Disrupting expectations and expanding boundaries with charitable love

Good morning, good people of St. Andrew’s, Emporia.  It’s the fourth Sunday of Epiphany.  We have one more Sunday of Epiphany after today and then we’re heading into Lent.  As it turns out, I’m with you today, next Sunday, and I believe Ash Wednesday as well.  I look forward to traveling together with you through the end of Epiphany and into Lent.

In this morning’s Epistle and Gospel lessons, we’ve heard about the prophet Jeremiah initially resisting God’s call because he believed himself too young, perhaps inexperienced and ill-equipped for prophecy to his people. We’re also still with Jesus in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth and the congregation’s reaction to his message.  And, we’re continuing to hear from Paul’s writing to the faithful in Corinth about mature perspectives on spiritual gifts and the priority of a certain type of love.

Among the wisdom being conveyed in this morning’s lessons, two strands stand out as relevant to where we find ourselves at St. Andrew’s. One thing I’m hearing is that God’s call interrupts our status quo thinking and challenges our boundaries and expectations.  The other thing I’m hearing is that greatest gift we’re entrusted with is a certain type of love, from and through which all else in our common life and ministry should be rooted.

God’s call interrupts our status quo thinking and challenges our boundaries and expectations…

Jeremiah 1:4-10:

• Jeremiah is living through a critical transition in the life of his kin, the last stronghold of the Jews resisting Babylonian rule over Judah. They resisted as long as they could, but were finally overtaken and their grand temple destroyed in 586 B.C.. Jeremiah fled to Egypt with some of the other Judean leaders. Perhaps some of them were beginning to believe that this dire state of affairs was their new reality and that they just needed to get used to it. 
• Jeremiah is being called by God, like Moses was, to speak to his people both about why they find themselves in this mess and about the promise of restoration if they get right with God. 
• What we hear this morning is a familiar pattern – God’s call of a seemingly unlikely character to leadership, that character’s initial resistance, followed by God’s promise to be with that person and to equip him with what is needed to fulfill the God-given task. 
• God calls Jeremiah as a prophet when there is a need for the people to renew their faith in the wake of their losses… a need to help the people renew their identity and purpose apart from all that was predictable in their previous way of life. 
• Initially, Jeremiah is resistant to God’s call – “I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 
• God assures Jeremiah that he (God) will put the necessary words in Jeremiah’s mouth, both to dismantle former ways of thinking and acting (pluck up, pull down, destroy, and overthrow) as well as to “build” and the “plant” new possibilities. 
• Living into God’s call at this critical time in the life of his people will find him both at odds with folk – being rather unpopular for critiquing how they’ve been doing things - as well as an agent of faith and hope assuring his kin that God has not abandoned them, despite the dire nature of the present circumstances.

How is this time in the life of the St. Andrew’s community critical?  Who might God be calling as prophets among us to help us understand where we are and remind us of where God intends for us to be?  Has God been calling you to speak up?  What’s stopping you? 

Jesus in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:31-30)…

• The call to constructively disruptive prophecy is apparent in today’s Gospel lesson that follows last week’s Gospel lesson in which we heard Jesus read from the scroll (citing Isaiah 61:1-2) in his hometown synagogue, announcing the year of jubilee, telling the congregation in effect that he has come to restore sight, release captives, and cancel debt. 
• Initially, his kin seem to welcome what they’re hearing from him – “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that come from his mouth” (Luke 4:22) 
• Having heard of his miraculous healings, perhaps they believed that he was back to offer them preferential treatment – certainly there were those among them who were in need 
• Jesus, however, interrupts expected order by anticipating their request to do for them what he has been doing elsewhere and he, instead, challenges their expectations of his mission by citing the stories of two previous prophets, Elijah and Elisha, who delivered God’s grace beyond what their people thought was appropriate, tending to the needs of foreigners even before their own kin 
• Elijah heals the son of a foreign, non-Jewish widow in Zarephath in 1 Kings 17:7-24 
• Elisha heals a Syrian general, also a foreigner, of leprosy in 2 Kings 5:1-19 
• The intimation that this emerging young leader intends to meet the needs of others before tending to the needs in his hometown in infuriating to his congregation – how dare he come in here with messianic promise and then suggest that our needs are not as pressing as the needs of those outside the boundaries of our congregation?! 
• Jesus is challenging them to change their perspective on the breadth of God’s desire for liberation and restoration and their attitude about tending to the needs of others, particularly those who are foreign or outside their norm. 
• Remember back to the Jesus’s birth and early childhood – the initial witnesses and evangelists where dirty migrant workers from the field and foreign wise men from another religious tradition 
• His congregation is so enraged with his apparent lack of concern for their wellbeing in their time of need that they drive him out and intend to hurl him off a cliff. 
• Alas, Jesus passes through the angry mob and continues his mission elsewhere.

When strong leaders emerge from our parish family or come to us in this time of transition, what if they’re more focused on mission outside the boundaries of what we have considered our parish?  What if they seem to ignore some of the needs of this congregation in favor of focusing on and ministering to people out there?  What might Christ be asking us to see about mission and ministry… what we claim to do in His name?

And now, what about this certain type of love, from and through which all else in our common life and ministry should be rooted?

Paul writing to believers in Corinth (1 Cor 13:1-13)…

• Though we’ve often heard this particular selection from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians read at weddings, with the hue of romantic bonds between partners, Paul is actually admonishing his listeners and is not calling them to romantic or erotic love. 
• You might recall, Paul is writing this corrective letter to a Christian community that has been inappropriately elevating some members to greater status/honor based on inappropriate reverence of certain spiritual gifts (he wants them to understand they are interdependent members of the same body, expressing different yet equal and complementary gifts from the same Spirit toward the same purpose) 
• Paul’s ‘hymn of love’ (as it’s sometimes referred to) is poignantly being offered to people who perhaps are not exhibiting the type of love Paul is calling them to 
• Perhaps some of you have heard verse 13 as “faith, hope, and charity… the greatest of these is charity” – the word translated a charity is the Greek word agape, one of three forms of love in the Greek language – the other two are eros (erotic love) and phileo (brotherly / fraternal love). 
• agape is self-giving love… more of a sacrificial action than a warm feeling… a love that seeks to honor and serve others even at personal costs (ref: Christ’s ultimate expression of agape love on the cross) 
• Paul is reminding his audience that it is this self-offering love that Christ exhibits toward us that should be the root of all our endeavors and expressions of our spiritual gifts. In other words, none of our talents are of any value of real use in God’s kingdom unless they are expressed out of a deep love for the wellbeing of others (more than love of ourselves). 
• He makes the vivid statement that as children we were focused on ourselves and our own dependency needs, but that as we’ve become adults, we are to develop a bigger view of the world and see more clearly our actual interdependency – how the wellbeing of others is just as vital.

A mentor of mine once said that as Christian leaders we must love our neighbors where they are more than we’re in love with our own ideas about who they ought to be.  So, in this time when we’re often looking for answers and solutions, and perhaps getting excited about what appears to be superior wisdom or special gifts manifesting in some cases (or depressed when we’re not seeing enough of them manifest in others), what might happen in our community if we each keep returning, at each opportunity, to more deeply loving and serving others first (before seeking to be served ourselves)?

Exile might be too extreme to describe the situation here at St. Andrew’s… but certainly most everyone will acknowledge that this congregation is going through a significant transition and that faith and hope are vital right now. 

Amid the changes that are taking place, and the fertile (albeit sometimes anxiety provoking) opportunities for new things to be considered, there will be God-inspired moments of prophecy that will disrupt our preconceptions and coping mechanisms. The Holy Spirit might surprise us by calling some of us to focus on ministry outside the boundaries of what we’ve previously considered the priorities of our parish.  We may be challenged to reconsider our identity and what it means to ‘be church’ moving forward together with new perspectives and priorities. 

Rather than get arrested by fear or seek to drive challenging voices off a cliff, what if we watched with Jesus for these disruptive moments and discerned together what God might be calling us to consider anew about our mission and ministry in Christ’s name in this place and this time?

Amid all that we do and discern in this time of transition - as often as each meeting and as intentional as each interaction with one another – recall Paul’s wise counsel about the self-offering nature of Christ’s love for us that we’re called to exhibit to others before anything else:

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. (1 Cor 13:4-6)

-or- as Eugene Peterson paraphrases these verses in The Message… 

Love never gives up.Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

AMEN