“And they took offense at Him.” (Mark 6:3 NIV)
Jesus was teaching in the synagogue and initially, many were amazed. But as He taught, their egos got in the way. The audience started questioning the authenticity of His miracles and then His origin story. The crowd got offended and when they did, they closed their ears and hearts to the teaching of Jesus.
We can be amazed by Jesus: challenged and changed. Or we can be offended. We can walk away upset. We can close ourselves off from His life-giving message.
I’m realizing, offense often hijacks relationship. This sounds elementary, but think about it. Look at the list of people that used to be your friends (or family, for that matter) and try to recall what happened with your connection. So very often, offense is the culprit. It could by yours or theirs, but mostly likely the compounding effect of offense by both parties. Offense hijacks relationship. It executes friendships and it closes off our hearts and ears. We stop listening. We stop loving. We leave people in our dust.
Jesus was teaching in the synagogue and it was awesome. As the kids say, He was spitting facts. Of course He was, Jesus is the authority on all things Kingdom. What He preached that day was likely hard to hear, but it was still truth. It still had the power to set people free. And many were amazed right up until they were offended.
I’m learning that offense is the wide road. It’s the easy path to find and follow. You don’t have to try to be offended, you just have to be alive. Walk and talk with people a little while and you’ll find good reason to get offended. More and more, we are living in a culture of offense. Everyone is offended, all the time, by everything. Outrage is rampant and exhausting.
In contrast, the path of the unoffended is narrow, rarely traveled, even overgrown. It’s a personally painful choice, in order to live unoffended, we’ve got to lay down our pride and personal defense. It’s choosing to love others enough to keep listening, even when we don’t like what we are hearing.
Remember who’s teaching here in our text. It’s Jesus. He’s literally without sin. His words were (and still are) perfect. And still, people took offense. They stopped listening. They stopped loving. It’s kind of amazing that Jesus wasn’t offended by their disengagement. He still loved them enough to go to the cross and die for the very people who were so completely offended by His teaching. (spoiler; that’s us, too!)
I’ve just finished a book you have to read. The concepts presented Unoffendable are changing my life. I want to make the daily decision to live unoffendable: to let hurts and accusations fall away without impact. I want to be freed up to fully love God and others.
“A person wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” (Proverbs 19:11 NIV)
Oh Lord, we need Your help in learning to live unoffendable. Love is what gets ahold of people’s hearts, not anger. Please assist us in living on the narrow road with You. Let us love in a way that our flesh objects. Amen.