The Rev. Dr. Ken Saunders
St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN
Year C - Epiphany 4 - January 30, 2022
There are a few things for us to remember in this Christian life. The first is that God loves you. That’s right, God loves you! No exceptions, no pre-qualifications, no prescriptions... just pure, all encompassing, all surrounding, unconditional love…
The second thing that we need to remember and understand is that God loves all of creation just as much as God loves you. That’s right, even those that you don’t love. God is right there loving them, too. God loves you and me, God loves the outcast and the stranger. God love those that don’t look like you, and don’t act like you. God loves those that don’t dress like you, and don’t make as much money as you, or even those who worship in a different way than you. (Lord have mercy)
The third thing and probably one of the most important - Through our professed faith, God has chosen us for a very important task. God has chosen you and I to show God’s love to the world... Through our every day actions… Through the people we meet, through the way we live. We all are to represent the love of God, who first loved us.
That may be a surprising thing for you to hear this morning. But it shouldn’t have been the first time you’ve ever heard it. n my study, I found some interesting surprises in today’s readings.
The first, from our old testament reading. Do you remember some months ago, when I said that whenever you read in scripture that “the word of God came” to someone, it means "it happened." Well, the word of God happened to Jeremiah. And Jeremiah is surprised that God knows him, and loves him, and has chosen him to do important work. (Surprise! God happens! And God chooses YOU!)
Like Jeremiah, we shouldn’t be surprised that God has found us worthy and capable to do the important work that God has given us to do. God calls Jeremiah, who at the time was just a teenager. And even though God tells Jeremiah that he knows him, and has prepared him to bring a great message to the people of Israel, Jeremiah feels inadequate.
Jeremiah exclaim, "I’m just a boy." But God empowers Jeremiah and guides him and empowers him to to do the work he needs to do to guide the people Israel and orient them back - back toward a right relationship with God and God's love.
God gives us everything we need to accomplish that which we are given to do. Everything that is needed to reconcile the world to God, we have already been given. All we need to do is look deep within ourselves and recognized where God is happening.
The second surprise for us this morning is in the Gospel reading. We pick up where we left off last week. Jesus has returned to his hometown... He returned to Nazareth, a small town in Galilee and he is teaching in the synagogue. He is handed the scroll of Isaiah. When he reads from the scroll of Isaiah, he says "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
When he hands the scroll back, Jesus makes the bold statement and says that “today the scripture
has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All the people were confused and amazed at his words. Some said, who does this guy think he is? Isn’t he Joseph’s son? And then the crowd wanted to see some sort of sign of who he was. They wanted him to prove that he was indeed a great prophet.
Jesus basically tells them that he’s not going to waste his time proving anything to them. Prophets aren’t heard and respected in their hometown. He tells them that other folks had faith, the folks not like them. Those folks were able to recognize God’s presence among them and God’s miraculous acts. They were able to see God’s provision through things like the sharing of widow in Zarephath and her care for the prophet Elijah. They were able to recognize God’s presence in the healing of Naaman through the prophet Elisha.
This really stirred up the crowd. The people gathered there in Nazareth who were listening to Jesus were surprised! Surprised to learn that God loves the people they don’t. Surprised to learn that God loves the widows and the lepers. Surprised that God’s Love is bigger than theirs! (Surprise! God’s love is bigger than yours!)
This made them feel so angry and frustrated that they drove Jesus out of the Synagogue out to the edge of town, to the edge of a cliff and attempted to throw him off. But Jesus surprised them again and passed through the middle of them and went on his way.
Paul surprises the Christians in Corinth by telling them that love is more important than anything else they could imagine. That you can have as much faith and hope as you want... You can be intelligent, and think you have all the answers... You can be humble and charitable… But if you don’t have love, you’re just making a lot of noise.
Paul qualifies this love and describes it as patient, kind, joyful and unending. Much how we know and understand the love of God to be. Paul basically tells them that above all, love wins, and it is the only thing that wins.
These readings during the Season after the Epiphany show us everything we need to know to be a true disciple; a true student of Jesus:
We need to know and understand that God loves us beyond anything that we can ask or imagine. God loves us. And we have seen that love poured out for us over and over, time and time again.
Being a follower of Jesus means we’ve been given a mission to reciprocate God’s love to the world. Like Jesus explains, we need to remind those who think or feel that they are unloved... that they are loved. And in reminding them of God’s love, we need to remind ourselves that God loves them, even if we think they don’t deserve it.
In showing others God’s love, we may make others angry. Especially the others who like to judge folks and think that because of this or that, they are somehow don't belong or are unworthy. When people get angry at us because we are loving someone who they don’t think is worthy, and when we are ridiculed and pushed to the edge, we need to follow Jesus’ lead, and pass on through and be about our business of loving.
Discipleship is costly, is stretches our boundaries. God’s love is all inclusive and abundant and there are no pre-qualifications are restrictions. In order to be a disciple – in order to be a follower of the way of Jesus it means that we must be part of that great source that conveys God’s love to the world.
If we hate, or judge, or exclude, or we insist on our own way, or we try to make up a list of rules of who’s in our who’s out. Then we aren’t doing it right.
So we need to be bold and courageous disciples, loving God, loving each other, and building up God's kingdom, because if we’re not loving like God loves, we’re just making a lot of noise.
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