4C Epiphany
30 Jan 2022
Texts we have all heard before. The text on love is indelibly associated with weddings in our culture. Is the text from Jeremiah proof that things are pre-ordained? Yet all these texts speak to me of community and what it means to be a Christian, a God like, community. If our community, our body of Christ, could be described in only one word, it would be love.
Has anyone here ever done something they did not want to do but knew it had to be done? If all hands don’t go up on this one I think someone is not telling the whole truth. One of the characteristics of community to putting the greater good, that is the good of the whole body, ahead of personal desires and, sometimes, ahead of personal needs!! In the eyes of God each one of us is unique, know to God from our earliest days, and loved by him. Yet often that love guides us to give up for the greater good. For those of you who have raised children, you know that, from the very act of giving birth, a great risk to a mother, even today, to the mundane chores of feeding and changing dirty diapers, we give up for another and for the life of a community. We pay taxes so that the communal work of our cities, counties, states, and our nation may be undertaken. I don’t have many positive things to say about people who amass great wealth because of the resources and advantages they have and then work as hard as they can to not give back by paying taxes and often by not even supporting charities.
I thought quite a bit about whether to have a child. Frankly some of my thoughts were economic and others were the time commitment to being a loving parent. You do give up much and the outcome is never certain.
This week we hear from three men: Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus. I think they are all addressing the very nature of community and the nature of God.
Things get really personal for Jeremiah. I heard him described as “everyman’s prophet.” He is more like you and me than I want to admit. Remember how Isaiah jumped at the chance to be a mouthpiece, if you will, for God? “Send me!” Not so Jeremiah. He did not believe he was up to the task. Self-doubt, or perhaps reluctance, or maybe both, filled this man. This seemed way beyond his comfort level. Maybe he thought he needed to get his degree from the school of prophets; maybe he just wanted to be one of the guys hanging out at the city gates. Seems pretty clear he did not want to go preach what God wanted him to say!! He paid dearly; even spending time in a dry cistern. Doing what we are called to do, whatever that is, may not be for the faint of heart. Yet we may have no choice. Remember how God followed Elijah all over the landscape? Or worse, remember that poor Jonah ended up inside the big fish. At least no one hear can say that has ever happened to them.
Our call can be a rotten experience, but as we say, “You are God and we are not, thanks be to God!”
Paul was trying to untie a gordian knot. Typical church politics. Trust me, every pastor has had a Corinthian experience somewhere in their career and I suspect most did not handle it with the great pastoral sense Paul used. He was dealing with a group that was trying to make a hierarchy. Remember last week’s anatomy lesson? Everyone is different, but all are of equal importance and necessary in bringing God’s reign to life. This week he puts everything in proper perspective.
I wish I could have met Paul; I still think of him as a bit of a curmudgeon. Do you sometimes wonder what he was like? His writings are the only ones in the New Testament we can ascribe to a real, historical individual.
He was passionate. He knew what needed to be present for a community to survive and that something was, and is, love. While this passage truly is a masterful one for a wedding, Paul is not talking marriage here! He is talking about agape, that self-giving love that God has for us and that we must, yes must, have for one another. In the medieval church in Europe, clerics and monks and nuns were considered closer to God than mere lay folk. If you were a peasant, a commoner, your chances of going to heaven after death were deemed far less than the monk down the road. Yet nowhere is there anything that says some folk are more worthy than others by virtue of who they are or what they do in life. Nor is it about correct belief!! And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Even charity does not count if you do not do it in love. Love is the only thing that lasts forever, for Love is God and God is love. To walk in love means to be self-giving. As Jesus emptied himself for us, we empty ourselves for won another and even for those we do not know nor like. That is the only kind of love that wins; it is the love that Jesus brought to us in perfection.
In a time that seems to me fraught with tribalism, with the building of walls, with divisions like the great faults of an earthquake, creating vast and seemingly uncrossable chasm, we need to hear this message of love more than ever. It is love not based on a creed, for Muslims and Buddhists and atheists can show this kind of love for fellow humans. Paul says beliefs are not at the heart of Jesus; love is. Love won when Jesus died.
Jesus condemns tribalism. He is explicitly doing so today. We love to think we are the chosen. He starts the day as a hometown hero; they had heard of his deeds and they heard his words about bringing the Good News, but when he makes clear the Good News is for those beyond the town walls, their sense of who they are is violated. Jesus came to bring healing and wholeness to all, not just those in Nazareth.
Jesus has the antidote for the tribalism than ailed his neighbors and that ails ours.
There are times when we need to call on the strength and love of Jesus to bring us through as individuals and families. We need to call on that love and healing in times of death and sickness.
But we must call on the strong name of Jesus when we need Good News and healing for all the fractured world.
If you were sitting in that synagogue that day and heard his words, would you have rejoiced in the power and love of God for all, or would you have felt insulted and threatened?
We are no different than those people who heard his words that day. I hope we do not chose to try to throw him off of the cliff.
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