Jeremiah 1:4-10
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4: 21-32

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. Amen.

The three lessons appointed for this Sunday, the Fourth after the Epiphany, give us an interesting mixture of themes for the Sunday of our Annual Meeting. Both the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel lesson touch on prophecy and its interpretation; and the lesson from the Christian Letters describes the importance of love, in our speaking and in the ways we treat our fellow human beings. The passage from Jeremiah tells the story of the calling of the prophet. It’s a wonderful, poetic passage, in which God affirms Jeremiah and his calling: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” When Jeremiah protests that he is neither fit nor prepared for such a ministry, God reassures him and promises to be with him. The passage ends with a description of the power of the prophet, the responsibility of the one chosen to speak God’s word to the people: “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” The role of the prophet, then, is to speak God’s word to the world. Sometimes it will be a word of transformation, sometimes a word of judgment, sometimes a word of renewal — but always God’s word and always unexpected. In the context of our Annual Meeting, today, during which we will engage in important discussions about our ministry here, it may be significant to note that, although Jeremiah is assured that God will be with him, he isn’t given an outline of the specifics of what God is calling him toward. Being appointed “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” doesn’t provide much in the way of goals, targets, or plans. It’s as though God is appointing Jeremiah to be an agent of change, an agent of transformation, without first telling him what the changes will look like, or how the transformations will play out. Often, in our own lives, we may feel ourselves drawn toward something new, something different, long before we can articulate what, exactly, it is that God is drawing — or leading, or coaxing, or luring — us into. In those instances, it is often our challenge to relinquish old expectations, to stop trying to second-guess, while we wait for the new thing to unfold and make itself clear.

In the passage from Luke’s Gospel appointed for this morning, we have a story in which Jesus challenges the people’s expectations by offering a new interpretation of the words of the prophet. On a visit home, Jesus has been asked to read and offer instruction — interpretation — in the synagogue. It’s easy for us to relate to the situation: here’s Mary and Joseph’s eldest son, all grown up; the people gathered for worship are pleased and proud of this local son; he reads the passage from the Prophet Isaiah well, and ends by saying: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The townsfolk smile and murmur, and wait confidently for words of comfort, words of justification. Jesus’ people in Nazareth are an oppressed religious minority, the subjects of the hated Roman Empire; and they unwaveringly expect Jesus to interpret the words of the prophet Isaiah as a message of hope and expectation for them. But Jesus doesn’t do that. Instead, he reminds them of other times in their history as a nation, other times of trouble and danger — and he points out that in those situations, God didn’t act solely on their behalf. “ But the truth is,” Jesus tells them, “there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.” Although there was hunger and despair among the Israelites — among the very people who understood themselves to be God’s Chosen — when God took action in that situation, it was to help a foreigner, a stranger, a woman who was not of their tribe, race or religion.

Jesus goes on with another example: “There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” This is even worse: Naaman was a general in an enemy army. Why would God send a prophet to help an enemy instead of cleansing a good Israelite? To the people of Nazareth, who understood themselves to be the chosen remnant among a much more powerful dominant culture, this was neither the message they expected, nor what they wanted to hear. Instead of justifying them, instead of telling them to have faith and persevere until God acts on their behalf, Jesus tells them that God’s loving action is not limited and restricted to them alone. Understandably, perhaps, it makes them angry. Jesus is challenging the deepest assumptions of their faith. In some way, their ability to endure the oppression they suffer at the hands of the Romans was rooted in their belief that they were really God’s people, and eventually, in God’s own time, the Lord would destroy their enemies and restore their fortunes. Jesus’ prophetic insight, Jesus’ radical teaching, undermined that fundamental and sustaining assumption. No wonder that they were filled with rage.

It’s easy, at this point in the story, to focus on the anger of the people of Nazareth; we’re all too familiar with the way we humans often react with anger, even violence, to challenges to our fundamental assumptions. But I want us to look as something else in this story. Jesus was offering a new interpretation — a challenge to the way his people had always thought of themselves. The people hear his words as rejection — even condemnation; but what he’s really articulating, while different from their assumptions, isn’t necessarily a negative thing. That God acted on behalf of a widow in Sidon, instead of on behalf of a widow in Israel, could indicate that God’s care and love are extended more widely, not that God had removed the Divine care and love from the Israelites and given it away to others. If God is not the private God of the Israelites, but instead cares about the whole human family, that’s not necessarily a negative reality. But the people of Nazareth reacted badly, didn’t take the time to explore all the ramifications of what Jesus was saying; they weren’t ready or able to let this new, transformative insight unfold for them. Instead, they let their fears close their minds and drive their actions.

We can see all of this, as we examine this story, because we have the benefit of hindsight. We know who Jesus is; we know what he was doing. But in our own lives and in our life together as a community of faith, we’re often not clear about how God is working in and through our context and reality. Like Jeremiah, we can’t see the entirety of what we are being called toward; and we’re never certain it’s really a good thing, and not just one more example of loss and diminishment. We often want things to go on as they are, not because whatever we’re used to is perfect, but because it is known; the degree of comfort (or discomfort) is familiar, and we’re skeptical of our own ability unerringly to effect a change for the better. It’s very hard for us — as it was hard for the people of Nazareth — to face change without fear; but fear is destructive. Fear closes us down to the possible; fear encourages us to reject and resist new things — even when the new things may be of God.

Think about that, for a moment. It is — as individuals and as a community — very hard for us to face change without fear. Even though we know, intellectually, that God loves us and guides us, and is with us, it is difficult for us to embrace change fearlessly. But it’s vitally important that we try to do just that: to approach inevitable changes in our lives or in the life of our community of faith as opportunities, rather than as disasters. There are two things that happened this week to underscore this insight. The first came out of a conversation, during which my friend reminded me that when we start from a negative place, our fears are always willing to meet us more than halfway; that is, if we start out by looking for the downside, we’ll find it: our fears will help us generate desperate and upsetting eventualities, and we’ll run the risk of getting so caught up in looking at the things we don’t want to happen that we will get in the way of whatever unexpected, transformative new thing toward which God is urging us. The second thing was a phrase of Scripture that came up in our Thursday noon Eucharist; it’s from Paul’s second letter to Timothy. “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” As Christians, we are called away from fear and negativity; God did not give us a spirit of cowardice. God does not encourage us — as individuals, or as a faith community — to draw in and protect ourselves, but rather to reach out; the spirit of power and love and self-discipline which is our gift from God isn’t something to hoard, but it is rather something to share, to channel outward, to set free to work in our lives, in the lives of our families and neighbors, and in the wider world.

There were widows and lepers beyond the boundaries of Israel, to whom the prophets were sent with messages of hope and healing. There are people in the Upper Valley, in our workplaces, among our friends, who need the messages of hope and healing the God empowers us to share. We can focus on our fears and get diverted into trying to protect the status quo, or we can open our eyes, and hands, and hearts to the transformations God envisions for us; and we can do all of this because we have God’s love. And, as Paul reminds us: “[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

In the Name of Christ, AMEN.

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner at St. Barnabas’, Norwich