Readings: Jeremiah 1: 4-10; 1Corinthians: 13, 1-13; Luke 4: 21-30

I had intended today to preach about climate change and make a few comments about the scriptures at the time of their reading. The powerful nature of the scripture passages was such that the few comments became a sermon in themselves and I had no option but to put climate change on the backburner for a later day. Sufficient for today are the scriptures hereof! The three passages are integrally related and of huge importance for us today.

The Old Testament passage is about Jeremiah the prophet. A prophet you will know by now is not one who foretells the future. A prophet is one who tells forth the will of God – to individuals, to communities and to nations. The prophet’s task, as the passage makes clear, is to demolish and to build. It is about the prophet Jeremiah who was in profound conflict with the ideological and theological basis of the establishment and who had a profound effect on the society of his day. Jeremiah was the one who fronted the King of the day with the needs of the poor, and those memorable words ‘To uphold the cause of the poor! Is not this what it means to know the Lord?’

The passage we read is about the call of Jeremiah and the two excuses he offers for not responding
(1) I am not skilled at speaking
(2) I am too young

God comes back very quickly:

Do not say you lack skill at speaking. I will put the words into your mouth
Do not say you are too young. I will be with you. Your task is to reconstitute the existing order – to tell forth the will of God as far as the community is concerned

Jeremiah resorted to two excuses for not responding to the call of God. It would be interesting to know what our excuse is for not engaging in prophetic work, for not challenging the status quo. The excuse of being too young is certainly not available to most of us. In fact it would probably be more along the lines of ‘I am too old’ – and I can appreciate that as an excuse. The excuse of not knowing what to say probably comes closer to it but this is not available in the light of both Moses’ and Jeremiah’s experience. God short circuits the excuse by saying that the words will be put into our mouths.

My guess is that the reason for our not engaging in prophetic work is twofold

One is that we benefit from the self serving political and economic systems that the prophet is called to challenge. As someone once said ‘Those who have four aces rarely ask for a new deal’

Secondly, the fact it is so easy to forget. The busyness of our lives results in us overlooking and forgetting about the need of the poor and the restructuring of our society

The Gospel passage is the fascinating one where a congregation tries to do away with the guest preacher. One hardly expects worship in a small town synagogue to be the stuff of high drama but such is the case here.

Jesus is back in his home synagogue, and is asked to read the scriptures. He reads from the prophet Isaiah - a passage which most of the worshippers would know off by heart. A few eyebrows are raised when Jesus leaves out the bit about God taking vengeance on their enemies but generally speaking they are charmed. He hands back the scroll with the comment. ‘All this is taking place right now’. Such eloquence, such self possession. Joe’s boy has done so well. How proud Mary must be of him. And then he blows it! Not prepared to quit while he’s ahead he spells it out with two stories of how God’s concern is for all people and not just the Hebrew people, how the prophet Elijah ministered to a foreigner rather than the women of Israel, and how the prophet Elisha ministered to the brutal Syrian military commander Naman.

The congregation is incensed as he challenges their ‘my’ mentality (my family, my nation, my religion) to a more inclusive world view and value system. God’s love extends to everyone. God was expected to come and come he did – but not to those who were devout but to outsiders. What he was in effect saying was ’You folks think that God loves you and hates the outsider. You are wrong. God’s love and grace is for all people and in your passion for exclusivity you are putting yourself beyond God’s love and concern.’ Any wonder that they reacted somewhat strongly. It would be like quoting on Australia Day the great words of Dosteovsky ‘Patriotism is a gross fraud perpetrated on humanity’. God loves the refugees as much as those of your own tribe – and your workmates in the water. Any wonder that the congregation acted somewhat strongly!

But what was it that really incensed them? It was Jesus identifying himself with the prophet Isaiah. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor’ – and by the poor he means more than the materially poor. He includes the prisoner and the disadvantaged. He offers hope to those who have no reason to hope. He offers a reversal of the present position. ‘This message is no longer a distant dream for the future. It is in me a present reality.’ It requires a reversal of the status quo, a re-organisation of society around those who have been excluded for one reason or another.

And credit where credit is due. The congregation at Capernaum got the message – and the decided to get rid of the messenger. Who is this young upstart to tell us that the non churchgoers are of more concern to God than those who regularly worship? The story literally becomes a cliff hanger. They take him to one of the cliffs surrounding Nazareth with intent to do away with the guest preacher. Jesus somehow gets away and continues to preach the same disturbing message of good news to the poor elsewhere until another mob finds another hill outside another city and makes sure that this time he doesn’t get away.

How does concern for the poor fit into the life and ministry of Jesus? It is central to it. He was after all one of them! Not only was he materially poor but he was rejected by the society of which he was a part. As our Easter music puts it ‘He was rejected and despised’. It is so important to recognise that the word poor means more than those who are materially poor. Being materially poor is certainly very important and more often than not is the basis of other kinds of poverty. The word ‘poor’ includes all those who are excluded from our society – that is the point of the illustrations in the synagogue, that is what got up the nose of the congregation

Jesus identified with the poor to the extent that if you did something for the poor you did it to Jesus. Matthew 25, the ‘in as much passage’, points up the fact that our relationship to the poor of this world and our relationship to Jesus of Nazareth are one and the same thing.

And here lies the crucial thing about poverty. At the root of poverty lies a relationship that has gone wrong, a relationship that puts another person into a position of inferiority, and this just isn’t on in the Christian faith. Poverty is a sign that God’s goal of community is not being fulfilled. At the root of poverty lies a relationship that has gone wrong.

And this, of course, is where the passage of scripture from Corinthians 13 comes in – possibly the best known passage of scripture, constantly intoned at marriages notwithstanding the fact that love does end in over 50% of marriages. Some people see this passage as the Christian definition of love, the spelling out of the Christian ethic. Not so! The Christian ethic is not contained in words, it is contained in a person, a person who said ‘Love one another as I have loved you’. In the life of Jesus lies the Christian ethic.

What then is the significance of 1 Corinthians 13? It lies in the claim that love is central. And this really is indisputable. When Jesus answers a lawyer’s question about the most important commandment he is quite clear: ‘Love God and love your neighbour’. Paul re-iterates it here – without love you may as well save your breath. ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ is the Christian ethic. We exist to help people get in touch with the love that is the source of our being.

How then to sum up these great passages of scripture?

What are we called to? It is to preach good news to the poor – not only the materially poor but to all who have been and are excluded from society. The failure to include is a relationship failure. We need to love one another as we have been loved in Jesus of Nazareth.

It really is time to grow up.