God is Love; February 3, 2019; ICCM; 1 Cor 13: 1-13; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
Will Willimon is known as one of the best preachers of our times. He poses a question about today’s gospel. What do you expect in a sermon? What would you most like to happen to you when you are listening to a sermon? Over the years, he’s heard these responses: I like a sermon that helps me think about a biblical passage in a new and fresh way. I think a sermon ought to point out ways that I have gone wrong and to suggest ways that I can get my life back on track. I want inspiration from a sermon, a feeling that I have been taken to a higher place or have been given a special feeling as the result of the sermon. The best sermons are those that give me something that’s easy to remember, something I can take home with me. He agrees that, while there is some truth in all of those responses, the problem is that none of them align well with this Sunday’s gospel – Jesus preaching at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.
Our gospel picks up right where we left off last Sunday. Jesus has read from the scroll and sits down to elaborate on the text. Instead of reciting some memorized rabbinical teaching, he says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He goes on, in his lifetime, to live out this inaugural sermon of his, bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight, and announcing the Jubilee year of justice.
The people gathered that day must have been excited. Could it be, at long last, this long-awaited time of deliverance, foretold by the prophet Isaiah, is fulfilled? They were having a great service, the music was the right tempo, they got to sing their favorite songs. It was a nice day. And then, here come the words about God’s salvation for them, oppressed, occupied Israel. At last, God is making good on God’s promises. At last, God is coming for them. Good news!
Jesus was their hometown boy. They were proud of him, feeling puffed up to claim his as one of their own. But, then he had to preach didn’t he? He said, in effect, “Isaiah says that God is coming to deliver the faithful. I say that that day of the Lord’s advent is now.” We can picture him pausing for effect, “Now let’s see, when was the last time that God came to us? During the time of the great prophet Elijah, there had to be many famished Jewish women when there was a great food shortage in the land. It is interesting to find that God’s prophet gave food to none of those hungry Jewish women, but only to a Gentile, pagan woman.”
This wasn’t the sermon they wanted to hear. Scowls, crossed arms, sideways looks. And Jesus the preacher continues, “And there had to be lots of people suffering from various illnesses during the time of the prophet Elisha, but God’s prophet healed none of them. Only one, a Syrian Army officer, was healed.” When he said “Syrian Army officer” we can be certain it meant exactly the same thing then in Israel that it means today.
And Luke tells us what happened “When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was filled with anger. They rose up and ran him out of town. They led him to the crest of the hill on which their town had been built so that they could throw him off the cliff.”
Well, I’ve had some negative reactions to my sermons over the years, but never has anybody in the congregation tried to murder me because of my preaching. Sometimes in sermons you get helpful hints for better living. Sometimes you receive answers to your most pressing questions. Sometimes the sermon is well-crafted. But the thing that really matters is that you hear not the preacher’s words, but God’s Word. In worship we get the gift of drawing close to God who, in Jesus Christ, has chosen to love us and be close to us. Sometimes that closeness with God feels good and sometimes it doesn’t feel so good. But, our feelings are not the main point. Sometimes what we hear sounds like good news and sometimes it sounds like bad news. The main thing is we have heard God’s news.
Will Willimon says that he has a Rabbi friend who says, “Judaism is a rather simple religion that is based on two profound articles of faith. One, there is only one God. Two, you are not it.” That might be just what the folk at Nazareth experienced in Jesus’s sermon that day. They arrived at the synagogue with their conceptions of God firmly in place. But then the preacher, using nothing but scripture, corrected, expanded, critiqued, and enriched their idea of who God is and what God was up to. God’s projects, God’s intentions, God’s concerns are bigger than any congregation or person. I agree with Will Willimon when he says an effective sermon occurs when we are reminded that God is God and we are not.
I think that’s what happens in Paul’s message to the church in Corinth, too. Yes, I know that it’s extremely hard to hear this love chapter without thinking it’s meant for weddings. It conjures up memories of rented tuxedos, unity candles and nervous mothers of the bride. But that’s the farthest thing Paul would have expected this chapter to be used for. This chapter isn’t about Romantic Love, it’s about God’s unconditional love. Whenever I preach on this text at a wedding I remind the couple, that no matter what their intentions are—they will at some point in their lives together each be everything this text says love is not—they will be irritable or impatient, rude or boastful, unkind or arrogant. I remind them that by getting married in the church they are calling for the blessings of God to surround their lives and my job is to remind them that when they are envious or insisting on their own way—to remember that God’s love undergirds and supports their promises and calls them to repentance and forgiveness.
As you may know, this chapter is the culmination of Paul’s long message to the divided congregation in Corinth. They’ve been jockeying for status among themselves, refusing to share, scorning their neighbor’s spiritual gifts, boasting in their own. They’ve become clanging gongs. Without love their gifts are nothing. All their efforts and accomplishments will come to an end. The only things that last are faith hope and love. The greatest thing, the thing that lasts is the thing we give away—love.
Paul has been building toward section for 12 chapters. In chapter 1 he says, God is the source of your life in Christ. In chapter 3 he says, so neither the one who plants, nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. In chapter 4 he asks, What do you have that you did not receive? If you received it as a gift, then why boast? In chapter 5 he says, Your boasting is not a good thing. Chapter 8 gives us these words: Yet for us there is One God, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. And Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by God. The love Paul is leading up to in our reading today is meant to be the reality of God’s presence in our lives, and among us, the very basis of who we are.
Paul isn’t just scolding the congregation here. He writes in the first person, using himself as an example, since he speaks in tongues, is a prophet, fathoms mysteries and knowledge, performs miracles and lives self-sacrificially. Each example builds on the one before, if the ability to speak in tongues of mortals is amazing, how much more so the ability to talk with God in ecstatic language. If prophecy is good how much better the ability to understand mysteries. And so on, all the way to sacrificing one’s own body like Jesus? But they are all nothing without love.
Personally, I feel convicted whenever I read this passage. I know I can be irritable and impatient. I’ve been known to insist on my own way. Perhaps you have too. And what happens when we admit our failings? What happens when we are convicted and we confess, when look in the dim mirror of self-awareness and go to the one we’ve hurt. A miracle happens when we are received in love and forgiveness. We feel the grace flood over us and restore us, grace not based on our strength or talents, not based on our accomplishments or accumulations, but solely based on love—freely given.
There’s a story from the 4th Century Desert Fathers, about Abbot Moses. He was evidently a tall, muscular man with rich ebony-colored skin and warm brown eyes. He had lived a life of scandal and wrong-doing as a robber and murderer before coming to the monastery in the desert where he begged for quite a long time to be accepted as a monk. Now he had lived many years in prayer and contemplation. He knew the long road of remorse and forgiveness. So, when he was called to a council of brothers to consider the consequences of the misdoings of a young novice he refused to come. The brothers and other Elders continued to implore him to be present. On the day of the council Abbot Moses arrived carrying a basket of sand. The basket had a hole and the sand poured out of the hole creating a trail behind the holy man wherever he went. When asked about the basket and the trail of sand, Abbot Moses replied, “My sins run out behind me and I do not see them. Yet I am summoned this day to judge failings that are not mine.” Chastened by this answer from Abbot Moses, the council released the young man with loving words of encouragement for his spiritual path and prayers for his future.
For those first listeners to Jesus that day in Nazareth, for the Corinthian congregation, for the monks in the desert in the 4th century, and for us…it’s easy to think we know the answers.
Every person in the synagogue in Nazareth that day began the day by reciting the great Jewish Shema, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one.” Jesus, good Jew that he was, reminded the faithful that it’s not like the Syrians have their God, and we have our patron God who runs errands just for us. There is only one God. God is not our tamed pet. God is God. We are not.
We are always in danger of attempting to cut the great, glorious God down to our size, to substitute other gods for the true and living God. That’s when we ought to pray that we’re about to hear a sermon that again reminds us that God is bigger than our meager concepts, our vain desires, and our little projects.
Paul says Love is the more excellent way. Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. And he encourages us saying, as the Father’s love abides in me, so I abide in you, abide in my love.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God, Those who love not, know not God for God is love, beloved, let us love one another.