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He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (vv. 16-21)

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

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Object: A photo of your family.

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Hello, everyone! (Let them respond.) I have a question for you today. Are you ready? (Let them respond.) Great. Here is my question. We all want to try and follow Jesus, and do the things God wants us to do, right? (Let them respond.) Who can tell me what you think is the hardest thing for us to do to do that? (Let them respond.) There can be a lot of things that are hard, but do you know what I think the absolute hardest thing is? (Let them respond.) I’ll show what I think the hardest thing to do is. (Show the photo.) This is a photo of my family. And I think the hardest thing for us to do is to do what God wants us to do when we are at home with our family. At least I know that can be the hardest thing for me.

Have you ever noticed that even though we are trying to do the things God wants us to do, sometimes we act differently when we are at home than we do when we are someplace with other people? We do that sometimes, don’t we? (Let them respond.) When we are at school, or at church, or even when we are just hanging around with other people, we sometimes act differently than we do at home, don’t we? (Let them respond.) We know our family so well, and they know us so well, that we sometimes forget about what God wants us to do, and we say and do things to them that we would never say to other people. Has that ever happened to you? (Let them respond.) It has to me. Sometimes it can be hard to follow Jesus when we are at home with our families.

Today’s story makes me think Jesus knew that too. After Jesus was baptized, he started traveling around talking to people about God, and trying to show them that he loved them as much as God loved them. Then one day, he went back to his hometown of Nazareth to visit his family and all of the other people he grew up with there. They all remembered how he talked and acted when he lived there with them and I’ll bet they thought he would be the same now, don’t you? (Let them respond.) But Jesus wasn’t the same as he was before, was he? (Let them respond.) Now he was trying very hard to do the things God wanted him to do. Even at home.

So, one day when they all went to the synagogue, which is like when we go to church, they asked Jesus to read the scripture for them. Jesus got up and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.” And when someone said the Spirit was with them, it meant they were trying to do what God wanted them to do. When he finished reading, he looked around at everyone and he said, “Today I tell you that from now on I am going to try and do what God has asked me to do and show everyone how much God loves everyone one of us, no matter where we are.”

I hope you will remember how much God loves you, and how much God wants us to love other people and do the best we can to help take care of those other people and make sure they know how much we love them. Even our families at home. (Show the photo.)

Let’s have our prayer and ask God to help us remember to do the things God wants us to do to take care of each other.

Prayer:
Dear God, thank you for reminding us how much you love us. Please help us remember that you love all of the people you have created and help us let the people around us know that we love them just like Jesus loves us. Amen.