Most preachers have had the...
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Most preachers have had the experience of going to the congregation where they grew up and preaching for those people. This is usually received as sort of cute, and one is told what a wonderful person you have become when, of course, no one had much hope for you when you were a cut-up in second grade Sunday church school. It is extremely difficult to bring the strong Word of God into a community that has known you from infancy. This was, of course, Jesus' problem in Nazareth. His Word from God was in his very person, and that was hard to take. That is why Luke's task is the easier one. In bringing the full Gospel message to Theophius, and so to all who will love God throughout the world, he sets God's Word free from the boundaries of tight communities and lets it bring it message of love and release to all people in need of it. We who preach have this same task every Sunday morning — to speak clearly and strongly the free Word of God to all God's beloved people, all the Theophilus's of our time, who can then be free from the bounds of culture and community to share that Word in every particular of their lives.
