Love - to be taken out and given to others

 

Sunday 30th January 2022

Luke 4: 21 - 30

Last week we looked at Luke 4: 14 - 21. Jesus was in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth and he shared these verses of scripture:

¹⁸ ‘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,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ Luke 4: 18 – 19 NRSV

In these verses Jesus was announcing that the Gospel he was bringing, the Good News, was for the poor and oppressed, those at the margins of society. Jesus was announcing that he came to liberate the oppressed from everything thing that oppressed them. He came to release those held captive.

So far so good. Jesus, the local hero has gained some notoriety in other places through the healings he has brought about, and word has reached his hometown. We can imagine the pride can’t we that this son of Joseph and Mary is stood up front reading. But then suddenly it all changes. The local people begin to realise that Jesus is making the point that his Good News isn’t just for the people of Nazareth. It isn’t just for Jewish people. It is Good News for all people who are oppressed, poor, and so on. Jew and Gentile alike.

The local people are expecting him to do some of the works of wonder for them. They want to keep it all for themselves. Surely the people of God, the children of Abraham are deserving of this? Jesus is aware of this and says to them

‘Surely you will quote this proverb to me: “Physician, heal yourself!” And you will tell me, “Do here in your home town what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.”’ Luke 4:23

But Jesus tells them this will not happen. He may have done these things amongst the Gentiles in Capernaum but the people listening to him in the synagogue in Nazareth are not worthy of this happening. Jesus reminds them that during a time of famine God sent the prophet Elijah to help a Gentile woman a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon rather than to Jewish widows.

The people of Nazareth like all Jewish people had for years and years understood God in a certain way. They had understood God was their God. They were God’s chosen people and no one else mattered. Suddenly they are confronted with Jesus telling them they have got it wrong. No wonder they are angry and hurt.

Their comfortable world and all its security had been turned upside down by Jesus. His message was dismantling the status quo and bringing in a new world. A new kingdom in fact. A kingdom built on love for everyone.

Our other Bible passage this morning was the well-known passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians chapter 13 dealing with love. It has direct relevance to what we are thinking of this time.

Although in this passage in Luke Jesus doesn’t mention love for one’s neighbour that is clearly what he is thinking of. We know don’t we in one of his most famous parables – the parable of the Good Samaritan – he demonstrated how love should be blind, how love can, and must, cross boundaries.

The people of Nazareth were content inside their own synagogue, inside their own little town, in  their own little world. They seemingly cared nothing for those outside, certainly those outside who weren’t Jews. And yet on this occasion Jesus is saying that is what his Good News is about.

David Sanford is professor of journalism at Western Baptist College in America. He has written a paraphrase of 1 Corinthian 13. I’ve given you all a copy of it to take home and reflect on. He has done a very good job I think in putting the underlying message of Paul into a modern context.

It is too long to include here. If you wish to read it go to  

https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/love-a-paraphrase-of-1-corinthians-13-1185256.html

But here is a flavour:

If I talk a lot about God and the Bible and the Church, but I fail to ask about your needs and then help you, I'm simply making a lot of empty religious noise.

  Here is what love is like...genuine love. God's kind of love. It's patient. It can wait. It helps others, even if they never find out who did it.  Love doesn't look for greener pastures or dream of how things could be better if I just got rid of all my current commitments. Love doesn't boast. It doesn't try to build itself up to be something it isn't.

  Love comes and sits with you when you're feeling down and finds out what is wrong. It empathizes with you and believes in you. Love knows you'll come through just as God planned, and love sticks right beside you all the way.  Love doesn't give up, or quit, or diminish, or go home.  Love keeps on keeping on, even when everything goes wrong and the feelings leave and the other person doesn't seem as special anymore. Love succeeds 100 percent of the time. That, my friend, is what real love is!

No doubt the people of Nazareth in the synagogue that day would have though “We exhibit that kind of love. So why is he lecturing us?”  Perhaps they did exhibit love amongst themselves. But Jesus’ point to them – and to us – is that his love, the love of the Good News is not just for us, it is not to be kept inside these four walls, it is to be taken out and given to others.

Professor Eli Wiesel was a Romanian born American writer, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor. He wrote 57 books including Night a work based on his experiences in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

In his book, All Rivers Run to The Sea he tells of his family, living in Hungry during the dark days of the WWII. His family was waiting for their time to come, for the Nazis to arrive at their door and take them to the camps.

He tells about a peasant woman by the name of Maria. Maria was almost like a member of the family. She was a Christian. During the early years of the war, she continued to visit them, but eventually non-Jews were no longer allowed entrance to the ghettos. That did not deter Maria. She found her way through the barbed wire, and she came anyway, bringing the Wiesels fruits, vegetables, and cheese.

One day she came knocking at their door. There was a cabin that she had up in the hills. She wanted to take the children, of which Eli was one, and hide them there before the SS came. They decided after much debate to stay together as a family, although they were deeply moved at this gesture. Eli writes of her:

Dear Maria. If other Christians had acted like her, the trains rolling toward the unknown would have been less crowded. If priests and pastors had raised their voices, if the Vatican had broken its silence, the enemy's hand would not have been so free. But most thought only of themselves. A Jewish home was barely emptied of its inhabitants before they descended like vultures.

I think of Maria often, with affection and gratitude, he writes, and with wonder as well. This simple, uneducated woman stood taller than the city's intellectuals, dignitaries and clergy. My father had many acquaintances and even friends in the Christian community, not one of them showed the strength of character of this peasant woman. Of what value was their faith, their education, their social position, if it did not arouse their love. It was a simple and devout Christian woman who saved the town's honour.

Of course, it took great courage to stand up against the might of the Nazi regime. And whilst not excusable, it is understandable that most Christians did nothing. Though equally one must ask if for some of them at least this was down to anti semitism.

The message of the Gospel is that we must be prepared to show love. To leave our places of safety and show the radical love of Jesus to all people but especially those who in the eyes of the world don’t deserve that love.

Post Script

On the evening I'd preached this I watched a television programme "Call the midwife". The particular episode of the drama dealt with child abuse and domestic abuse in a very sensitive way. At the end of each epsode is an epilogue spoken by the person who originally wrote the book the drama is based on. In this epilgoue she said, in relation to a mother who had disicpled her child ie abused them out of 'love', "Love that hurts isn’t love at all".