Over 3,000 people had jammed the Beverly Hills Super Club, in Southgate Kentucky on the clear, mild evening of May 28^th, 1977.  They were gathered to see a popular singer who was to perform that evening. Like many nightclubs, there were a few preliminary acts that would entertain before the headliner would appear.  In one of the preliminary acts, a comedian was regaling the audience with funny stories when an employee of the supper club, a busboy named Walter Bailey, walked calmly onto the stage and to the microphone. “There is a fire in the building,” Bailey announced in a calm voice.  He then pointed out the exits around the perimeter of the room.  Bailey asked every to quietly leave their seats and make their way to safety.  There was a problem, however: the audience mistook the message as part of the comedian’s routine and simply laughed it off.  About a minute later, thick black smoke began to pour through the air-conditioning vents, seconds after that the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness. Many of the people panicked.  Some could not find an exit in the maze of tables and darkness.  Others found doors that led to blind hallways, but not to safety. When the fire was finally extinguished, 165 people lay dead in the ruins of the Beverly Hills Supper Club.

Often the most significant moments of our lives come and go without our realizing, at the time, just how the current moment will change the rest of our lives. Jesus went to his home synagogue. He was telling the folks he grew up around - his closest friends and neighbors - that the freedom and deliverance predicted by the Prophet Isaiah were being fulfilled, presently, in him.

Unfortunately, his neighbors could not believe Jesus. Like the patrons of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, they looked at the messenger and could not accept the message. Jesus was the ordinary son of a common carpenter. He was poor. There were whispers that he was conceived out of wedlock. How could such a person be God's anointed one? How could a common carpenter bring freedom from captivity? Many of the supper club patrons who rejected the life saving message of the buss boy lost their lives. Those who rejected Jesus' message of grace lost much, much more.