4 Epiphany C February 3, 2013
Luther Memorial Lutheran Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Jeremiah 1: 4-10 + Psalm 71: 1-6 + 1 Cor. 13: 1-13 + Luke 4: 21-30
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
One of the greatest privileges for me as a pastor is the opportunity to encourage others who are called to ordained ministry. In fact, in my ordination vows, I promised to do this and when this congregation called me here to be your pastor, you made me again promise to do this. This year, it has been our great privilege to participate in the formation of Vicar Inge as she prepares for ordained ministry in the ELCA. At other times I have also served as a discernment partner for people trying to determine if and how the Holy Spirit is calling them to serve.
One of the hardest places a pastor can return to, though, is to their home congregation. People remember you as a rambunctious toddler or a sulky teenager. People know your parents. It’s hard, as someone once noted, to go home again.
And that’s the story from Luke’s Gospel this morning. Jesus goes back to the synagogue where he was raised, reads the Scripture and preaches – and the congregation thinks he is just amazing. The text reads “They were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Can you just imagine it? His former teachers, the friends of his parents, maybe even some of his former buddies wondering together: Isn’t this Joseph’s son? Why, I’ll be he’ll be Bishop someday!
How proud they were to have such a fine prophet and preacher come from among them. They settled in and continued to listen….this was so good….much better than the regular preacher….that is, until Jesus really got to the heart of his message.
When Jesus began to speak, you see, he had words of truth that stung the very people who had raised him. He didn’t come to them with easy words, with praise for their faithfulness or reassurances from God. He didn’t say that their giving was on track or their faith was enough to heal what ailed them. Instead, Jesus reminded them that God had chosen to heal a Syrian leper and a widow who was an outcast from society, both of another race and another ethnicity. Both shunned and marginalized by those very folks gathered in the synagogue at Nazareth that day. These two whom God had helped, whom God had strongly preferenced…even over the Israelites, said Jesus…were the outsiders. And it was the outsiders who held God’s favor.
And so, just as quickly as his hometown folks had accepted him, they turned on him, chased him out of the synagogue and tried to throw him off of a cliff.
Being a prophet, preaching the word of God, sharing the faith, is usually not at easy thing. One of the people I mentored, in Ohio, did not want to imagine that ministry would require hard things of him. I told him that this text reminds us of many hard truths, among them, that often those who proclaim the Gospel message of God’s preference for the outcast and the poor are chased out of town and shown the cliff’s edge. I cited other examples, famous ones and private ones, of lives that had crumbled when they became obedient to God. Of family division, of personal strife, of being ostracized by their communities. This young man was angry with me and told me that God would protect those whom God has called from the dangers present in the world. I asked how closely he had read Scriptures. He wanted me to tell him that this would be an easy path. That seminary would go well and that his personal life would not suffer because of the inherent sacrifices. He wanted me to assure him that the debt he would accumulate in order to serve God’s church would not be crippling. He wanted a promise that the salary he would make as a new pastor would be enough to meet the financial obligations of that debt. He wanted to be assured of a 40 hour work week with nights and weekends free. He wanted me to guarantee that he would not stand to preach and find himself dangling at the edge of a cliff with an angry congregation on his heels.
I remember that he left that meeting quickly…in anger. Before I could share with him the rest of the story, which comes from another of our readings today.
You see, despite the enormous difficulties of a call to ministry, whether it is ordained or not….when we come together as the Body of Christ, we are called to come together as people who love one another. It doesn’t mean we must like one another or agree with one another all of the time, but we do love one another. The reading from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth today is most often read at weddings, but these words from Paul were not directed at individuals who were ‘in love.’ They were written to a group of believers struggling with the everyday conflict inherent in life together. There were old grievances over who said what and who did what and who hurt whose feelings and who forgot to call and who called too often and who never visited and who would never leave and who took over whose job and who never got a job and who had been at the same job forever. There were worries about being left out, left in, and left behind. And Paul wrote to them of a more excellent way.
Paul said: You know, I might be the best preacher you’ve ever had. My words might just melt your hearts and drip off my tongue, but if I don’t have love, it’s all just noise. And if I understand everything in the Bible and understand it in a way that solidifies my faith, but don’t have love..it’s all worthless! And if I take care of the poor and give them my things, but don’t do it with love….I am nothing.
Then Paul lays it out even further…love is patient…kind…not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It is not self centered, irritable or resentful. It rejoices over the right. It bears, believes, hopes, and endures everything.
This is a tall order for anyone, don’t you think? Especially for a congregation. I have been a member of 14 congregations in my lifetime, as one who has moved around in nomadic fashion her entire life. Fourteen….count ‘em. And I have seen patience, kindness, and rejoicing…and I’ve seen the other side as well. And the key for us as the church, as the body of Christ, is to continue to dwell in love and in loving relationships, even in the midst of the hard times. Because we are all human…only human. We will miss the mark, or sometimes we will have to proclaim the mark as the Gospel that prefers the least and the lowly….and we will find ourselves balancing on the edge of the cliff.
Only Jesus can walk through to the midst of anger and disappointment. The rest of us are left to find our way through together. But the best thing…the best news….what I hope you’ll remember today, if you remember nothing else is verse eight of the reading from 1 Corinthinans. Love never ends. Love never ends. All of that other stuff It will come to an end. There will come a time and a place where it just won’t matter anymore….whether the sermons were great or mediocre, whether the reports were done on time or the old hymnal was better than the new hymnal or the old bulletins were better then the new ones. Because then, Paul says, we will see clearly, we will know fully, we will understand. And it won’t be about committees and reports and deadlines. It will be about love…love that, although it preferences the outcast, encompasses us all….and love….that never ends. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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