4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30

I have preached a lot of sermons
on the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.
This is, of course, because it is a favorite choice for weddings.
After all, it uses the word “love” eight times.
But how we hear texts can change
depending on the contexts in which we hear them.
Paul’s hymn to love sound different
when sandwiched between our first reading and our Gospel for today,
which deal with the prophetic missions of Jeremiah and Jesus.
What does love look like when we put it in the context
of Jeremiah’s mission to speak a word of judgment against his own people,
or of Jesus’ saying, “no prophet is accepted in his own native place”?
And what does the prophetic call to speak God’s truth look like
when read through the lens of Paul’s hymn to love?

The first thing we might note
is that if we take Jesus and Jeremiah as our models,
there should be no conflict
between words of prophecy and words of love.
Even difficult truths can be spoken out of great love.
Of course, sometimes people claim that they are being prophetic
when actually they are just being jerks.
As Paul writes, “if I have the gift of prophecy,
and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge;
if I have all faith so as to move mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.”
Elsewhere Paul writes of “speaking the truth in love.”
You can be right without speaking righteously,
that is, with love.
When we must speak a hard truth
we can wield it as a weapon
with which to wound those
with whom we are in conflict.
Or our words can convey a love
that, as Paul says, “rejoices with the truth.”

Second, when we have spoken the truth in love,
when we have said the hard but necessary
things that need to be said,
we might even so meet opposition
and find our words are rejected.
Do we turn our backs and walk away,
retreating to nurse our bruised egos?
If we have been motivated by love in our speaking,
we will have the persistence of a Jeremiah or a Jesus
in proclaiming the truth, no matter what the cost.
If truth is joined to love in our words,
then God will say to us what God said to Jeremiah:
“They will fight against you but not prevail over you,
for I am with you to deliver you.”
If we look to Jesus
as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
then we can embrace the cross of rejection
in sure and certain hope of truth’s resurrection.
If our words of truth are spoken in love
we can endure rejection
because, as Paul says, love
“bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.”

Third, even as we speak the truth
with love and persistence,
we should take to heart Paul’s words:
“we know partially and we prophesy partially…
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror.”
Jesus was God’s Word incarnate;
he saw truth not indistinctly, but face to face;
he knew his Father even as he was known.
His words were perfect in love
and, therefore, perfect in truth.
But, not to put too fine a point on it,
last time I checked, none of you is Jesus.
And, just to be clear, neither am I.
Neither you nor I have a pure intuition of the truth;
neither you nor I can peer into the human heart.
Because we know in part and prophesy in part
we must speak the truth we know
with a certain humility,
a certain willingness to listen,
seeking to hear in the words of others
that part of the truth that our words lack.
So while holding fast to the truth we have seen,
to the wisdom we have been given,
we must speak that truth with a love that
is not pompous,
is not inflated,
is not rude.
In this life, even for a saint,
it will be through our love,
not through our knowledge,
that we will be most like Christ.

So we must proclaim the truth
with love,
with persistence,
and with a measure of humility.
Paul’s hymn to love should guide us
when we need to speak a difficult truth
to a family member or a friend.
We must walk a narrow path
in speaking with both love and firmness,
in being persistent while acknowledging
that we do not speak with full knowledge,
in being open to revising our estimate of the situation
without being a pushover or letting ourselves be manipulated.
Likewise, in our public discourse,
these days there is not a lot of truth being spoken in love.
In some cases, of course, the issue is a failure to be truthful.
But even when truth is spoken,
we should ask: is it being spoken in love
or is it being spoken in a way that is dismissive and destructive;
is it spoken with contempt for the stupidity of our opponents?
Both in our personal and in our public lives
we need to examine our consciences and ask,
“am I speaking the truth in love”?

Even once we have examined our consciences
the challenges of speaking the truth with love remain.
How do you speak with love when confronting someone
about an addiction or an unhealthy relationship?
How do you share the wisdom you have found
without being overbearing or coercive?
How do you denounce injustice or express righteous anger
without demonizing those who disagree?

In the face of these challenges,
we should take comfort in the words of Paul:
“love never fails.”
For the love that never fails
is not our faltering human love,
but God’s love,
the love that is God’s gift to us in Jesus,
poured into our hearts through God’s Spirit.
Let us allow that love that never fails
to grow ever stronger in us,
so that love’s truth may be proclaimed
in our words and in our deeds.

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30

In today’s Gospel, the people who,

at the beginning of the story, “all spoke highly” of Jesus

and “were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,”

have become by the end of the passage a mob “filled with fury,”

who try to throw Jesus over a cliff.

This change in attitude seems to occur

when Jesus recalls for them two stories in which

the prophets Elijah and Elisha came to the aid of Gentiles –

the starving widow of Zarephath and the leper Naaman the Syrian –

rather than helping their fellow Israelites.

Presumably what fills them with fury is the implication

that Jesus has come not only for them,

to fulfill God’s promises to Israel,

but also for others,

to extend God’s saving covenant to the Gentiles.

Their fury is, I think, rooted in fear:

the fear that God’s favor

is a limited commodity,

so that the more God loves others

the less he loves them;

the fear that there is only so much room

within God’s covenantal love,

so that the inclusion of others in that love

might mean their exclusion.

As is so often the case with the Gospels,

the figures we read about invite us to reflect on our own lives.

Do we treat God’s love as if it were a limited commodity?

Do we react with envy when others benefit?

Do we find ourselves filled with fury

because we fear that another’s gain is our loss?

And if we find such fear and fury in ourselves,

do we ask ourselves, is this who I really want to be?

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov

a character recounts a Russian folktale that paints for us

a picture of such fury and fear:

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman
and a very wicked woman she was.
And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind.
The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire.
So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers
he could remember to tell to God;
‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he,
‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’
And God answered: ‘You take that onion then,
hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out.
And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise,
but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’
The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her.
‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’
He began cautiously pulling her out.
He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake,
seeing how she was being drawn out,
began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her.
But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them.
‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’
As soon as she said that, the onion broke.
And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day.
So the angel wept and went away.

Because she was convinced

that her single good deed belonged to her alone,

that God’s salvation was a limited commodity

that she had to grab for herself,

that those with her in the lake of fire were her rivals

rather than her fellow sufferers,

she found herself left in that lake for eternity

drowned in the fire of her own fear and fury.

But this is not who we are condemned to be.

In our second reading,

Paul speaks of a different kind of living,

what he calls “a still more excellent way,”

the way that prizes love above all else.

This love, Paul says, is not jealous, not pompous, not puffed-up, not rude,

“it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered,

it does not brood over injury.”

It is not filled with fear of being deprived of a blessing,

or fury at the good fortune of others,

but “bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things, endures all things.”

If we want to be Christians,

if we want to live this still more excellent way,

we should pray that God fill us with this greatest of gifts,

the love that seeks not its own good

but rejoices in the good of others,

the love that led Jesus to endure the cross for all,

the love that conquers fear and fury.