Overheard
by the well somewhere in Nazareth, a few weeks before Jesus’s visit:
--“Where’s that Jesus kid—you know, Joseph’s
son? I haven’t seen him at the job site for a long time.”
--“I
heard he’s been over at Capernaum preaching and healing. He’s on some kind of LOVE
tour, promoting this new reign of healing and liberation. I saw the t-shirt
with the dates on it—he’s coming to Nazareth soon.”
--“Wow. Joseph’s son? Well, this should be interesting.”
But apparently Jesus does know. He’s not
waiting for questions or reactions.
I think he knows their provincial ways because
he grew up around them. He knows they won’t grasp the depth and breadth and
width of his upside-down message of love and forgiveness.
And so, he launches. To paraphrase his semi-rant: “I know what you’re
thinking. You heard what I was doing in Capernaum and you think you have some
kind of inside knowledge about what God is up to in me. But you have no idea.
Just like the prophets. Elijah came to
Israel, but it was only Zarepath, the poor widow from Sidon, who wasn’t even an
Israelite, who received him. Elisha came to the people of Israel, but it was
only Namaan, the Syrian leper, who could be healed by him. So I’m here to usher
in God’s love and mercy, but if you think nothing will be asked of you, or that
you have a special claim because you are from Nazareth, you will not receive
them.”
OK so now, the people are enraged. How DARE
he!! Basically, in the space of seven
verses, Jesus goes from ultimate insider to an outsider who they are ready to
throw off a cliff.
In our first reading, God puts words in
Jeremiah’s mouth, and tells this reluctant prophet to speak them to the people.
Jeremiah must literally take up a yoke and he will be scorned and rejected by
people who would rather hear a false prophet than listen to the words God has
given him. And now the people of Nazareth are just having none of what Jesus
has to say.
Putting words in the mouth brought to mind a
book by the late, great Eugene Peterson he called “Eat this Book.” By “book,”
he meant Scripture, or the word of God. He
writes, “this book makes us participants in the world of God’s being and
action; but we don’t participate on our own terms. We don’t get to make up the
plot or decide what character we will be. This book has generative power;
things happen to us as we let (it) call forth, stimulate, or rebuke us. We don’t
end up the same” when we have taken in this book, he says.
 |
| Eat this book: Ezekiel eats the scroll |
That’s why we reject it—we refuse to eat those
words, like the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus. We spit them out, and we
send them back to the kitchen and tell our friends never to go to that
restaurant again.
The people of Nazareth didn’t expect the Love
tour to make them so uncomfortable. They didn’t expect this ordinary son of a local
carpenter to bring them up short.
And so today we have Jesus’s words to his
hometown, that the good news of healing and liberating comes also with disruption
of the complacent and entitled. And we have Jeremiah’s instruction – that along
with the building up and planting, God’s words will tear down, and overthrow,
and destroy.
And between these two readings—we have Paul’s letter
to the people of Corinth on love. A passage that reminds us of the last wedding
we’ve been to, because practically every wedding uses this reading, and it’s come
to be associated with hearts, and flowers, and all the promise of happily ever
after.
What is this reading doing here!?!
It’s some kind of love sandwich – like a dollop
of fluffernutter spread between two slices of whole grain nuts and seeds health
bread.
Something about that sweet and creamy fluffernutter
love doesn’t jibe with the challenging words of Jesus in Nazareth.
So let’s look at what Paul is saying about
love, and his original intention for the people of Corinth. This was a community beset by inequality and status
differences. Paul wrote them previously that when they share a table, it’s inappropriate
for the ones who can afford good food to keep it for themselves, instead of
sharing their bounty. Here, he is pleased that they have claimed spiritual
gifts--he had encouraged them to do so--but some have lorded their gifts over
others. When he writes, “when I speak in the
tongues of mortals and angels," he’s talking about tongues as a spiritual gift.
“So if you have the gift of tongues, great,” he’s saying. “But if you are showing
them off, instead of using them in love—freely, and for the benefit of all--you
are a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.” Our God-given gifts and talents are
nothing, if they are not offered in the spirit of love.
We use the same word—love--in
all kinds of ways, but the Greek that Paul used has a lot of different words
for love, and his letters are full of them. He chose the one he uses here--agape--carefuly. It's the
love that is uniquely shared between God and humans and moved out into the
world. This love is not merely emotion, nor is it a character trait, or an
attitude to adopt. Love in community comes from sharing in the very nature of
God. We are not its source. Its source is the love of God made known to us in Jesus
Christ. The love Paul wants for us is a grownup love, a love that pulls us into
discipleship, that begs to be acted upon, even more than “felt” or said—the
love meant when we hear, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul is saying,
there is no way to be a community alive in Christ except through sharing in
agape, this divine love.
And this is where agape gets beefier,
crunchier, more nutritious than the fluffernutter kind of love we might have imagined.
This is some tough love. It’s resilient love. Love that bears all things.
Because this love is the opposite of fear. When we speak the truth to each
other in love, we can face it together. Even when it’s hard truth—the kind we didn’t
want to hear. Love binds us together even in disagreements. Love can be working
even when “like” seems to be in short supply. You see now why it’s ok to read
this passage at a wedding after all!
And you know what? Love can make us do things we
really don’t want to do--like taking a boat out to help people out of their
homes after a flood. Or standing outside in the cold to feed hungry people a
hot meal. Or resisting the barbed response that was devastatingly clever, and
choosing instead to use words of peace. All these things we really didn’t want
to do—but at the time, or at least in time, we realized were exactly what we
were meant to be doing. Because we were showing up!! And love brought us there.
“The greatest of these is love,” Paul wrote. It is said that love is greater than faith
because faith becomes sight. Love is greater than hope because hope is realized.
But love never goes away. It never dies. Love is of God, and God is love. Our understanding of it,
through a dim mirror, is only a portion of what it is, and what we know in this
phase of our life in God is only a glimpse of the love waiting for us.
Despite its power, to conquer hate, to comfort
and console, to encourage and transform, Frederick Beuchner wrote that love is
both powerful and powerless. We have talked about love’s power. Love is
powerless because it can do nothing without our consent. We must participate in
it. The wonderful message of our Gospel is that this love is offered to us in
Christ to all who say yes to it, to us, and even to people like that Syrian
leper, that widow from Sidon, who were unloved. Especially to the unloved.
Our hymnal is full of love songs. One of my
favorites is “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” How do we respond to this gift of wondrous
love, the hymn is asking? The final
verse answers:
Were
the whole realm of nature mine
That
were an offering far too small
Love
so amazing, so divine
Demands
my soul, my life, my all.
Amen.
Preached Feb 3, 2019 at St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland, OR
Lectionary readings: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
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