01/30/22 - Home is Where the Love Is - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 01/30/22

01/30/22 – Home is Where the Love Is

HOME IS WHERE THE LOVE IS

January 30, 2022
4^th Sunday after Epiphany
Jer. 1:4-19; Ps. 71: 1-6;1 Cor.13:1-13; Lk. 4:21-30
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

This past week an international holiday was observed – Holocaust Remembrance Day. During the 1930s, Germany began enacting laws to prevent Jews in Germany from having the same rights as non-Jewish Germans. These new laws limiting their freedoms intensified until German law demanded all Jews to be sent to concentration camps. Their financial assets, businesses, homes, and properties were seized. Until the end of World War 2 in Europe, Germany systematically murdered 6 million Jews — 2/3rds of the Jewish population in Europe. Around 5 million other people, Germany decreed were unfit to live in the Nazi’s vision of an Aryan-dominated world, were also sent to concentration camps and executed. The oppression of a people deemed inferior to the ruling power due to their race, ethnicity or any identity-based judgment can be taken to the extreme, which is denying their right to live. Holocaust Remembrance Day was first decreed by the United Nations in 2005. The motto, “Never Again,” was introduced in postwar Israel. Since that time, more genocides have occurred – Darfur, Rwanda, and Bosnia, along with other “ethnic cleansing,” such as seen in Myanmar.

Sadly, our own country has also, in its history, rounded up people based on their ethnicity, and forced them from their homes to prison camps, in the case of the Japanese during World War 2, and to land considered worthless in the case of Native Americans forced onto reservations. In the years between 1839-1840 there were forced migrations from the 5 major tribes in the Southeast, in Black Hawk Territory, and more. Thousands upon thousands of Native Americans died during this process of forcing them off of their ancestral lands and making them walk west to areas of land with non-arable land and few natural resources for survival.

Our Old Testament and Gospel readings for today both focus on a people who were or became oppressed. God called Jeremiah to be a prophet for the people of Israel. Israel’s leaders had forsaken God’s call for justice and exploited their people for the sake of their own wealth and power. Jeremiah was given the difficult task of speaking God’s words of judgment to those who were very satisfied with the status quo and had no desire to change. Typical of biblical call stories in the Old Testament, Jeremiah responded to God’s call with reluctance. Jeremiah cited his youth and inexperience as the reason for his hesitance. God’s response was less than assuring: ⁸Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” Knowing you are walking into a situation that is dangerous enough that you might need divine rescue isn’t a great endorsement for taking on a job. Jeremiah was being asked to “afflict the comfortable.” Not surprisingly, Jeremiah was known as “the weeping prophet.” In one instance, after delivering God’s message of judgment and consequential punishment, Jeremiah was thrown down a well.

Jesus famously said: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. (4:24) Like Jeremiah, Jesus’ audience in his hometown synagogue was met with a violent response. His first scripture reading and sermon started off well. What happened?

Our reading for today is part 2 of last Sunday’s reading. We heard that Jesus entered the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth, and read from the scroll of Isaiah:

“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, ¹⁹to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

When Jesus finished the selected passage, he didn’t just say: “The Word of the Lord,” he startled the congregation with the words: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” That’s a pretty startling revelation and makes one heck of a first sermon! If not for the drama, certainly the brevity would be cheered.

The Isaiah passage from which Jesus quoted, with a few changes which emphasized economic injustice, foretold a new king of Israel would be anointed, but would not bring them political power or wealth. The king God would send would be a suffering servant king, who would right the injustices of their society and lead the people back to God’s priorities.

The synagogue crowd was ripe for hearing good news, particularly that their long-awaited Messiah had finally arrived. They lived in Judah, a Jewish province, ruled by the Roman Empire. They did not have the rights afforded Roman citizens. They paid exorbitant taxes to fund the Roman’s grand building projects and a large powerful army to protect and increase the empire’s power. They led a hardscrabble life. They had heard of Jesus’ healing miracles in Capernaum and hoped that Jesus would do even more for them, his neighbors from childhood. “Is he not Joseph’s son?” Surely, that relationship earned them the privilege.

Why did the crowd turn against him? What was wrong with fulfilling the prophet Isaiah’s prophesy that the new king of Israel would do these wonderful things? The problem was the message they received did not sound as if they would be given special treatment. What’s the advantage of being lifted up from poverty, healed, and freed from oppression if the same benefits are given to everyone? There is a reason for the saying: ‘When the oppressed are freed, they become oppressors.’ In our sinful nature, there is the desire to have hierarchies of power and privilege. We need to have someone to look down upon, to lift ourselves up. The people of Nazareth acted like a self-focused electorate and they rejected the opportunity for real transformation and fullness of life for all in their exclusion of goodwill for those with whom they did not identify.

The biblical message is quite the reverse. God’s will is for all humanity to be treated with dignity as we are all made in the image of God. God’s will is for all of humanity to be free to experience the fullness of life, God’s gracious blessing. But these were not the words the congregation wanted to hear. They didn’t really want to hear a sermon, they wanted to feel good. The only good news they wanted to hear was news that their own hopes and desires would be fulfilled.

Jesus anticipated their discontent, referring to the adage from Proverbs: “Physician heal yourself.” This phrase has come to mean that one with a problem should take care of it before attempting to change others. But what it meant to the ancient world is that the normative approach is for people to put themselves first. Jesus refuted that adage. Jesus proclaimed God’s way was to take care of ones’ sisters and brothers in greater need first. Jesus claimed to work under a divine triage system – the system which those that can muscle in with claims of privilege always try to thwart.

Jesus reminded them that God doesn’t put any stock in entitlement. No one earns God’s favor. Jesus brought up something else they didn’t want to hear – facts. We know how facts can get in the way of a good rant. Jesus pointed out that during the drought in Israel, the revered prophet Elijah saved a gentile widow and her son. And Elisha healed Namaan, another gentile, at a time when there were many Jewish lepers. When people are only interested in what a leader can do for them, facts that refute one’s personal agenda are often met with defensive action or dismissed outright as untrue.

Jesus’ quote from Isaiah did not tell the people of Nazareth anything they should already know. The Hebrew Scriptures they had heard read in the synagogue all their lives were filled with statements of God’s care and concern for the most vulnerable in society – ‘the widows, orphans, foreigners, the sick and disabled.’ These are the words the Lord put into Jeremiah’s mouth:

“This is what the Lord says: ‘Do what is just and right. Rescue from
the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong
or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not
shed innocent blood.’”

Why would they believe God would send a Messiah that did not fulfill that mission? Self-interest distorts and even blinds us to the needs of others and to justice.

The Apostle Paul offered an antidote to the affliction – love. Writing from Ephesus, Paul addressed his letter to the Corinthian congregation at a time when conflicts had arisen. Members of the congregation were insisting on creating a hierarchy of value among its members. They created strata of worth to the congregation based on wealth and family background – in this case, Christians that were born and raised into the Jewish faith and those that were Gentile Christians. A new qualification had arisen based on spiritual gifts, such as prophecy and speaking in tongues. Paul countered that without love, none of their spiritual gifts were of any use to their Christian mission.

The Greek language in Paul’s time had many words for love. In English, we have only one. The Greek word Paul uses here is agape, which is love for others without expectation of reciprocation. This is the kind of love God has for us and we are to have for God and our “neighbors.” In a few minutes, you will hear a beautiful English anthem using the word, “charity,” instead of love. The translation of the
The Greek word, “agape, as “charity” is an error of the King James’ Bible. The King James version was written long before many of the archeological finds of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, which added tremendously to the translations of ancient texts. In this case, even earlier translations than the King James’ bible translated “agape” as love. We do not give charity to God. Although charity can be an expression of love, it can be given without love and with the expectation of reward.

Paul insists that agape love “does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.” In the public sphere, we are not seeing much love these days. Truth is what you want it to be. The banning of books in school libraries that tell the history of the Holocaust, the injustices inflicted upon African-Americans from the time of slavery onward, and the internment of people of Japanese descent during World War 2, are testaments to truths that are being suppressed. As post-war Germany knew, denying such injustices pave the way for their repetition. Germany tore down the statues of Nazi leaders, but left the concentration camps for people, including school children, to visit and learn about the Holocaust. Children and youth who are not given the facts about history will grow up to deny and diminish the importance of facts and will fail to see the warning signs of the same injustices reoccurring.

Paul presented the congregation in Corinth with a plumb line for speech, behavior, and discernment – the love of Christ. If we were all to stop before we speak or act and ask ourselves: “Is what I am about to say or do loving?” there would be more silence, more listening for understanding, more truth, and justice in our lives and in our society.

Amen. May it be so!

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