Luke 4 and 1 Corinthians 13
Karoline Lewis writes a column every week for people who need to preach (called Dear Working Preacher) and this week she puts it this way...
“In Luke, rejection to the “Good News” brackets Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ hometown sermon in Nazareth, his first public act in Luke’s Gospel, has the crowd ready to cast him off a cliff.
And Jesus’ empty tomb will be met with “well, that’s just nonsense.” (Luke 24:11).
“What’s the offense? That Jesus is for those we’d rather forget? That Jesus is for others that just may be in line before us? That Jesus actually imagines the purpose for his ministry as coming to being and bearing fruit without our input and control? All of the above?”
Hmmm... And why did Jesus have to lead off this way? Maybe he could have been a little more... gracious?
Karoline continues...“No one is saved by our concerns to play it safe. No one is saved by our decisions to protect each other from challenges... When we make the Gospel simply an option for living, we have forgotten that it’s also a choice about dying.”
“And so, this week we lean into the real discomfort of the Gospel, we acknowledge that what Jesus preaches is hard… and admit that we ourselves sometimes wish to call “nonsense”... or worse. We admit that it is hard to carry the weight of believing for others. It’s hard to hold the burden of faith for others. And it is hard to preach what you yourself have questioned.”
This week, several of us attended a conference at Luther seminary—Give us this day our daily bread: food, land, and sustainability...
One of the speakers, Dr. Melanie Harris spoke from the perspective of honoring faith traditions of African-American women and as part of that, she asked us to consider our own Eco-memories. I remembered my grandmother's sun browned arms as she worked in her big, shared garden plot... I remembered working in fields myself, de-tasseling Pioneer seed corn for a crew that my middle school science teacher led. It was hard work and the best money a 14-year-old Iowa city kid could make. During the season, I would wake up with my hands clenched, dreaming I was in the field. And it was also one of the first places I was awakened to the reality of injustice toward farm workers on whom we all depend. As we ate our lunches and complained about the stench of the run-off from early hog confinement barns, my science teacher pointed to a nearby crew. "You see those folks, you all are following the machines as you do your work. They aren't... They’re doing harder work and they're probably making half of what you are because they are migrant workers."
“In Luke, rejection to the “Good News” brackets Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ hometown sermon in Nazareth, his first public act in Luke’s Gospel, has the crowd ready to cast him off a cliff.
And Jesus’ empty tomb will be met with “well, that’s just nonsense.” (Luke 24:11).
“What’s the offense? That Jesus is for those we’d rather forget? That Jesus is for others that just may be in line before us? That Jesus actually imagines the purpose for his ministry as coming to being and bearing fruit without our input and control? All of the above?”
Hmmm... And why did Jesus have to lead off this way? Maybe he could have been a little more... gracious?
Karoline continues...“No one is saved by our concerns to play it safe. No one is saved by our decisions to protect each other from challenges... When we make the Gospel simply an option for living, we have forgotten that it’s also a choice about dying.”
“And so, this week we lean into the real discomfort of the Gospel, we acknowledge that what Jesus preaches is hard… and admit that we ourselves sometimes wish to call “nonsense”... or worse. We admit that it is hard to carry the weight of believing for others. It’s hard to hold the burden of faith for others. And it is hard to preach what you yourself have questioned.”
This week, several of us attended a conference at Luther seminary—Give us this day our daily bread: food, land, and sustainability...
One of the speakers, Dr. Melanie Harris spoke from the perspective of honoring faith traditions of African-American women and as part of that, she asked us to consider our own Eco-memories. I remembered my grandmother's sun browned arms as she worked in her big, shared garden plot... I remembered working in fields myself, de-tasseling Pioneer seed corn for a crew that my middle school science teacher led. It was hard work and the best money a 14-year-old Iowa city kid could make. During the season, I would wake up with my hands clenched, dreaming I was in the field. And it was also one of the first places I was awakened to the reality of injustice toward farm workers on whom we all depend. As we ate our lunches and complained about the stench of the run-off from early hog confinement barns, my science teacher pointed to a nearby crew. "You see those folks, you all are following the machines as you do your work. They aren't... They’re doing harder work and they're probably making half of what you are because they are migrant workers."
Dr. Melanie Harris, our speaker at the seminary, said that of course a huge part of the collective (and often personal) Eco-memories of African Americans is the slavery system by which they or their relatives not only were forced to work the land but within a system where relatives were themselves sold for less than the price of seeds. So coming out of a commodity system, a destructive system, and empire system where people are treated as property, as less valuable than the beloved ones of God, how do we bring all our resources to heal memories, restore faith and share together in commitment toward earth and all humans, all creatures, all life, even extending our imaginations to include the living soil on which we all depend?
Given the ways that our personal bodies hurt and the way that our shared body hurts when a part of it is in pain, given the way that the earth itself groans… and given that this is not new, although we are certainly more intensely aware of the earth’s groaning now…
The words of Paul to the people of Corinth give us a window into a more excellent way… really the only way to become new, and that is through love.
Love is present all around us—that is true, God’s love is all around us. But in 1 Corinthians, Paul describes a love that is not a noun, not simply omnipresent, but a love that is all verbs.
Paul’s teaching is all about the things we do and the things we refrain from doing if and when we are acting out love.
It’s about accessing patience when we expect instant results. It’s about showing kindness and rejoicing in truth. It’s about endurance and trust, practicing hope and shouldering burdens together.
Love is not ego-based, selfish, jealous, manipulative, arrogant… it does not cause the earth and its people, the soil and all creatures to groan under the weight of it.
Love is saying “no” to certain behaviors, saying enough, and stopping to make space for community and personal flourishing for each diverse body, for our whole body.
Jesus comes among us and says basically, if you're looking for ministry that's just catering to you... then God wants you to pay better attention to the ones you’ve rejected or just not taken the time to notice.
An older person you think is no concern of yours.Or a child you think is annoying and distracting...or someone who is not easy to like, understand or deal with...
An older person you think is no concern of yours.Or a child you think is annoying and distracting...or someone who is not easy to like, understand or deal with...
As his examples, Jesus points to Naaman the Syrian... (in case we don’t know or remember), he was a powerful leader, slave owner, pompous and nationalistic... albeit who listened to his slaves (an action that saved his life)
Jesus pointed to a widow who those gathered might have thought didn’t deserve God’s constant providing as much as some others did…
As we get deeper into this vein, we can sense where Jesus is going with this and maybe begin to imagine how the crowd gathered around him with compliments in the beginning so quickly became a mob, how we might be capable of that, too, in our rougher moments.
As we get deeper into this vein, we can sense where Jesus is going with this and maybe begin to imagine how the crowd gathered around him with compliments in the beginning so quickly became a mob, how we might be capable of that, too, in our rougher moments.
We can maybe understand, if we realize how challenging it is to be critiqued into better behavior, how the people turned on Jesus. “Don’t you know you are one of us?... How dare you get in our face about this, Jesus?”
The community tries to harm him but rather than engage in the escalating violence, Jesus passes through and goes on his way.This is a hard word for any of us who are established, who are too unbending, who are becoming set in our ways… if we are not on the path of love, Jesus will simply move on, but we are invited on the way. And what is the way?
It's the way of love in action. It’s a kind of dying… to whatever in us makes us think Jesus or a neighbor is our enemy. It’s a kind of living in relationship that loves us from the start but that continues to challenge us to grow, so that we can live and breathe and find new life daily. So that as Jesus moves on, we might move together with the one who heals our memories, restores our faith and leads us in commitments to bear fruit for the healing of the world.
The community tries to harm him but rather than engage in the escalating violence, Jesus passes through and goes on his way.This is a hard word for any of us who are established, who are too unbending, who are becoming set in our ways… if we are not on the path of love, Jesus will simply move on, but we are invited on the way. And what is the way?
It's the way of love in action. It’s a kind of dying… to whatever in us makes us think Jesus or a neighbor is our enemy. It’s a kind of living in relationship that loves us from the start but that continues to challenge us to grow, so that we can live and breathe and find new life daily. So that as Jesus moves on, we might move together with the one who heals our memories, restores our faith and leads us in commitments to bear fruit for the healing of the world.
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