiting Silently for me

This is what home is: the place where love itself is born and nurtured, discovered and replenished, the place to where God is always sending us and giving us the words to speak, or the silences to keep.

And wherever we are there are no dangers that can touch us when we realize that it is time to go home.

But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.