At the Heart of God's Plan Is Love
Commentary
Jeremiah is appointed to pluck up and call out nations. Serious change. Not popular. Jesus suggests that God will institute the Jubilee, a radical redistribution of debt and assets. This is not popular either. But at the heart of God’s universe and God’s plan is love — and love will bind us together as nations, as citizens, and as one body in Christ.
Jeremiah 1:4-10
It’s a pretty mixed bag when it comes to stories of prophetic call and the prophet’s response in scripture. Ezekiel seems simply to have been overwhelmed with the glory of God’s presence as one of the exiles hundreds of miles from home. He doesn’t argue with God. Gideon bargains with God for a sign, and then bargains again. Moses insists he’s not up to the task. The thing to remember is that bearing the word of God is not a ticket to popularity. As Jesus said, the people might raise monuments to prophets that were safely dead, but they reviled the ones who told them things they did not want to hear.
Jeremiah’s excuse is that he is too young. We don’t know if Jeremiah was literally a young person, perhaps even a child, or if that’s just part of his self-image. Oddly enough we live in an era when more and more people are being called into the ministry later in life, when they have achieved many other things before hearing and responding to God’s call. So we may well say in response to the Holy Spirit that we’re too old as easily as we might say we’re too young.
But the prophetic call is not about popularity or even effectiveness. Some might say that some of the prophets were failures. They did not deter God’s people from a toxic lifestyle or a careening journey toward disaster. They did not convince kings to change their ways. Jeremiah would be lowered into a pit to die, and faced many hardships. Though his death is not recorded in scripture, there are traditions about his passing that are not comforting. But God’s larger purpose is warning us. And our calling does not have anything to do with any particular gifts we have or don’t have. It’s about our willingness to listen when others turn down the volume on God’s persistent calling.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Having outlined in chapter 12 how the many gifts we have as a diverse group of people molded into one body of Christ, the apostle shifts course and outlines for the Corinthians what he calls a better way.
It’s hard to know if Paul recited these words to the scribe who took down his dictation off the cuff, or if this was a meme that Paul had practiced and recited on many occasions. It is an expansion of the answer Jesus gave with regard to the best law in the Bible. You will remember that Jesus chose verses from Deuteronomy and Leviticus to demonstrate that our proper response is love — love of God, love of neighbor. If we focus on love, we don’t need the rules.
There were four words translated as love in the Greek language, three of which appear in the New Testament. There is eros, what we might call the love shared by lovers. There’s storge, love for things, like ketchup and fries. There is philos, a love for people, and there is agape, the divine love without self-interest, a higher love associated with God.
In this poetic passage (which is not strictly poetry) Paul outlines positive qualities of this kind of love as well as negative qualities that have nothing to do with agape. Patient? Kind? Yes. Jealous? Boastful? Arrogant? Rude? Rejoicing at wrong? No, no, no. Rejoice in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. Literally that means love never falls to the ground. But we lose sight of these things when we think in an immature fashion. True maturity no longer needs the Law. Truly mature believers don’t need the letters of Paul. Jeremiah’s prophecies are not needed if the rulers and people are acting in love. Jesus doesn’t have to outline the Jubilee to the folks in Nazareth if they are living in love.
Luke 4:21-30
If a Jeremiah shows reluctance to accept God’s prophetic call and, having accepted that call, lives a life of seeming failure to have a positive impact on events, we would like to think Jesus could show us how it’s done. Yet his visit to his home town of Nazareth is a failure. The local folks have heard about Jesus and the things he is doing, but when Jesus outlines God’s plan for Jubilee and reveals that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, the townsfolk respond with skepticism and anger and attempt to execute Jesus.
What was so threatening about Jubilee? Prophets like Isaiah, Amos, and Micah allude to situations where poor farmers had lost their land — exploited by the rich and powerful. Those who were wealthy might have felt threatened by it, because the Jubilee as described called for the elimination of debts that crushed workers in the field. Those who had to sell ancestral land because of their poverty would be able to reclaim those lands from those who had bought them. The Jubilee as described in Leviticus also makes it clear that the land belongs to God.
The folks of Nazareth might not have been poor, but working class people can become convinced that what little they have is threatened if those worse off than they receive hope. They may have seen the program outlined by Jesus as a threat.
Moreover, it seems that those in Nazareth had heard stories of wonders performed by Jesus. They may have felt cheated of the dog and pony show of miracles, healings, and wonders, and reacted angrily when they realized their wallets might be involved.
My suspicion is that nowadays many Christians prefer sermons that put others on the hot seat, literally, instead of Christ-inspired messages about God’s love for, and plans for, the poorest peoples and the poorest nations on the earth.
The suggestion here is that faithfulness to God’s call does not insure success as the world knows it, but that faithfulness is necessary, nevertheless. The message is not always popular. But it’s God’s message.
(Some of this comes “Bring the Jubilee: Economic Justice,” chapter 10 in the book “Ten Reasons to Love Leviticus” by Robert W. Neff and Frank Ramirez.)
Jeremiah 1:4-10
It’s a pretty mixed bag when it comes to stories of prophetic call and the prophet’s response in scripture. Ezekiel seems simply to have been overwhelmed with the glory of God’s presence as one of the exiles hundreds of miles from home. He doesn’t argue with God. Gideon bargains with God for a sign, and then bargains again. Moses insists he’s not up to the task. The thing to remember is that bearing the word of God is not a ticket to popularity. As Jesus said, the people might raise monuments to prophets that were safely dead, but they reviled the ones who told them things they did not want to hear.
Jeremiah’s excuse is that he is too young. We don’t know if Jeremiah was literally a young person, perhaps even a child, or if that’s just part of his self-image. Oddly enough we live in an era when more and more people are being called into the ministry later in life, when they have achieved many other things before hearing and responding to God’s call. So we may well say in response to the Holy Spirit that we’re too old as easily as we might say we’re too young.
But the prophetic call is not about popularity or even effectiveness. Some might say that some of the prophets were failures. They did not deter God’s people from a toxic lifestyle or a careening journey toward disaster. They did not convince kings to change their ways. Jeremiah would be lowered into a pit to die, and faced many hardships. Though his death is not recorded in scripture, there are traditions about his passing that are not comforting. But God’s larger purpose is warning us. And our calling does not have anything to do with any particular gifts we have or don’t have. It’s about our willingness to listen when others turn down the volume on God’s persistent calling.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Having outlined in chapter 12 how the many gifts we have as a diverse group of people molded into one body of Christ, the apostle shifts course and outlines for the Corinthians what he calls a better way.
It’s hard to know if Paul recited these words to the scribe who took down his dictation off the cuff, or if this was a meme that Paul had practiced and recited on many occasions. It is an expansion of the answer Jesus gave with regard to the best law in the Bible. You will remember that Jesus chose verses from Deuteronomy and Leviticus to demonstrate that our proper response is love — love of God, love of neighbor. If we focus on love, we don’t need the rules.
There were four words translated as love in the Greek language, three of which appear in the New Testament. There is eros, what we might call the love shared by lovers. There’s storge, love for things, like ketchup and fries. There is philos, a love for people, and there is agape, the divine love without self-interest, a higher love associated with God.
In this poetic passage (which is not strictly poetry) Paul outlines positive qualities of this kind of love as well as negative qualities that have nothing to do with agape. Patient? Kind? Yes. Jealous? Boastful? Arrogant? Rude? Rejoicing at wrong? No, no, no. Rejoice in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. Literally that means love never falls to the ground. But we lose sight of these things when we think in an immature fashion. True maturity no longer needs the Law. Truly mature believers don’t need the letters of Paul. Jeremiah’s prophecies are not needed if the rulers and people are acting in love. Jesus doesn’t have to outline the Jubilee to the folks in Nazareth if they are living in love.
Luke 4:21-30
If a Jeremiah shows reluctance to accept God’s prophetic call and, having accepted that call, lives a life of seeming failure to have a positive impact on events, we would like to think Jesus could show us how it’s done. Yet his visit to his home town of Nazareth is a failure. The local folks have heard about Jesus and the things he is doing, but when Jesus outlines God’s plan for Jubilee and reveals that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, the townsfolk respond with skepticism and anger and attempt to execute Jesus.
What was so threatening about Jubilee? Prophets like Isaiah, Amos, and Micah allude to situations where poor farmers had lost their land — exploited by the rich and powerful. Those who were wealthy might have felt threatened by it, because the Jubilee as described called for the elimination of debts that crushed workers in the field. Those who had to sell ancestral land because of their poverty would be able to reclaim those lands from those who had bought them. The Jubilee as described in Leviticus also makes it clear that the land belongs to God.
The folks of Nazareth might not have been poor, but working class people can become convinced that what little they have is threatened if those worse off than they receive hope. They may have seen the program outlined by Jesus as a threat.
Moreover, it seems that those in Nazareth had heard stories of wonders performed by Jesus. They may have felt cheated of the dog and pony show of miracles, healings, and wonders, and reacted angrily when they realized their wallets might be involved.
My suspicion is that nowadays many Christians prefer sermons that put others on the hot seat, literally, instead of Christ-inspired messages about God’s love for, and plans for, the poorest peoples and the poorest nations on the earth.
The suggestion here is that faithfulness to God’s call does not insure success as the world knows it, but that faithfulness is necessary, nevertheless. The message is not always popular. But it’s God’s message.
(Some of this comes “Bring the Jubilee: Economic Justice,” chapter 10 in the book “Ten Reasons to Love Leviticus” by Robert W. Neff and Frank Ramirez.)
