MEDITATION
Text: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 & Luke 4:21-30
4th Sunday
after the Epiphany
January 31, 2016
FIRST
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton,
Texas
Rev.
Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am
only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can
fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move
mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and
give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b]
but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love
is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It
does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it
keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love
does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love
never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are
tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in
part, 10 but
when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a
child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I
put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For
now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope
and love. But the greatest of these is love.
*
* *
He began by saying to them, “Today this
scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
22 All
spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his
lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
23 Jesus
said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal
yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard
that you did in Capernaum.’”
24 “Truly
I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows
in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years
and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them,
but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with
leprosy[a] in the time of Elisha the
prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
28 All
the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town,
and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to
throw him off the cliff. 30 But
he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
The year was 1878.
Rutherford B. Hayes was President of the United States. In February of that year, a war began that
has come to be known as “The Lincoln County War” in the New Mexico area. It brought names to national prominence –
names like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
1878 was the year Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. The Remington No. 2 Typewriter (with a shift
key that allowed for lower and upper-case lettering) was introduced. On a sad note, it was 1878 when yellow
fever took the lives of over 13,000 people in the Mississippi Valley. On a happier note, the Pope Manufacturing
Company gave us the high-wheel bicycle, and that started a cycling craze in our
country.
Meanwhile, closer to home in Denton, Texas; in May of 1878;
nearly 138 years ago, a Presbyterian mission congregation was established. There were fourteen souls – 4 men and 10
women – as charter members. At that
time, two of the four men were ordained installed as ruling elders: Mr. Louis Van Brown and Mr. Henry Upton
DeVault. Ordained and installed as the
first deacon was Mr. D.R. Long.
Today, that same church – here and now – ordains and installs
Charles Hubbard and Eric Manor as ruling elders and Christina Renteria as
deacon. There is a continuity of grace
here that should not be overlooked. The
New Testament Scriptures teach that our ascended Lord gave gifts to His church,
and among those gifts are the offices of elder and deacon. And in keeping with God’s way of giving
gifts, there is always more: the gifts
of these offices are gifted with the unique gifts of the people called to
occupy them. This has gone on quietly
yet unmistakably for nearly 138 years.
To borrow a phrase I don’t use very often, “Can I get an ‘Amen’?” AMEN.
The readings from the Bible you’ve heard today, for the 4th
Sunday after the Epiphany, present two things to minds and hearts. First, we have a statement on love in 1
Corinthians – and a famous, beloved statement at that. Secondly, we have a story from the life of
Jesus. With His public ministry
underway, the Lord returns to His boyhood home of Nazareth and is a worship
leader and preacher. The people at the
synagogue welcomed Him warmly. They
marveled at His gracious words. It seemed
to be a most happy day for them and for one of the sons of their
synagogue. Some of them had probably
known Jesus since he was, as they say, “knee high to a grasshopper.” “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” one of them asks.
Something utterly fascinating happens when we set this
statement on love alongside the story of Jesus leading worship in His
hometown. This is what happens: we’re given a choice. Last week, you might recall, there was a
similar choice that emerged. In a
nutshell, the question was along these lines:
are we going to be about membership, about being “card-carrying”
Presbyterians who find their place in a religious organization, or are we going
to be about discipleship? With
discipleship, we learned that it’s not about what we want for our organization,
it’s about what God wants for His people.
This week, similarly, we have two starkly different visions of
what discipleship can look like. It can
be 1 Corinthians 13 discipleship, you might say. In other words, it’s about love. We could be the greatest church in town with
police officers directing traffic due to the massive number of cars heading for
the buffet after worship; we could be the religious “talk of the town”; we
could have a golden-tongued preacher – some reincarnation of Billy Graham
-- that everyone thinks is the cat’s
meow; we could have outreach and inreach and programs for every conceivable
need. But if LOVE, God’s love, is not
the sole motive, driving force, and reason for our being, then all we are doing
is taking up space (in some instances, millions of dollars worth of space) and cranking out carbon dioxide. We might as well go home – and not begin the
139th year!
What is love? GOD is
love, and, as our text declares:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does
not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it
is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but
rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.
Love never fails.
That’s the first vision of what discipleship looks like: it’s about love and it looks like love. It’s God’s love.
The second vision of discipleship is about being right. People of faith who are all about being right
can often be most friendly and APPEAR to be most loving. They can be conversational and even kind – to
a point. They can be warm, welcoming,
and appreciative. They can be pious and
prayerful and devout. In addition, they
can be most generous. They’re willing to
sacrifice portions of time, talent, and treasure for the good of the
cause. They actually look like the
believers in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth.
They can be many things, but there’s one thing they cannot be
– and that is be wrong. At the core of
their being, they have to be right. If
they are not right, they crumble as individuals and as a community of faith. If their version of right is challenged, they
“take offense” almost immediately.
You see, that they were welcoming and friendly toward Jesus
in Nazareth is only half of the story.
When Jesus started to share a few of what we might call “inconvenient
truths”, their warmth and friendliness turned on a dime.
He said that a prophet “is not welcome” in his hometown. That got them scratching their heads. But then He gave them a few observations from
Israelite history. When there was a
famine in the land, to whom did God send a prophet? It wasn’t to an Israelite. It was to a pagan
widow from Sidon. Back in the days of
Elisha, there was a scourge of leprosy (kind of like a scourge of yellow fever
in the Mississippi Valley in 1878). None of the Israelites were cleansed, but
only a pagan military commander from Syria by the name of Naaman.
These statements from Jesus pushed those worshippers over the
edge, so they literally attempt to throw Jesus over the edge. Luke reports:
All the people in the synagogue were
furious when they heard this. They
got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on
which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked
right through the crowd and went on his way.
You see, at the end of the day Jesus didn’t fit in with their
view of what was right. For them, it was
all about being right. Once you get past
the coffee, the cookies, and the welcome team, there are churches like that
today – churches that have to be right – and some of them are very successful
in the way the culture defines success.
What does Jesus do?
Call down fire from heaven? No. He just walks through it all. He goes on His way. He and His followers, His disciples, walked
through that crowd of people that had to be right.
There is so much more than just being right: there is Jesus. He is God in the flesh, and God is love. Jesus is the fulfillment of all that is right
and the forgiver of all that is wrong.
His crucifixion was – and is! – sufficient payment. Was payment accepted? His resurrection from the grave at Easter
clinches it. In a word, it’s LOVE.
We are headed, as His followers, into, Lord willing, the 139th
year of existence – and today we follow on with two newly ordained elders and
one newly ordained deacon.
“Faith, hope, and love.
These three remain, but the greatest of these is love.” And we get to walk with it, follow it, and
live it.
Amen.
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