Sermon preached at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Eugene, Oregon, 30 and 31 January 2016. By Loren Crow.
Scripture Readings: Jer 1:4-10; Ps 71:1-6; 1 Cor 13:1-13; and Luke 4:21-30
O LORD, open thou my lips and my mouth shall proclaim thy praise. In the name of God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — Amen.
You might think you know someone, but you don’t. No matter who you are, and no matter who she is, you perceive at best only a dim reflection her. Love her anyway. But be ready for her to surprise you, and to disappoint you, and to challenge your assumptions about who she is. She is herself, and who she really is, is a mystery to everyone but God. Just love her.
We’ve just heard two stories, one about Jesus and one about the prophet Jeremiah. And we’ve heard a very famous passage from St. Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth (I don’t care whether you call it First Corinthians or One Corinthians, as long as you read it!), the so-called “love chapter.”
Our gospel reading begins with Jesus telling a group of people that a piece of Scripture has been fulfilled. The back story is that Jesus has been preaching and doing miracles in the Galilee region of northern Israel and is becoming famous. He returns to his home town of Nazareth, goes to synagogue (“as was his custom”) and reads the passage “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor….” Today, he says that Scripture has been fulfilled.
We’re told that everyone was impressed with his eloquence, and doubly so because they recognized him as a local boy, the son of Joseph whom they knew. But for no apparent reason Jesus launches immediately into a pronouncement of judgment on the town, telling them that prophets are never accepted in their own homeland, and citing two examples from sacred Scripture of prophets —Elijah and Elisha — who saved foreigners rather than Israelites. Jesus had to realize that telling these two stories to his parents’ friends, who after all were just trying to be supportive of this local boy who spoke so well, would be sure to rattle some cages. It does even more than that! They mob him and are going to throw him off a cliff. But Luke concludes the story, abruptly, with “But passing through the midst of them he went away.”
These people had a script in their heads for who Jesus was supposed to be. They recognized Jesus, Joseph’s son, and they were willing to be supportive as long as he continued in the role they had in their mind for him. But He refused to play along. In the end, their inability to recognize the real Jesus, as opposed to the Jesus of their mental image, allows him to walk right through the middle of the crowd with no one the wiser. They were open to the Jesus they thought they knew, but could not accept the Jesus who actually was, and so they missed out on his miraculous presence.
No matter who you are, I’m willing to bet there’s someone in your life who doesn’t quite fit into the role you envision for him. Learn from the people of Nazareth: when the person you think you know turns out to be different from what you expect, who doesn’t fit into the script you’ve got running in your head about him, don’t throw him off a cliff. Just love him.
Now, on to Jeremiah. We’re not told when in Jeremiah’s life this event occurs, but it’s at the beginning of his book so most of us presume that it’s at the beginning of his ministry. It tells the story of Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet. Since before his birth, says God, he has been known by God, sanctified by God, and appointed by God as a prophet — and particularly as a prophet to the “nations” or “gentiles,” which is to say, to people other than Israel. Naturally enough, Jeremiah objects: “Ah, Lord GOD, I wish I could — honestly I do — but really, I’m not a very good speaker and I’m way too young!” (In my head, he sounds a lot like Woodie Allen.) What I notice here is that Jeremiah’s self-image is different from God’s image of him, and we have to assume that God’s assessment is the correct one. As it turns out, reading the rest of the book, we find Jeremiah to be an eloquent poet and an influential commentator on the politics of his day. How often, I wonder, do we have a self-interpretation that threatens to inhibit us from doing what God wants us to do? How often do we hate ourselves because the selves we are, are at variance with the selves we envision? I don’t know if you feel this way or not, but I’m largely a mystery to myself on so many levels. If you sometimes don’t meet your own expectations, or if like Jeremiah you suffer from a tendency to under-rate your abilities, relax. Love yourself anyway.
That’s what First Corinthians chapter 13 is about. The whole letter addresses a church that was filled with power struggles and sinful people, with charismatic tongues-speakers and prophets, with rich merchants and poor beggars. Corinth was a very cosmopolitan and commercial city, lying on the isthmus between the Greek mainland and the Peloponnesian Peninsula, midway between Athens and Sparta. It lay on a major shipping crossroads between Italy and the East. The Church in Corinth was about as diverse as you could imagine.
That diversity was tearing the Church apart; Paul argued, conversely, that its diversity was its great strength. Their view of themselves was that of a church divided, but that view was misleading. It was like viewing oneself in a mirror, dimly. But in this letter Paul begins to formulate his metaphor of the Church as the “Body of Christ” where all the body parts need one another, and need one another precisely because of their differentness. What good would a hand be if it were shaped like an eyeball? A head without feet wouldn’t be able to accomplish much. The body isn’t a body unless it’s composed of parts that are different from one another and equally necessary.
The problem is that it can be terribly difficult to see that unity, maybe even impossible. We have these scripts running in our minds about the importance of this or that ministry, and it’s not that we’re wrong, but we are short-sighted. We see only part of the picture. God has given us in our diversity to one another, so we have to assume that the diversity is a good. This is something we should constantly bear in mind as we struggle to make sense, for example, of the struggles within the Anglican Communion: We NEED them and they NEED us. Our vision is limited, and none of us is the head of this body (the head is Christ, and He’s the one who understands the whole).
We have to honor our limited vision because it’s what we have and the understanding we have is a precious gift from God, but we also have to realize that we see in a mirror dimly. Others won’t fit into our notions of what they should be. We’re commanded to love them anyway. We may be less important, or more important, than we understand. We have to love ourselves anyway. This isn’t just one of those “Oh wouldn’t it be nice” sorts of things; unless we’re willing to love people despite tensions and failures and differentness we’ll find pretty fast that we can’t live with, well, pretty much anyone except ourselves. And then we’ll find that we can’t live with ourselves either.
But there is a better way, “a more excellent way.” We have to have faith that what we see is false, incomplete, finite, and that God really does see and hold the truth. We have to have hope that the truth is better than we can imagine. And in light of that faith and hope, as we wait for the coming of God’s Kingdom, we have to love. Love, despite the fact that we don’t understand. Love, even when we think we’re right and are disappointed with others. Love may not make the world make sense, it may not solve all our problems, it may not even make you happier. Love anyway.
Amen.
