Whoa! Wait! What?
Whenever we hear those words, we know someone has reached the end of their patience with some person or situation. It is the ultimate declaration of disengagement and boundary-drawing. Usually it is punctuated by a "dramatic exit". We've all seen them...we've even contributed to a few of them ourselves, to be perfectly honest (ahem).
Our Lord recognized that there would be times His disciples would have to assess a situation, come to the conclusion that it's pointless to stay, and just walk away...and maybe with a wee bit of a statement (Keep your dirt. No, really, I would leave your air, but there you have it.)
The trigger for this particular teaching was the reception He got in His home town of Nazareth. Certainly little flashes of the Kingdom of God broke through, but by and large the population looked, said, "Oh. It's just Jesus," and went their merry way. Jesus could do no miracle not because he was powerless, but because they just would not believe it and frankly they could not care less.
It says much for Our Lord that thick headed obstinacy of that level didn't make Him level the town. The Gospel did say, however, that He was blown away at their level of unbelief.
Before we get all smug and self righteous about it, let's stop for a moment and think about how WE have descended to that level of unbelief. The miracles have become less frequent, clustered around those of faith, because, well, the great majority of us aren't interested in the demonstration of the power of God and when we do see the outpouring of the power of God we explain it away with our empirical upbringing. Miracles still happen but we have to work harder at them. When they do happen they get explained away by the physical analysis of the situation at the complete victimization of the metaphysical.
"Harden not your hearts as your forebears did in the wilderness...this people are wayward in their hearts for they have not known my ways." (Ps. 95.8a, 95.10b)
How about a little belief to allow the power of God back into our life, for no other reason to transform us into the children of God?
