This sermon was heard at John Calvin Presbyterian Church on Sunday January 31, 2016, the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Sorry, I don't have any audio for this one.
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 7:1-6
1Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
I’m a big fan of sermon titles. I noticed that Pastor Beth usually lists the sermon title as “The Message,” and that’s fine, but I don’t. My sense of humor, irony or the “ah-ha moment” doesn’t allow it. Now it doesn’t mean that the title of a sermon won’t change, but that doesn’t happen often and it didn’t happen this week. You see, the way the lectionary is set up there is a real “meanwhile back at the ranch…” feel to it.
This week our gospel reading began with the same words it ended with last week, “In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and began to say, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” It’s a set up. The folks who put the Revised Common Lectionary together practically begged ministers and preachers to do a two part sermon. Who am I to disappoint, right? So, meanwhile, back at the ranch…
So the people have just heard that the One they had been waiting for was in their presence. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him! He has been anointed to bring good news to the poor! Release the captives! Recover sight to the blind! Set the captive free! He has been sent and anointed—he has been ordained by God to do the things that only God can do! He is all but claiming the role of the Messiah, the Christ. He’s not saying he is… but he’s not saying he’s not. The people were stoked like the fires of a kiln ready to fire clay into fine pottery.
Oh how they gush over him like a clear cold spring of water. “Is not this Joseph’s son?” They are so proud of him, they invoke the “family” name. Yeah, Joseph’s son! Not only did they help build my house, they built most of the furniture! They’re better than the Amish I tell ya!
They are so stinking proud to be there to hear the message of fulfillment that they can hardly believe it. They’re sitting up ready to see signs and miracles in Jesus’ home town like he has already performed in Capernaum. After all, you always play better before the home fans than you do on the road. They know they are living in an “I was there” moment, they just didn’t know the true shape of the moment.
So, what does Jesus do with this moment? He turns it on its ear. Jesus is kind of famous for that, isn’t he? He does this by upholding the faithful. He upholds the widow at Zarephath in Sidon who fed the prophet Elijah. Her faithfulness was rewarded with grain and oil so that she and her family would have bread through the drought. A drought caused when Elijah himself stopped the rains!
He upholds Naaman, the general who slaughtered many Israelites. Through a household slave, Elisha instructs Naaman to bathe in the Jordan seven times to rid himself of his leprosy. Naaman is incensed because there are much better rivers at home, but he is convinced and after faithfully bathing is cleansed.
Hooray! The prophet has come! He’s the son of our very own Joseph! Let’s kill him! You’d think it was an American election the way the crowd turns so quickly. They try to herd him off a cliff, but he manages to escape unharmed. What is it about these two examples that makes them so enraged? It’s really quite easy.
These examples, these great heroes of the faith, these names mentioned in the synagogue as people whose faith carried the day are not Israelites. One was a gentile widow from a Sidon, north of the nation. Israelite widows are starving every day because of the drought that Elijah himself called upon the land, but the hero of this story is a gentile woman.
Naaman is a great general, but he’s no Moses! He conquered Israel! There should be no love lost over the fate of the skin condition of your Syrian enemy. This is tantamount to curing Bin Laden’s kidney ailment! Hundreds of years later, hundreds of years after the Babylonian emancipation, well into the Roman occupation, Jesus is holding up Naaman’s cure as something worthy, something good.
If you’re wondering what my point is here, that’s my point! Of course the people are going nuts! There are people at home who need the help, not these foreigners you’re talking about Jesus. It’s time to build a tram so we can ride you out of town on a rail.
But here’s what’s important, Jesus is talking about their faith. Elijah is rejected, he has to leave. The kings of Israel were so bad that his first appearance in scripture is to call this drought on the land. The widow of Zarephath is preparing her family’s final meal but instead prepares a meal for the prophet as well and is rewarded for her faithfulness.
Naaman could have slaughtered Elisha’s entire household, he brought the firepower to do it too. But instead of bringing wrath at the offense of being told to take a bath in a filthy foreign river, he follows the word of the prophet and is healed.
In their faithfulness, these people, not the children of God, are freed from the captivity of hunger and disease. Through grace, the oppression of their lives has been lifted. The blindness of life beyond what they can see with their eyes is lifted.
I enjoy a good children’s sermon. There are Sundays when after hearing a good children’s sermon all I want to do is read the scripture, say, “Yeah, what she said,” and sing a couple of extra hymns. Last week, Pastor Beth warned the children, “So next week if I ask you ‘What are the three gifts of the Holy Spirit’ what are you going to say?” Well my first thought was “does that mean she’s going to call in the children’s sermon? I can put her on speaker.” But I figured no, so I’ll do it, “what are the three gifts of the Holy Spirit?” Everybody together now, faith, hope and love.
Paul writes to the Corinthians about the spiritual gifts. The Corinthians were a gifted people, but they lorded their gifts over one another for personal advantage. Paul needed to put an end to that. He didn’t tell them not to use their gifts until they could use them properly, he taught them the guide post to follow to use them properly. Love.
Yeah, I can speak in tongues. I can prophesy. I have great knowledge and understand the great mysteries of life and beyond. I have faith that can move mountains, I’m generous to a fault, I am willing to give my life! But if I do this without love that what am I? Nothing. What have I done? Nothing. What have I gained? Nothing. Or worse, I can become so arrogant that I become insufferable while offering faint or even false praise to God.
This is what happens without love.
Everything we have comes to an end. Prophecies, tongues, knowledge, all of them ultimately sands through the hourglass of time. It is as Paul says, when the complete comes the partial comes to an end. The mirror in which we see dimly will be replaced by the glorious face to face visage of the perfect love of Christ.
Paul also teaches, “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Why is love the greatest?
Perhaps it is that faith is rooted in the past. In the “Institutes of the Christian Religion” John Calvin himself writes, “Faith is ultimately a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us found upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” Faith is based in our knowledge, our knowledge of the past and our faith of what it means as the people of God.
As for hope, hope is based in the future. Hope is about what is to come. Hope is about the reign of Christ that we say is now, but we can’t see yet. Hope is about the coming of Christ, it’s not about earthly things that fade and rot. Again as Paul says, when the complete comes the partial comes to an end. The mirror in which we see dimly will be replaced by the glorious face to face visage of the perfect love of Christ. This is our expectant hope.
But love, love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Faith is in what was. Hope is in what will be. Love is because of what is, because of who God is in Christ.
So what does what Jesus’ message in the Synagogue have to do with love? That’s kind of messy. It takes a special kind of Messiah to be so loved that you want to kill him, and oh how the people want to kill him. The Reverend William Sloan Coffin was the pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City, one of the premier Christian pulpits in the world. One of my favorite quotes from a Sloane sermon speaks to a nation, but points to the church, “There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with the world.”
Jesus is having a lover’s quarrel with Israel. He’s telling them that great examples of what God expects do not always come from God’s people. He’s saying that as much as that might pain them to hear, it is important because it’s true. Truth hurts and with love truth heals. The people boast “We know his daddy!” and but Jesus doesn’t say, “Who’s your daddy?” He doesn’t say “Who’s your Momma?”
He isn’t rude or arrogant. He’s frank, but he’s not rude or arrogant. He isn’t irritable even if the nation finds him irritating. He isn’t a noisy gong or clanging symbol. He isn’t gleeful that they are doing it all wrong so the gentiles can be grafted into the Kingdom. (God knows the gentiles, the Christian world, will get enough wrong on its own. Literally God knows.) God in Christ will endure all things, even death on the cross to show his love has no end.
Friends, believe the good news, in Christ we are forgiven. Only though the love of the Messiah, through Christ’s life and death and resurrection is this possible. Only by the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ is this even conceivable. By our faith in the hope of God’s love is this even conceivable. God loves us enough to have that lover’s quarrel with us and by that we are saved.
So meanwhile, back at the ranch, the people weren’t happy. Nobody is ever happy when discipline comes down. Whether it is being told someone is a better example like Jesus did or being told you are a bad example like Paul did. But by grace we are given God’s discipline in love. It is up to us to receive it the same way or face the fate of this assembly—they heard the word, responded with rage, and Jesus escapes without them even knowing he left their presence.
Amen.
