The Doctor His Colleagues Drove Away

In 1847, a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis made a startling discovery at Vienna General Hospital. He noticed that women in the maternity ward staffed by doctors were dying of childbed fever at five times the rate of those attended by midwives. The reason? Doctors were coming straight from autopsy rooms to deliver babies without washing their hands. When Semmelweis instituted a simple handwashing policy, the death rate plummeted almost overnight.

You would think his colleagues would have celebrated. Instead, they turned on him. These were men who had trained alongside him, who shared his hallways and dining tables. They knew his family. They knew where he came from. And they could not accept that this ordinary colleague — no more distinguished than themselves — could see what they had missed. His message implied they had been doing harm, and that truth was unbearable. They mocked him, stripped him of his position, and eventually drove him from Vienna altogether.

In Nazareth, the hometown crowd initially marveled at Jesus. But the moment He suggested that God's grace might flow beyond their village walls — to widows in Sidon and lepers in Syria — admiration curdled into murderous rage. They did not reject Jesus because His words lacked power. They rejected Him because a familiar face delivered an unfamiliar, uncomfortable truth. The Most High has never limited His mercy to those who feel entitled to it.