February 3

Gospel for January 30, 2022

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 4:21-30
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

As Paul Harvey used to say on his radio broadcasts, this passage is “the rest of the story.”

In Luke 4:16-20 (the lectionary Gospel for January 23, 2022), Jesus returned home to the synagogue in Nazareth, where he worshiped and studied as a boy. During the worship service, he took the precious scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and read the text aloud in the hearing of his childhood friends and neighbors:

“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” (Luke 4:18-19).

Now he utters these words:

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Note that their initial reaction seems to be quite positive:

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

The only hint we see that the congregation might be grumbling a little is the quip:

“Is not this Joseph’s son?”

Are they remembering the kid who hung out in his dad’s carpenter shop, and ran errands for his mom, and played with the neighborhood kids? Is there a hint of envy? Are there whispers like, “who does this guy think he is? I paid him to sweep my step when he was nothing!”

Jesus seems to sense that there is criticism that is just beneath the surface. So he confronts it head on:

He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

Jesus has already made a mark in his ministry by teaching in the Galilean synagogues. Luke hasn’t mentioned any of Jesus’ miracles, that are yet to come. Presumably, the Nazarene people may be a little “underwhelmed” by his presence and preaching so far in their synagogue.

And Jesus can tell that he is not being received as a messenger from God:

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

Jesus seems to know that they are skeptical of him simply because they’ve known him all their lives. As the saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”

Still, the Nazarenes haven’t yet reacted violently to his words. But then, Jesus seems to pick a fight with them:

“But the truth is, 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. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

The examples that Jesus gives are offensive to some observant orthodox Jews because the stories that he cites compare Gentiles to Israelites in a very favorable light. He takes his examples directly from the Scriptures, recounting the stories of two of Israel’s most famous prophets, Elijah and Elisha.

His point is that these prophets offered ministry to Gentiles, and not to Israelites during a severe famine, and cleansed a Syrian of leprosy rather than an Israelite. In a culture that insisted on religious separation and exceptionalism that verged on outright bigotry, Jesus’ words are highly offensive.

The Nazarenes now react violently:

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

We can only imagine how Jesus escaped the mob. Mob violence is dangerous and uncontrollable. And yet Jesus seems to walk through them unscathed, in a kind of regal serenity!

And so, his return home is triumphant despite the negative reaction of the Nazarenes.

APPLY:

Part of the responsibility of preaching is the willingness to say unpopular things. Most preachers play it safe, staying on the “right” side of their congregations. But the preacher with Biblical integrity speaks the truth in season and out of season.

It should be noted that Jesus’ teaching is thoroughly Biblical, from the text he reads from Isaiah 61 to the examples he gives of Elijah and Elisha. His application may not be conventional by the standards of his audience, but it is pure and it is relevant.

Jesus has not come to simply confirm what we already believe, but to shake our preconceptions to their roots and replace them with his truth.

RESPOND:

I have preached in my own home church a couple of times in the past few years. I am grateful that no one tried to throw me off the side of a nearby mountain!

But it does make me wonder when my words stir up no controversies at all whether I am being as Biblical as I need to be.

John Wesley considered persecution and mob violence to be confirmation that he was doing the right thing!

The point is not to provoke controversy for its own sake, but to speak the truth as the Spirit and the Word direct us to do. As a friend of mine once said, preachers are to be like the referees in a game. It doesn’t matter whether the crowd likes the calls or not, the ref has to call ’em as he sees ’em.

Lord, you have come to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind. But sometimes your good news seems like bad news when it means that I need to change my behavior so that I may comply with your Word. Change my heart so that you may change my life! Amen.

PHOTO:
“Jesus shakes our preconceptions” uses this background:
“Chalk Board” by Dave Linscheid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for February 3, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Luke 4:21-30
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

As Paul Harvey used to say on his radio broadcasts, this passage is “the rest of the story.”

In Luke 4:16-20 (the lectionary Gospel for January 27, 2019), Jesus returned home to the synagogue in Nazareth, where he worshiped and studied as a boy. During the worship service, he took the precious scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and read the text aloud in the hearing of his childhood friends and neighbors:

“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”(Luke 4:18-19).

Now he utters these words:

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Note that their initial reaction seems to be quite positive:

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

The only hint we see that the congregation might be grumbling a little is the quip:

“Is not this Joseph’s son?”

Jesus seems to sense that there is criticism that is just beneath the surface. So he confronts it head on:

He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

And Jesus can tell that he is not being received as a messenger from God:

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

Jesus seems to know that they are skeptical of him simply because they’ve known him all their lives. As the saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”

Still, the Nazarenes haven’t yet reacted violently to his words. But then, Jesus seems to pick a fight with them:

“But the truth is, 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. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

The Nazarenes now react violently:

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

We can only imagine how Jesus escaped the mob. Mob violence is dangerous and uncontrollable. And yet Jesus seems to walk through them unscathed, in a kind of regal serenity!

And so, his return home is triumphant despite the negative reaction of the Nazarenes.

APPLY:

Jesus has not come to simply confirm what we already believe, but to shake our preconceptions to their roots and replace them with his truth.

RESPOND:

I have preached in my own home church a couple of times in the past few years. I am grateful that no one tried to throw me off the side of a nearby mountain!

But it does make me wonder when my words stir up no controversies at all whether I am being as Biblical as I need to be.

John Wesley considered persecution and mob violence to be confirmation that he was doing the right thing!

PHOTO:
“Jesus shakes our preconceptions” uses this background:
“Chalk Board” by Dave Linscheid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for February 3, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The “Love Chapter” of 1 Corinthians is a lyrical interlude between Paul’s discussion of the Body of Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12), and his more detailed directions on how some of the spiritual gifts (prophecy, tongues, discernment of tongues) are applied in the church (1Corinthians 14).

He is underscoring the vital truth that love is the unsurpassable spiritual gift, above all others. He has ended his list of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 by saying this:

But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:31).

Paul’s celebration of the gift of love is divided into three sections:

Love is the essential, non-negotiable characteristic of Christianity (verses 1-3)
The defining characteristics of love (verses 4-7)
The enduring and unsurpassable nature of love (verses 8-13)

For the sake of context, we remember that Paul is writing to a church that was still “opening” their spiritual gifts, so to speak. And, like the children in the faith that they were, some of them were beginning to feel a sense of competition and superiority. Some felt that they were more elite as Christians because they had certain gifts that others did not (see 1 Corinthians 4:6-8).

So, Paul is insistent that love is the vital gift that trumps all others, and makes all others work together for the good of all.

In verses 1-3, Paul compares great feats of spiritual gifts, knowledge and sacrifice with the power of love, and concludes that without love these accomplishments are nothing.

In the second section, verses 4-7, Paul defines love not as a dictionary might define it, but according to its characteristics in action:

Love is patient; love is kind.

But he also defines love by what it is not:

love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

He ends this section with soaring rhetoric that stresses the universal, transcendent power of love:

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Finally, in verses 8-13, Paul focuses on the enduring, even eternal, nature of love:

Love never ends.

Without exception, all of the spiritual gifts will eventually become obsolete, because they will not be needed — except for love.

Some of the gifts are for the purposes of strengthening the church right now, in this interim time — prophecies, tongues, even knowledge. But:

when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

Paul compares these gifts to the developmental process of growing up:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

And then, in one of the most profound verses in this passage, he says:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Knowledge and faith and hope — undeniably important gifts — are only provisional. They are needed now among Christians and in the church. But when the End of the Age has arrived, knowledge will be perfected, faith will become sight, and hope will be fulfilled.

Knowledge and faith and hope are like looking in a mirror. What is seen in the mirror is not reality, but is a copy of reality. Seeing face to face is the perspective of one who has turned to face reality.

Of the three great Christian virtues, love is supreme:

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

APPLY:

No doubt this passage is one that is frequently chosen for weddings, even by couples who may otherwise be unacquainted with the Bible. This can be a good thing, reminding these couples about the centrality of love in their relationships.

However, this “Love Chapter” has almost nothing to do with romantic love, and everything to do with the kind of sacrificial love that is modeled most dramatically in Christ.

This passage is inspiring, but it is also daunting. Who can love so purely and sacrificially that all other gifts and accomplishments are completely eclipsed?

Who can love with such abandon that there is no ego or self-assertion?

As an example, try this exercise. Substitute your own name for each blank below, and ask yourself whether it is truly accurate of you:

_____is patient; _____ is kind; _____ is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. _____ does not insist on ______ own way; _____is not irritable or resentful; ______ does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. _____ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

If this little exercise doesn’t bring conviction by the Holy Spirit, the reader is either not entirely honest, not terribly self-aware, or a candidate for immediate canonization!

But we can take comfort. It is not up to us to love in this way in our own power. This kind of love is empowered by God’s love working in us:

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love (Ephesians3:16-17).

The source of the love described in “The Love Chapter” derives from the indwelling power of God’s Spirit through Christ.

RESPOND:

There is an aspect of this passage that reaches me even beyond the obvious eloquence about the supremacy of love.

As one who reads about, studies on, and broods over mysterious theological questions on a daily basis, I often find myself simply perplexed and overwhelmed .

I find great peace in this verse:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

The now is obviously the temporal present world in which we live, with all of its labyrinthine confusion. And then is the eternity that it is to come. This is what Martin Luther meant when he said he had two dates on his calendar — today and THAT day.

The imagery of the mirror reminds me of Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, where the men are chained to a wall in a cave and can only see the shadows from the light outside the cave. The shadows reflect the Reality of the Forms that are outside the cave.

The mirror in 1 Corinthians 13 reflects imperfectly the Reality of God’s Kingdom, because the mirror represents our own insufficient understanding and experience. But when God’s Reality is made manifest, then:

we will see face to face.

And how wonderful, how marvelous, that we will know God’s love fully, even as God’s love has fully known us!

That’s when all the questions will be answered, and all our shallow answers questioned. As C.S. Lewis is alleged to have said,

The most commonly heard word in heaven will be “Oh!”

Lord, I confess that the only way that I can even remotely approach the kind of love that you ask of me is if you love through me. I haven’t the capacity in myself. But I love because you first loved me. Amen.

PHOTO:

I took this photo during one of my daily walks on the bike trail in Searcy, Arkansas.

Psalm Reading for February 3, 2019

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God! [photo by Holly Hayes]

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 71:1-6
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The Psalmist is lifting up a prayer of supplication, asking God for deliverance and protection. He bases his present hopes on the deliverance he has experienced in the past.

It is the righteousness of the Lord that provides the source of deliverance and rescue. This is in contrast to the shame that the Psalmist fears.

The Psalmist uses a common Biblical metaphor of the Lord as a:

rock of refuge,
a strong fortress.

If the Lord is his refuge and fortress, God provides a place of rescue from the wicked, unjust and cruel. They are his besiegers, but God is his strong wall.

More proactively, the Psalmist affirms that the Lord has been with him from the very beginning of his life:

For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
Upon you I have leaned from my birth;
it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.

The Psalmist’s present faith in God’s protection is grounded in God’s past faithfulness.

APPLY:

This Psalm illustrates the vital need to teach our children about the faithfulness of God.

A child first learns about the reality and the faithfulness of God by the example of parents, then by the reinforcement of precept and experience. And this comes from a strong, caring, nurturing community of faith.

RESPOND:

Martin Luther, the great German reformer, penned one of the great hymns of the faith that is reminiscent of this Psalm:

A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing . . .

There is another quote that has been attributed to Martin Luther that seems appropriate to this Psalm:

The church is always just one generation away from extinction.

Every generation of Christian parents is responsible for teaching and modeling the Christian faith to their children.

Lord, I thank you that you have been with me since the very beginning of my life. Because you have always been my rock and my fortress, I don’t fear the future. Amen.

PHOTOS:
"a mighty fortress is our god" by Holly Hayes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Old Testament for February 3, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Jeremiah 1:4-10
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The Prophet Jeremiah describes his call to ministry. This call is not simply because he is a priest of the priestly house of Hilkiah. He can honestly say that there was almost never a time he wasn’t aware of his call. The Lord makes clear that he was singled out even before his birth as a distinctive voice for the Lord:

“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.”

The call was always there , and even at an early age Jeremiah became aware of it. He also confessed his sense of inadequacy:

Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the Lord said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.”

Jeremiah is given a clear and powerful mandate from God. He is told not to be afraid. The Lord promises to be with Jeremiah and to deliver him, and then his lips are prepared to proclaim God’s message:

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth.

This is reminiscent of Isaiah’s call in the temple when Isaiah sees the Lord, and Isaiah recognizes that he is “a man of unclean lips, and dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Upon this confession of humility and repentance, a seraph takes one of the burning coals from the altar, touches Isaiah’s lips with it, and says,

“Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out” (Isaiah 6:7).

We see a pattern here that is common with the prophets: the call comes, the prophet protests his inadequacy, and God “touches” them and strengthens them for their task.

God makes very clear to Jeremiah that his role as a prophet will be of national and international consequence:

“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.”

Jeremiah will no doubt draw on the inspiration of this dramatic call many times during his ministry.

From the time he becomes aware of his call in the thirteenth year of King Josiah of Judah (627 B.C.) Jeremiah would witness the reforms of King Josiah, Josiah’s death in battle, five different kings on the throne of Judah, the exile of many of the best and brightest of Jerusalem, and the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.

Along the way, he would be criticized by the false prophets of Judah, thrown into a well, imprisoned, and discounted by those he was meant to warn. He would need all of the confidence that God’s call had measured out to him on this occasion!

APPLY:

What is the tension between God’s plan and our will? Jeremiah is aware that God has had plans for his life while he was still in the womb.

When God reveals his call to Jeremiah, the young man — who calls himself a mere boy — protests his inability. But God makes it clear that the words Jeremiah will speak are not his own, but God’s.

Could Jeremiah have refused his call? Theoretically, yes. But later in his ministry, when his warnings about the impending disaster and destruction of Jerusalem become extremely unpopular, he tries to keep his silence:

If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot (Jeremiah 20:9).

One thing is clear — if a prophet (or pastor) is going to speak the word of God with conviction and confidence, he/she must be as sure as Jeremiah that the Lord has their back! This is especially true in times like ours, when there is confusion and chaos in the culture and the church.

RESPOND:

Two things seem to me to be true about the call to ministry — one, that every preacher or servant of God must have a sense of a divine call; and two, that every person who is ever called feels a sense of their own inadequacy.

I can certainly identify with Jeremiah’s hesitation and reluctance. To be called into ministry is to know that you are required to handle holy things, and to speak on behalf of God! What audacity that requires!

Answering the call to ministry requires on the one hand a sense of absolute confidence in God, balanced by absolute humility about oneself. I would mistrust any preacher who didn’t have both of those qualities.

Lord, many times in my ministry I have asked the question, ‘why on earth did you call me?’ I have had to overcome shyness and introversion, and have sometimes had to dig deep to find the courage to say what needed to be said. But you have never failed me. And looking back on my call, I am absolutely sure you have been with me every step of the way. Please, never leave me nor forsake me. Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Answer the Call” used this photo:
“Put in an area code” by Philip Howard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.