Bait and Switch
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For January 30, 2022:
Bait and Switch
by Tom Willadsen
Luke 4:21-30, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6
The word of the day is paraprodokian. Here are a couple examples:
“I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.” ― Emo Philips
“The pen is mightier than the sword, if you shoot that pen out of a gun.” ― Stephen Colbert
“It’s not just unprecedented—it’s never happened before!” — TIW Contributor Tom Willadsen
A paraprodokian is verbal bait and switch. The first part of the sentence leads you this way, but the second part takes you completely by surprise. Paraprodokians can be amusing, but their effect can be so jarring, so surprising that they get people very, very upset. Maybe even upset enough to toss the local kid who made good in the wider world off a hill — or to shock them to see the truth.
In the Bible
In many ways today’s reading from Jeremiah is a typical call story. The Lord addresses Jeremiah; Jeremiah objects; the Lord reassures; the Lord touches and thus validates the call. Moses’ and Isaiah calls contain those elements.
There are some basic ways, however, in which Jeremiah’s call differs from other call stories. The call precedes Jeremiah’s birth, for example. The Lord addressed Jeremiah in Jeremiah’s youth and informed him he had been called. Jeremiah’s objection is cast aside by the Lord’s bullying reassurance. Of all the prophets Jeremiah is the most honest, to himself and to the Lord, about the costs of being God’s mouthpiece. Perhaps this is because Jeremiah wasn’t given the chance to accept God’s call on his own behalf.
The challenge with the reading from I Corinthians is to imagine it in a setting other than a wedding. The paean to the power and strength of love is certainly an appropriate message for a couple promising to spend their lives together in plenty and in want, in sickness and health, but originally its target audience was the larger community, specifically the Body of Christ. Could these words speak to a congregation wrestling with whether and how to conduct in-person worship in the throes of a dramatic spike in a pandemic of which we’re all weary? (Yes, yes, yes.)
Jesus’ social standing has taken a u-turn since last week. The carpenter’s son in the seat of honor impresses the locals. (One wonders how he made such a good impression so quickly; he only read two verses from Isaiah. To his credit he picked verses that promise deliverance and restoration, but you’d think in declaring himself as the fulfilment of these words he’d have set off their Arrogance Detector.) But that was last week. This week he tells them that this good news and deliverance isn’t theirs alone. In fact, it’s for people like the widow in Zarephath, who cared for Elijah and Naaman, the Syrian. When his homies realize that he’s pulled a bait and switch they want to throw him off a hill. Somehow Jesus escapes from the mob.
Today’s psalm resonates with the Jeremiah and the gospel lessons. The psalmist names the Lord as her deliverer, refuge and rock and calls out to the Lord to be rescued. Jesus could have said exactly those words when the synagogue in Capernaum rose up against him. In the last verse in today’s reading the psalmist affirms that the Lord has been her protector since birth:
Upon you I have leaned from my birth;
It was you who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.
The Jeremiah reading begins with Jeremiah hearing that his call was issued while he was in his mother’s womb, the Lord only informed him about it later.
In the News
After being invited to give a speech for MLK Day at the UW-Madison campus, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones found out that some members of the group who invited her opposed to her appearance, claiming that her work on The 1619 Project and more didn’t represent the views of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Upon learning of that opposition, Hannah-Jones took matters into her own hands to teach a lesson to her audience. At the last minute, she ditched the speech she planned to give and meshed together King’s own words from addresses he gave between 1956 and 1967 — without letting her audience know upfront that it was his words, and not her own, she would be reading.
She made a slight editorial modification on King’s words, changing “Negro” to “black,” but otherwise, the first half of her speech was straight from King’s mouth.
Hannah-Jones decided the best response would be to quote King accurately by reading excerpts of his speeches without mentioning explicitly that they were his words. “And, whew, chile, it was AMAZING,” she said.
Hannah-Jones reminded them that, while he was alive, he was labeled a “charlatan, demagogue, communist, traitor” and that “three-quarters of Americans opposed King at his death.”
The most troubling thing about Hannah-Jones’s/King’s speech is how contemporary it sounds.
"The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there..."
In the Sermon
Jesus was well-received by the people who had watched him grow up, until he told them that the deliverance and good news he’d read to them from the prophets didn’t apply to them. They turned from adoring fans to fury-spitting mob when he told them that it was others whom God had in mind. They imagined God’s love as a Zero Sum Game, in which God’s finite love and mercy could not possibly reach people who were not them, or at least, like them. Surely God would love them less — or, horrors, not at all — if they believed that God loved the Syrians and whoever was living in Zarephath these days!
How would your congregation react to hearing that the powerful, durable love that Paul describes, the love that undergirds and strengthens married people who have “only just begun,” is the model for how Christians love one another, and a model for how Christians should love their neighbors?
Jeremiah was called not only for the happy ending of the prophets that Jesus read to his synagogue in Nazareth, but to “pull down,” “destroy” and “overthrow.”
In my community, the Omaha, Nebraska metro area, Covid cases have increased more than fivefold in the last month. The Omicron variant is raging, our hospitals are at capacity. Yet the assertion of the “right” of an individual to not be compelled to mask is stronger than ever. Science, medicine, the Common Good be damned, I don’t like it when my glasses fog up!
Perhaps your congregation, your community, needs to be shaken by a well-devised paraprodokian. Turn Paul’s words about the power of love into a force that is focused on, and intended for, other people. Not the person you share a household, or pew with, but people who stand next to you in the produce section. Or people who live in a neighborhood you don’t feel safe in.
If you do it right, there will be backlash. But backlash has always been there, it’s only revealed when it’s pushed against. Afflict the comfortable. Scandalize them by leading them to see that love that is patient and kind includes other people, especially other people. Love that is patient and kind calls us, the people who will hear our sermons, to make sacrifices.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Not Just For Weddings Any More
by Dean Feldmeyer
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
I dare say that if it wasn’t for weddings, most of us would never have read or heard the 13th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, better known as his hymn to love.
That’s a shame because a wedding service is probably the worst setting in which to hear that lovely poem. See, Paul never intended his meditation to be applied to interpersonal relationships. Read chapter 12 as we have for the past two weeks and you see that what Paul is talking about is the community of faith or what we call, the church.
1 Corinthians is about the fellowship of Jesus followers and how to get along and live together as a vital, healthy, authentic, supportive community in a big, thriving, bustling, multi-cultural city.
Paul in Corinth
The city of Corinth was a large, busy, diverse city, the capital city of the Roman province of Achaia. It was located in extreme southern Greece on the Isthmus of Corinth on high ground that allowed it to control the Port of Lechaion to the west and the Port of Cenchreae to the east. This isthmus was so narrow (about 3 ½ miles) that ships would dock in the ports and their good would be unloaded and taken into the city of Corinth to be traded there. Small ships were sometimes actually dragged across the isthmus from the Aegean Sea to the Strait of Corinth which led to the Mediterranean Sea. Nero attempted to have a canal dug across the isthmus but had to stop when problems in other provinces demanded his attention and resources. Evidence of that construction can be seen in archeological digs, today. While Corinth was known primarily as a city of trade it was also known for its industry in making pottery and bronze work, examples of which are still being uncovered in digs throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Corinth was, quite literally, where east met west for the purpose of trade and industry.
This meant that, in Paul’s time, it was a city with a vast and diverse population, somewhere between 800,000 and 900,000 souls, and right in the middle of that big, beautiful city there thrived a group of Jesus followers. They didn’t call themselves “Christians” or “churches” at that time. They were more like clubs or associations or guilds and, though the group was probably large, they rarely met all together in plenary meetings. More likely they met in each other’s homes over shared meals to sing, pray, read scripture, and discuss it in the style of the synagogues.
They were a diverse group, too, as diverse as the city in which they lived and met. There is reason to believe that among the Jesus followers in Corinth there were Africans, Europeans, and Asians. There were gentiles and there were Jews who had escaped the horrible slaughter of the Jewish war in Palestine that lasted from 66-70 CE and ended with the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the mass suicide at Masada, and the mass murder of more than a million Jewish men, women, and children by the Romans.
All of these Jesus followers had come together to form a Corinthian Jesus community and they brought with them their various cultures and traditions, their music, their languages, their poetry, their foods, their relationships, and their values. And the big problem they faced was how they were all going to live together, worship together, learn together, eat together, talk together, and get along as one body.
A big part of 1 Corinthians has to do with Paul’s attempt to instruct the Corinthian Jesus followers on how to do just that.
Chapter 12 deals with how they were to assimilate the different gifts and graces that not just individuals but groups of Jesus followers brought to the faith community and Paul concludes his discussion of that issue with this, in verse 12:31: But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
In other words, “Yeah, yeah, these gifts that you all value so much are all well and good but there is one gift that is greater than any of them, indeed, greater than all of them put together, and now I’m going to tell you what that gift is.”
The gifts of the spirit are given, he has said, “for the common good.” But there is one gift that none of you have mentioned that builds the community into an authentic community of faith, a true Jesus community.
And then he begins what we know as chapter 13.
Agape as Charity
One more thing before we go to the passage, itself. I prefer the King James Version for 1 Corinthians 13 because it translates the Greek word agape as “charity.” Other translations usually translate agape as “love” which is nice but lends itself to all sorts of romantic, saccharine interpretations that were just not intended by the author. There is nothing romantic in his use of agape. This is not about how to be a nice person or how make your marriage work. It’s concrete, practical advice on how to get along as a community when getting along isn’t always easy to do.
So, I like the King James translation of agape as “charity,” and not charity as we think of it around Christmas – giving to the poor and that kind of thing – but as the Free Dictionary defines it: Benevolence or generosity toward others and toward humanity; indulgence or forbearance in judging others;” a word whose synonyms include mercy, grace, lenience, and love.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul offers us a way of getting along with each other that embraces our differences and uses them to build authentic community. And he offers this as a panacea not just for Jesus followers who are having a hard time getting along with each other but for Jesus followers trying to get along in a world that often sneers with hostility at those whose desire it is to bring peace and harmony to all human interaction. He offers it, in other words, not just for the church but common good of the church and of the whole world.
So, let’s look at what I think of as Paul’s Panacea — “Charity.”
In the Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 13
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
Oratory was one of the highest values and one of the most sought-after skills of both the Roman and the Greek worlds but, Paul says, if they are practiced without charity, without grace and love, they are empty talents no more valuable than being able to strike a triangle or make a noise by buzzing into the mouthpiece of a tuba. And no one, individual or the community benefits.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
Have you ever known a person who was really, really smart? I mean someone who just puts you in awe of her intelligence or maybe someone whose piety is so real and genuine they make you feel unworthy to be in their presence? Yeah, we all have. But if they use these gifts only to improve their own lot in life or to lord them over others as the without a sense of charity, as the Pharisees did, they are, well, as nothing. And the community, instead of being built up, is torn down.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
I work at being generous. I over-tip my waiter, I thank the cashier and the bagger at the grocery store, I always buy more candy or magazines than I need from the kids who come to my door selling them to make money for their school band or sports team. When I was younger, I used to shovel the snow from the driveway of my elderly neighbor. But, Paul says, if the only reason I am generous and helpful is so people will admire me, then I gain nothing from my faux generosity. And my community – family, neighborhood, church, country – gains nothing as well.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Impatience, unkindness, envy, self-promotion, egotism. These things all undermine and tear down our community whether it is our family, our church, our neighborhood, or our country. We edify and build up with patience, kindness, satisfaction, and humility.
5 [Charity] Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Theologian Paul Tillich once described that state of sin (separation) into which all human’s sometimes fall, as that occasion when “…there is something in the misfortune of our best friends which does not displease us.” And when we are “ready to abuse everybody and everything, although often in a very refined way, for the pleasure of self-elevation, for an occasion for boasting, for a moment of lust? To know that we are ready is to know the meaning of the separation of life from life, and of ‘sin abounding.’” It is to see our community torn asunder by the very opposite of the grace and charity in need of which we all stand.
7 [Charity] Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
True charity is undefeatable. It overcomes and persists through pain, despair, seemingly endless failure, and mean and painful derision of others.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
Everything we know and experience, even the things we value most as a community, fades away with time. Everything except the charity that we exhibit toward others and the world around us. Indeed, even our knowledge and our discernment are limited. That’s just the way it is. Charity, however, knows no limits.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
But there is something that is perfect and true and outlives all of the partial and imperfect things we encounter in our lives.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Charity is an adult thing. Children don’t get it. They are ruled by their emotions. Adults are informed by their emotions but they are ruled by their capacity for rational thought. Charity is not a feeling, it’s a decision. When we are new to our faith it’s like looking at the world through dark sunglasses. But as we mature in the faith we come to understand even as we are understood by God – with grace, and love, and charity.
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
The only things that are eternal are faith, hope, and charity. But charity is number one. So strive for charity.
So, yes, this is good advice for a young couple standing at the threshold of life together as a family. They would do well to heed it. But that is not the limit of its meaning and application. It is a powerful bit of council for all Christian folk trying to live in Christian community, or in any community, for that matter.
Charity: Our Default Setting
You will, no doubt, recall the headlines and the news accounts a couple of weeks ago about the gunman who entered a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, just outside the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area, and took several people, including the rabbi hostage, for eleven hours. It was a tense time, fraught with high anxiety and fear for the lives of those innocents whose only desire was to come together and worship God in safety and peace.
Perhaps what you didn’t see, especially if you blinked, because it wasn’t visible for long, was the picture of a group of clergy who gathered at a Catholic church nearby to offer support for the families of the hostages and the law enforcement personnel who were present, and to pray for all involved, even the hostage taker, that no one would be harmed.
That group included a rabbi from another synagogue, a Muslim imam, a catholic priest, and Episcopal priest, and several protestant pastors from churches in the community. And it was charity, a sincere desire for the good of all that brought them together in that ministry.
Would that our political leaders would, for even a moment, provide for us an example as profound and moving as that of those clergy.
In my lifetime I have seen the American political scene change from a meeting of friends who differed in their opinions but who still respected and cared about each other, to a battleground where those who don’t agree are considered the enemy, incapable of even the smallest worthwhile idea, blind to any truth, and unworthy of respect, not to mention tolerance or even the briefest, perfunctory hearing.
Instead of sitting down together to hammer out solutions to problems in our communities, our schools, or our country, we call each other names, spray paint epithets and slurs on each other’s houses, and plot to see the other fail. Our goal is not to build up our country but to tear down our political adversaries, not to create good but to eradicate what we have defined as evil, not to make peace but to be constantly at war. And our war against each other is not a means to an end but an end in itself. The war against the other is all that matters. We elect our leaders not because they have plans and solutions to our problems but simply because they are willing to make war against the plans and solutions offered by the others.
Brothers and sisters, this is not something that is being done to us. We are doing it to ourselves. And it cannot long continue. Hate and prejudice and anger and resentment have become our default setting and we cannot long continue in that way. If we insist on doing so, we will consign ourselves, our families, our communities and our country to a bitter, shameful, and ignominious end.
Today Paul tells us in truth that only three things abide forever: Faith, Hope, and Charity. And the greatest of these is Charity. Let us, as a sign of our faith, cleave unto those three, especially charity, and make them our standards, the standards of our Christian faith, today, tomorrow, and forever.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Don’t say I’m too young
After three years of pandemic-induced chaos, churches may be looking for new sources of inspiration and leadership. Jeremiah’s youthful call to prophesy might be a paradigm for contemporary ways of plucking up and pulling down.
New research from the Barna Group indicates that among Christians, younger generations are more interested in developing their gifts than older generations. Barna’s researchers discovered that younger generations in the church place significantly more emphasis on developing gifts than older generations. Larger numbers of Millennials and Generation Z cohorts say that it is “extremely important” for one to know or understand their particular gifts and talents than Baby Boomers. According to the report “Gifted for More,” surveys show:
Younger generations are significantly more likely than their older counterparts to agree they often define themselves by their gifts and talents when introducing themselves to others. One in four practicing Christian Gen Z and Millennials agrees strongly on this point, nearly double the amount of Gen X and triple the number of Boomers who say the same (24% Gen Z and 25% Millennials vs. 13% Gen X and 7% Boomers).
* * *
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Thirty Under Thirty
For the past decade, Forbes’ list of Thirty Under 30 has identified trail blazers and innovative thinkers showing promise for reshaping the world. Ten years ago the list included up and coming leaders such as journalist Ronan Farrow, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom and newcomer actors Donald Glover and Lena Dunham.
The 2022 class features a mix of familiar names like NBA star Devin Booker, actors Miranda Cosgrove, Bella Thorne and musician Jack Harlow. But the list also includes less familiar names that have come of age during the hardships of the pandemic whose potential for innovation is garnering attention. Included are 25-year old first generation American Tarek Mansour, creator of the startup Kalshi, a federally-regulated “event investment” exchange that allows investors to trade on the outcome of events. (For example, investors can wager on how many Americans will get the Covid-19 vaccine.) Their innovation, achievements, and talents are worthy of consideration by churches of our generally older congregations.
They’re a diverse group, with an average age of 28, though nearly 14% are from Generation Z. This year’s class has collectively raised more than $1 billion in project funding. They are 24% immigrants, 1% nonbinary, 38% female, and 61% male, and carry a large amount (over $10 million) in student debt.
* * *
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
A force for good
While we most often associate 1 Corinthians 13 with weddings, Paul’s famous words on love were actually a sermon to a fractured church. The patient forbearing of agape, says Paul, is the greater good that the body of Christ should endeavor to seek. His words are a reminder of “our charter of salvation” as the old hymn suggests, a reminder that even in a divided, socially-isolated world, we are called to proclaim love that becomes a force for good.
Get over yourselves, Paul seems to be thinking, and seek the gifts that will bring true innovation to the Body of Christ.
With that in mind, churches might consider heading to a local library for inspiration. Not necessarily to grab a book or to engage in research, but perhaps to record a rap song, film a video or to participate in a ukulele flash mob.
When Keenon McCloy, director of the Memphis Public Library, was appointed to her job she decided to take the library beyond the shelf-stable card catalog. Today, the Benjamin C. Hooks Library in midtown Memphis is no longer a hushed repository of books, but is instead a vibrant hub of community where seniors learn to foxtrot, ukulele-playing flash mobs appear, and as many as 7,000 other events are hosted annually. You can check out books, of course, but also repair bicycles, use 3D printers, or record an album.
Leaders began seeing the library as a force for good in a community beset by poverty. One person noted: “The library has given me confidence and access to the resources I needed to make films,” she says. “In a place where you are traditionally supposed to be as quiet as possible, I have found my voice.”
All this reshaping and redesigning became an exercise of believing, hoping, and enduring all things. The core mission of the library remains the same: “We exist for the betterment of communities. We support literacy and learning. We want all our resources to be free and everyone to feel welcome.” Love has just led them in new ways.
* * * * * *
From team member Mary Austin:
Psalm 71:1-6
Refuge
“In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame,” the psalmist says, with the certainty that there is help to be found with God. The Welcome Church in Philadelphia makes that claim come to life for people without housing in Philadelphia. The church began with the Rev. Violet Little noticing something many of us would look past. “On a cold day in 2006, the Reverend Violet Little walked into a public transit restroom in Philadelphia. She was exhausted. She’d been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease that causes weakness, vision problems and breathing difficulties. Unable to drive, she was dependent on the city’s transit system. Inside, she found a woman washing her hair in the sink. Another woman was attempting to dry her pants under a hand dryer. Little felt a deep empathy. They began to chat. Soon a police officer arrived and told the women to get out. They quickly packed up and left. Little was stunned. Where were they supposed to go? In that moment, she realized their vulnerability and marginalization, and felt a passionate calling to provide them with a community that would feel like a home. “My life,” Little says, “was forever changed.” It was then she left behind her congregation of fourteen years to create a refuge for the homeless that would become the “church without walls” called the Welcome Church.”
Ironically, the church has no physical refuge. “Led by an ecumenical team of Christian ministers, the Welcome Church is itself technically homeless, as it has no permanent headquarters. It holds teatime in a Methodist church, Bible Study in a Lutheran church, a women’s group in subsidized housing and worship services in a park. It also holds celebrations for members moving into permanent housing, coordinates medical services through local universities, helps people get into rehab or jobs, and offers educational services to the public on the causes of homelessness.”
“Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me,” the psalmist implores God, and this church brings that hope into being for many who need a refuge.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30, Jeremiah 1:4-10
Identity, Up and Over
The passages from Jeremiah and Luke both explore the question of identity this week.
The writer Andrew Solomon explores the idea that we have both vertical and horizontal identities. Our vertical identity is our family — and in Jeremiah’s case, the God who is claiming him from birth. Our horizontal identity comes from the traits we don’t share with our family, including an identity in the LGBTQ+ community, or a disability, or a genius IQ.
Solomon says that vertical identities “are passed down from parent to child across the generations not only through strands of DNA, but also through shared cultural norms. Ethnicity, for example, is a vertical identity. Children of color are in general born to parents of color; the genetic fact of skin pigmentation is transmitted across generations along with a self-image as a person of color, even though that self-image may be subject to generational flux. Language is usually vertical, since most people who speak Greek raise their children to speak Greek, too, even if they inflect it differently or speak another language much of the time. Religion is moderately vertical.”
God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah’s identity is rooted in God.
Solomon adds, “Often, however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside the family. Physical disability tends to be horizontal, as does genius.”
If we have one of these identities, we need to get support for these identities outside the family. This is what becomes clear to Jesus, as he moves deeply into this ministry, and as his hometown becomes so inhospitable.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Disappointment
It is often said that expectations are pre-loaded resentments, and the hometown folks in Nazareth are primed for disappointment when Jesus comes to town. They have a certain kind of favorite son in mind, and Jesus falls short of what they want. V.R. Ferose had a similar journey, on a smaller scale, when his young son was diagnosed with autism. He was heartbroken and disappointed that none of what he imagined for his son would come to pass, and yet he chose a different path. He says, “Like every parent with a child with Autism, I had spent a significant time trying to find a cure for Vivaan’s condition. I read books which spoke about a complete cure and triumph over autism, and I hoped it would magically cure Vivaan too. I believed Autism was a problem and I had to solve it. The more I was unable to, the more frustrated I got.
“Soon I realized that I was chasing the wrong goal. If I started looking at Vivaan as unique and enjoy him for what he is, life was fun. Not comparing Vivaan with others was key. At times, we had to overcome the social compulsions of throwing a birthday party like every other family did. We realized Vivaan enjoyed the solitude of the family and cutting birthday cakes socially made him more anxious. So we started celebrating birthday by pampering Vivaan and giving him a free day — no therapies and unlimited access to his favorite object, an iPAD!”
He adds, “We tend to overestimate our pain and underestimate others’ pain. As soon as we are able to detach ourselves from the expectations of the society, and stop comparing, life becomes easier. One of my realizations was, since Vivaan needed so much time and attention, worrying about others meant that much less time we spent on Vivaan. Hence we benchmarked Vivaan as normal (btw, who decides who is normal and who is not?) and started doing everything every other parent would do — go for dinners, watch movies and take vacations!”
He and his wife learned to change their expectations, and they found deep fulfillment in ways they didn’t expect.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Disappointment, Part Two
The people listening to Jesus are deeply disappointed in him. They were hoping for so much more from him. Author and professor Kate Bowler notes that, at this time of year, our disappointment may be with ourselves, pointed inward instead of outward. “New Years is wrought with great plans. Plans to eat different. Act different. Save different. Be different. We want to believe that at the precipice of a new year we can become new versions of ourselves. We hope to change! Really! We do. But, then a few weeks in, we’re back. In the same routines. Same old habits. Same bodies and minds and frustrations. Stuck in webs of obligations and dependents and bodies and minds and entire systems that are sometimes out of our control.
“So, this year, what if we let ourselves off the hook for becoming someone different? For believing that our best selves are before us, if we just try XYZ. Yes, we are capable of change. But let’s take ourselves off the hook for being GOOD, BETTER, BEST. Perhaps today, it is enough to love and dream and hope and nap and search for beauty and truth and try again tomorrow.”
The people in the synagogue are disappointed with Jesus, and he may well be disappointed with them. As he leaves town, he gives us a good example of how to let disappointment roll away and to start again.
* * * * * *
From team member Katy Stenta:
Luke 4:21-30
Good News
When Jesus preached the good news about and to the poor, the captive, and marginal, this is not what the privileged people, those who were able to access the temple, wanted to hear. Often time good news is this way. We in America have good news like this. The good news is we have enough empty houses to solve homelessness and solving homelessness solves a lot of other problems. The bad news is we are not certain that people deserve houses.
The good news is that feeding children at schools makes them healthy and increases test scores. The bad news is we don't want to do that because it feels socialist.
The good news is the Child Tax Refund pulled three million families out of poverty. The bad news is we are not going to renew that part of the tax laws.
The good news is we know how to stop Covid. The bad news is, we have to all work together to do it.
The thing is, the good news is out there, but it has to be inclusive to be good news. If its not inclusive, it’s not good news, it’s okay news. So often we would rather throw Jesus off of the cliff, than hear, be, and do the good news things. Friends — hear the good news.
* * *
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Volcano Monster or Mountain Goddess
The plot of the children's movie Moana is that she and the demi-god, Maui, have to go and return the heart to Te Fiti. Without the heart, Te Fiti is no longer an island goddess of life-giving power... and she shared it with the world. Maui took the heart, and transformed her into a heartless, gong without love, and became Te Ka. She has no love and no one can recognize her without her heart, until Moana understands what had happened.
* * *
Jeremiah 1:4-10
No Words
Imposter syndrome is a real psychological state, where one cannot accept one’s own achievements, and worries that the praise is not worthy and that they do not deserve credit for their accomplishments. Here, God confronts imposter syndrome and says there is no “I am only a boy” excuse — for God calls us as we are. The safety net with God is that we are safe to be fully ourselves and therefore do not need to be imposters, which is different than the realities of our world.
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WORSHIP
by George Reed
Call to Worship
One: In you, O God, we take refuge; let us never be put to shame.
All: In your righteousness incline your ear to us and save us.
One: Be to us a rock of refuge, a strong fortress.
All: Save us, for you are our rock and our fortress.
One: For you, O God, are our hope, our trust.
All: O God, our praise is continually of you.
OR
One: The God who gives love so freely comes among us.
All: We rejoice that God’s love shines upon us.
One: As God’s love caresses us it also calls us.
All: We receive God’s love and God’s call.
One: God calls us to love others as God loves us.
All: With thankfulness we will share God’s love with all.
Hymns and Songs
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
UMH: 89
H82: 376
PH: 464
AAHH: 120
NNBH: 40
NCH: 4
CH: 2
LBW: 551
ELW: 836
W&P: 59
AMEC: 75
STLT: 29
Come Down, O Love Divine
UMH: 475
H82: 516
PH: 313
NCH: 289
CH: 582
LBW: 508
ELW: 804
W&P: 330
The Gift of Love
UMH: 408
AAHH: 522
CH: 526
W&P: 397
Renew: 155
To God Be the Glory
UMH: 98
PH: 485
AAHH: 157
NNBH: 17
CH: 39
W&P: 66
AMEC: 21
Renew: 258
There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
UMH: 121
H82: 469/470
PH: 298
NCH: 23
CH: 73
LBW: 290
ELW: 587/588
W&P: 61
AMEC: 78
STLT: 213
Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive
UMH: 390
H82: 674
PH: 347
LBW: 307
ELW: 605
W&P: 382
Renew: 184
All Who Love and Serve Your City
UMH: 433
H82: 570/571
PH: 413
CH: 670
LBW: 436
ELW: 724
W&P: 625
More Love to Thee, O Christ
UMH: 453
PH: 359
AAHH: 575
NNBH: 214
NCH: 456
CH: 527
AMEC: 460
Spirit of God, Descend upon My Heart
UMH: 500
PH: 326
AAHH: 312
NCH: 290
CH: 265
LBW: 486
ELW: 800
W&P: 132
AMEC: 189
Blest Be the Tie That Binds
UMH: 557
PH: 438
AAHH: 341
NNBH: 298
NCH: 393
CH: 433
LBW: 370
ELW: 656
W&P: 393
AMEC: 522
Help Us Accept Each Other
UMH: 560
PH: 358
NCH: 388
CH: 487
W&P: 596
AMEC: 558
Shine, Jesus, Shine
CCB: 81
Renew: 247
They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love
CCB: 78
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is love and has created all through your love:
Grant us the grace to reflect your love back to you
and to all your children and all of your creation;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are love. You brought creation into being through your love and it reflects your presence. Help us to reflect your love back to you and to all your children. Help us to see your loving presence in all creation. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to live in and through your love.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. In love you created and in love you seek to redeem us. We have allowed our selfishness to block the image of your love from shining in our lives. Where we should be signs of your gracious presence we have been signs of division and hatred. Forgive us and renew your image within us that we might share your love with others. Amen.
One: God is love and is always striving to draw creation back to its true nature as a reflection of that love. Receive God’s grace and forgiveness and allow that love to shine through you.
Prayers of the People
We praise and glorify your name, O God, because your love is the foundation of all creation. Your gracious presence dwells within all that you have created.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. In love you created and in love you seek to redeem us. We have allowed our selfishness to block the image of your love from shining in our lives. Where we should be signs of your gracious presence we have been signs of division and hatred. Forgive us and renew your image within us that we might share your love with others.
We give you thanks for all the ways your love radiates from your creation. We thank you for the beauty of nature and for the love of family, friends, and folk in the congregation. We thank you for the kindness of strangers and for the opportunities you offer us to share you love with others, especially those who need it most.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We are aware of many who suffer and struggle in this world. Some of them we know and some we do not. We know that known or unknown to us they are all known and loved by you. We lift those in need up to you not because you do not know or because you do not care but because you invite us to be part of your caring, loving, healing presence in this world.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
* * * * * *
CHILDREN'S SERMON
Asking For Help Is Okay — Even If You Don't Know How
by Quantisha Mason-Doll
Psalm 71:1-6
Before you start: Kids Help Line has a detailed repository for how to talk and educate children on how to ask for help. It also has resources on educating adults.
King David loved to write songs for God. He was someone who enjoyed putting his thoughts, feelings, and prayers to music so that they would be gentle on God's ears. For him it was the best way he could communicate his feelings to God. Through the psalms King David models the best ways for us to speak with our God. There are psalms that are happy, there are psalms that are sad, there are even some that are angry. Today's song is no different. Our psalm today shows that it is okay for someone as mighty and powerful as David to ask for help. In fact, our psalm tells us it is never a burden or shameful to seek help from the right people.
(At this point it would be best to go into a short discussion about seeking help from the right people by identifying helpers. Also establishing when it’s best to seek help from both God and our earthly helpers.)
Prayer
Loving God we thank you for your Earthly helpers. We thank you for our ability to help others. Help us to know when it is best to ask for help. Guide us as we try to be better helpers in the world.
All praise be to your guiding hand.
Amen.
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The Immediate Word, January 30, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
- Bait and Switch by Tom Willadsen.
- Second Thoughts: Not Just For Weddings Any More by Dean Feldmeyer.
- Sermon illustrations by Chris Keating, Mary Austin, Katy Stenta.
- Worship resources by George Reed.
- Children's sermon: Asking For Help Is Okay Even If You Don't Know How by Quantisha Mason-Doll.
Bait and Switchby Tom Willadsen
Luke 4:21-30, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6
The word of the day is paraprodokian. Here are a couple examples:
“I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.” ― Emo Philips
“The pen is mightier than the sword, if you shoot that pen out of a gun.” ― Stephen Colbert
“It’s not just unprecedented—it’s never happened before!” — TIW Contributor Tom Willadsen
A paraprodokian is verbal bait and switch. The first part of the sentence leads you this way, but the second part takes you completely by surprise. Paraprodokians can be amusing, but their effect can be so jarring, so surprising that they get people very, very upset. Maybe even upset enough to toss the local kid who made good in the wider world off a hill — or to shock them to see the truth.
In the Bible
In many ways today’s reading from Jeremiah is a typical call story. The Lord addresses Jeremiah; Jeremiah objects; the Lord reassures; the Lord touches and thus validates the call. Moses’ and Isaiah calls contain those elements.
There are some basic ways, however, in which Jeremiah’s call differs from other call stories. The call precedes Jeremiah’s birth, for example. The Lord addressed Jeremiah in Jeremiah’s youth and informed him he had been called. Jeremiah’s objection is cast aside by the Lord’s bullying reassurance. Of all the prophets Jeremiah is the most honest, to himself and to the Lord, about the costs of being God’s mouthpiece. Perhaps this is because Jeremiah wasn’t given the chance to accept God’s call on his own behalf.
The challenge with the reading from I Corinthians is to imagine it in a setting other than a wedding. The paean to the power and strength of love is certainly an appropriate message for a couple promising to spend their lives together in plenty and in want, in sickness and health, but originally its target audience was the larger community, specifically the Body of Christ. Could these words speak to a congregation wrestling with whether and how to conduct in-person worship in the throes of a dramatic spike in a pandemic of which we’re all weary? (Yes, yes, yes.)
Jesus’ social standing has taken a u-turn since last week. The carpenter’s son in the seat of honor impresses the locals. (One wonders how he made such a good impression so quickly; he only read two verses from Isaiah. To his credit he picked verses that promise deliverance and restoration, but you’d think in declaring himself as the fulfilment of these words he’d have set off their Arrogance Detector.) But that was last week. This week he tells them that this good news and deliverance isn’t theirs alone. In fact, it’s for people like the widow in Zarephath, who cared for Elijah and Naaman, the Syrian. When his homies realize that he’s pulled a bait and switch they want to throw him off a hill. Somehow Jesus escapes from the mob.
Today’s psalm resonates with the Jeremiah and the gospel lessons. The psalmist names the Lord as her deliverer, refuge and rock and calls out to the Lord to be rescued. Jesus could have said exactly those words when the synagogue in Capernaum rose up against him. In the last verse in today’s reading the psalmist affirms that the Lord has been her protector since birth:
Upon you I have leaned from my birth;
It was you who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.
The Jeremiah reading begins with Jeremiah hearing that his call was issued while he was in his mother’s womb, the Lord only informed him about it later.
In the News
After being invited to give a speech for MLK Day at the UW-Madison campus, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones found out that some members of the group who invited her opposed to her appearance, claiming that her work on The 1619 Project and more didn’t represent the views of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Upon learning of that opposition, Hannah-Jones took matters into her own hands to teach a lesson to her audience. At the last minute, she ditched the speech she planned to give and meshed together King’s own words from addresses he gave between 1956 and 1967 — without letting her audience know upfront that it was his words, and not her own, she would be reading.
She made a slight editorial modification on King’s words, changing “Negro” to “black,” but otherwise, the first half of her speech was straight from King’s mouth.
Hannah-Jones decided the best response would be to quote King accurately by reading excerpts of his speeches without mentioning explicitly that they were his words. “And, whew, chile, it was AMAZING,” she said.
Hannah-Jones reminded them that, while he was alive, he was labeled a “charlatan, demagogue, communist, traitor” and that “three-quarters of Americans opposed King at his death.”
The most troubling thing about Hannah-Jones’s/King’s speech is how contemporary it sounds.
"The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there..."
In the Sermon
Jesus was well-received by the people who had watched him grow up, until he told them that the deliverance and good news he’d read to them from the prophets didn’t apply to them. They turned from adoring fans to fury-spitting mob when he told them that it was others whom God had in mind. They imagined God’s love as a Zero Sum Game, in which God’s finite love and mercy could not possibly reach people who were not them, or at least, like them. Surely God would love them less — or, horrors, not at all — if they believed that God loved the Syrians and whoever was living in Zarephath these days!
How would your congregation react to hearing that the powerful, durable love that Paul describes, the love that undergirds and strengthens married people who have “only just begun,” is the model for how Christians love one another, and a model for how Christians should love their neighbors?
Jeremiah was called not only for the happy ending of the prophets that Jesus read to his synagogue in Nazareth, but to “pull down,” “destroy” and “overthrow.”
In my community, the Omaha, Nebraska metro area, Covid cases have increased more than fivefold in the last month. The Omicron variant is raging, our hospitals are at capacity. Yet the assertion of the “right” of an individual to not be compelled to mask is stronger than ever. Science, medicine, the Common Good be damned, I don’t like it when my glasses fog up!
Perhaps your congregation, your community, needs to be shaken by a well-devised paraprodokian. Turn Paul’s words about the power of love into a force that is focused on, and intended for, other people. Not the person you share a household, or pew with, but people who stand next to you in the produce section. Or people who live in a neighborhood you don’t feel safe in.
If you do it right, there will be backlash. But backlash has always been there, it’s only revealed when it’s pushed against. Afflict the comfortable. Scandalize them by leading them to see that love that is patient and kind includes other people, especially other people. Love that is patient and kind calls us, the people who will hear our sermons, to make sacrifices.
SECOND THOUGHTSNot Just For Weddings Any More
by Dean Feldmeyer
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
I dare say that if it wasn’t for weddings, most of us would never have read or heard the 13th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, better known as his hymn to love.
That’s a shame because a wedding service is probably the worst setting in which to hear that lovely poem. See, Paul never intended his meditation to be applied to interpersonal relationships. Read chapter 12 as we have for the past two weeks and you see that what Paul is talking about is the community of faith or what we call, the church.
1 Corinthians is about the fellowship of Jesus followers and how to get along and live together as a vital, healthy, authentic, supportive community in a big, thriving, bustling, multi-cultural city.
Paul in Corinth
The city of Corinth was a large, busy, diverse city, the capital city of the Roman province of Achaia. It was located in extreme southern Greece on the Isthmus of Corinth on high ground that allowed it to control the Port of Lechaion to the west and the Port of Cenchreae to the east. This isthmus was so narrow (about 3 ½ miles) that ships would dock in the ports and their good would be unloaded and taken into the city of Corinth to be traded there. Small ships were sometimes actually dragged across the isthmus from the Aegean Sea to the Strait of Corinth which led to the Mediterranean Sea. Nero attempted to have a canal dug across the isthmus but had to stop when problems in other provinces demanded his attention and resources. Evidence of that construction can be seen in archeological digs, today. While Corinth was known primarily as a city of trade it was also known for its industry in making pottery and bronze work, examples of which are still being uncovered in digs throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Corinth was, quite literally, where east met west for the purpose of trade and industry.
This meant that, in Paul’s time, it was a city with a vast and diverse population, somewhere between 800,000 and 900,000 souls, and right in the middle of that big, beautiful city there thrived a group of Jesus followers. They didn’t call themselves “Christians” or “churches” at that time. They were more like clubs or associations or guilds and, though the group was probably large, they rarely met all together in plenary meetings. More likely they met in each other’s homes over shared meals to sing, pray, read scripture, and discuss it in the style of the synagogues.
They were a diverse group, too, as diverse as the city in which they lived and met. There is reason to believe that among the Jesus followers in Corinth there were Africans, Europeans, and Asians. There were gentiles and there were Jews who had escaped the horrible slaughter of the Jewish war in Palestine that lasted from 66-70 CE and ended with the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the mass suicide at Masada, and the mass murder of more than a million Jewish men, women, and children by the Romans.
All of these Jesus followers had come together to form a Corinthian Jesus community and they brought with them their various cultures and traditions, their music, their languages, their poetry, their foods, their relationships, and their values. And the big problem they faced was how they were all going to live together, worship together, learn together, eat together, talk together, and get along as one body.
A big part of 1 Corinthians has to do with Paul’s attempt to instruct the Corinthian Jesus followers on how to do just that.
Chapter 12 deals with how they were to assimilate the different gifts and graces that not just individuals but groups of Jesus followers brought to the faith community and Paul concludes his discussion of that issue with this, in verse 12:31: But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
In other words, “Yeah, yeah, these gifts that you all value so much are all well and good but there is one gift that is greater than any of them, indeed, greater than all of them put together, and now I’m going to tell you what that gift is.”
The gifts of the spirit are given, he has said, “for the common good.” But there is one gift that none of you have mentioned that builds the community into an authentic community of faith, a true Jesus community.
And then he begins what we know as chapter 13.
Agape as Charity
One more thing before we go to the passage, itself. I prefer the King James Version for 1 Corinthians 13 because it translates the Greek word agape as “charity.” Other translations usually translate agape as “love” which is nice but lends itself to all sorts of romantic, saccharine interpretations that were just not intended by the author. There is nothing romantic in his use of agape. This is not about how to be a nice person or how make your marriage work. It’s concrete, practical advice on how to get along as a community when getting along isn’t always easy to do.
So, I like the King James translation of agape as “charity,” and not charity as we think of it around Christmas – giving to the poor and that kind of thing – but as the Free Dictionary defines it: Benevolence or generosity toward others and toward humanity; indulgence or forbearance in judging others;” a word whose synonyms include mercy, grace, lenience, and love.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul offers us a way of getting along with each other that embraces our differences and uses them to build authentic community. And he offers this as a panacea not just for Jesus followers who are having a hard time getting along with each other but for Jesus followers trying to get along in a world that often sneers with hostility at those whose desire it is to bring peace and harmony to all human interaction. He offers it, in other words, not just for the church but common good of the church and of the whole world.
So, let’s look at what I think of as Paul’s Panacea — “Charity.”
In the Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 13
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
Oratory was one of the highest values and one of the most sought-after skills of both the Roman and the Greek worlds but, Paul says, if they are practiced without charity, without grace and love, they are empty talents no more valuable than being able to strike a triangle or make a noise by buzzing into the mouthpiece of a tuba. And no one, individual or the community benefits.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
Have you ever known a person who was really, really smart? I mean someone who just puts you in awe of her intelligence or maybe someone whose piety is so real and genuine they make you feel unworthy to be in their presence? Yeah, we all have. But if they use these gifts only to improve their own lot in life or to lord them over others as the without a sense of charity, as the Pharisees did, they are, well, as nothing. And the community, instead of being built up, is torn down.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
I work at being generous. I over-tip my waiter, I thank the cashier and the bagger at the grocery store, I always buy more candy or magazines than I need from the kids who come to my door selling them to make money for their school band or sports team. When I was younger, I used to shovel the snow from the driveway of my elderly neighbor. But, Paul says, if the only reason I am generous and helpful is so people will admire me, then I gain nothing from my faux generosity. And my community – family, neighborhood, church, country – gains nothing as well.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Impatience, unkindness, envy, self-promotion, egotism. These things all undermine and tear down our community whether it is our family, our church, our neighborhood, or our country. We edify and build up with patience, kindness, satisfaction, and humility.
5 [Charity] Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Theologian Paul Tillich once described that state of sin (separation) into which all human’s sometimes fall, as that occasion when “…there is something in the misfortune of our best friends which does not displease us.” And when we are “ready to abuse everybody and everything, although often in a very refined way, for the pleasure of self-elevation, for an occasion for boasting, for a moment of lust? To know that we are ready is to know the meaning of the separation of life from life, and of ‘sin abounding.’” It is to see our community torn asunder by the very opposite of the grace and charity in need of which we all stand.
7 [Charity] Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
True charity is undefeatable. It overcomes and persists through pain, despair, seemingly endless failure, and mean and painful derision of others.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
Everything we know and experience, even the things we value most as a community, fades away with time. Everything except the charity that we exhibit toward others and the world around us. Indeed, even our knowledge and our discernment are limited. That’s just the way it is. Charity, however, knows no limits.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
But there is something that is perfect and true and outlives all of the partial and imperfect things we encounter in our lives.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Charity is an adult thing. Children don’t get it. They are ruled by their emotions. Adults are informed by their emotions but they are ruled by their capacity for rational thought. Charity is not a feeling, it’s a decision. When we are new to our faith it’s like looking at the world through dark sunglasses. But as we mature in the faith we come to understand even as we are understood by God – with grace, and love, and charity.
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
The only things that are eternal are faith, hope, and charity. But charity is number one. So strive for charity.
So, yes, this is good advice for a young couple standing at the threshold of life together as a family. They would do well to heed it. But that is not the limit of its meaning and application. It is a powerful bit of council for all Christian folk trying to live in Christian community, or in any community, for that matter.
Charity: Our Default Setting
You will, no doubt, recall the headlines and the news accounts a couple of weeks ago about the gunman who entered a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, just outside the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area, and took several people, including the rabbi hostage, for eleven hours. It was a tense time, fraught with high anxiety and fear for the lives of those innocents whose only desire was to come together and worship God in safety and peace.
Perhaps what you didn’t see, especially if you blinked, because it wasn’t visible for long, was the picture of a group of clergy who gathered at a Catholic church nearby to offer support for the families of the hostages and the law enforcement personnel who were present, and to pray for all involved, even the hostage taker, that no one would be harmed.
That group included a rabbi from another synagogue, a Muslim imam, a catholic priest, and Episcopal priest, and several protestant pastors from churches in the community. And it was charity, a sincere desire for the good of all that brought them together in that ministry.
Would that our political leaders would, for even a moment, provide for us an example as profound and moving as that of those clergy.
In my lifetime I have seen the American political scene change from a meeting of friends who differed in their opinions but who still respected and cared about each other, to a battleground where those who don’t agree are considered the enemy, incapable of even the smallest worthwhile idea, blind to any truth, and unworthy of respect, not to mention tolerance or even the briefest, perfunctory hearing.
Instead of sitting down together to hammer out solutions to problems in our communities, our schools, or our country, we call each other names, spray paint epithets and slurs on each other’s houses, and plot to see the other fail. Our goal is not to build up our country but to tear down our political adversaries, not to create good but to eradicate what we have defined as evil, not to make peace but to be constantly at war. And our war against each other is not a means to an end but an end in itself. The war against the other is all that matters. We elect our leaders not because they have plans and solutions to our problems but simply because they are willing to make war against the plans and solutions offered by the others.
Brothers and sisters, this is not something that is being done to us. We are doing it to ourselves. And it cannot long continue. Hate and prejudice and anger and resentment have become our default setting and we cannot long continue in that way. If we insist on doing so, we will consign ourselves, our families, our communities and our country to a bitter, shameful, and ignominious end.
Today Paul tells us in truth that only three things abide forever: Faith, Hope, and Charity. And the greatest of these is Charity. Let us, as a sign of our faith, cleave unto those three, especially charity, and make them our standards, the standards of our Christian faith, today, tomorrow, and forever.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Chris Keating:Jeremiah 1:4-10
Don’t say I’m too young
After three years of pandemic-induced chaos, churches may be looking for new sources of inspiration and leadership. Jeremiah’s youthful call to prophesy might be a paradigm for contemporary ways of plucking up and pulling down.
New research from the Barna Group indicates that among Christians, younger generations are more interested in developing their gifts than older generations. Barna’s researchers discovered that younger generations in the church place significantly more emphasis on developing gifts than older generations. Larger numbers of Millennials and Generation Z cohorts say that it is “extremely important” for one to know or understand their particular gifts and talents than Baby Boomers. According to the report “Gifted for More,” surveys show:
Younger generations are significantly more likely than their older counterparts to agree they often define themselves by their gifts and talents when introducing themselves to others. One in four practicing Christian Gen Z and Millennials agrees strongly on this point, nearly double the amount of Gen X and triple the number of Boomers who say the same (24% Gen Z and 25% Millennials vs. 13% Gen X and 7% Boomers).
* * *
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Thirty Under Thirty
For the past decade, Forbes’ list of Thirty Under 30 has identified trail blazers and innovative thinkers showing promise for reshaping the world. Ten years ago the list included up and coming leaders such as journalist Ronan Farrow, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom and newcomer actors Donald Glover and Lena Dunham.
The 2022 class features a mix of familiar names like NBA star Devin Booker, actors Miranda Cosgrove, Bella Thorne and musician Jack Harlow. But the list also includes less familiar names that have come of age during the hardships of the pandemic whose potential for innovation is garnering attention. Included are 25-year old first generation American Tarek Mansour, creator of the startup Kalshi, a federally-regulated “event investment” exchange that allows investors to trade on the outcome of events. (For example, investors can wager on how many Americans will get the Covid-19 vaccine.) Their innovation, achievements, and talents are worthy of consideration by churches of our generally older congregations.
They’re a diverse group, with an average age of 28, though nearly 14% are from Generation Z. This year’s class has collectively raised more than $1 billion in project funding. They are 24% immigrants, 1% nonbinary, 38% female, and 61% male, and carry a large amount (over $10 million) in student debt.
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1 Corinthians 13:1-13
A force for good
While we most often associate 1 Corinthians 13 with weddings, Paul’s famous words on love were actually a sermon to a fractured church. The patient forbearing of agape, says Paul, is the greater good that the body of Christ should endeavor to seek. His words are a reminder of “our charter of salvation” as the old hymn suggests, a reminder that even in a divided, socially-isolated world, we are called to proclaim love that becomes a force for good.
Get over yourselves, Paul seems to be thinking, and seek the gifts that will bring true innovation to the Body of Christ.
With that in mind, churches might consider heading to a local library for inspiration. Not necessarily to grab a book or to engage in research, but perhaps to record a rap song, film a video or to participate in a ukulele flash mob.
When Keenon McCloy, director of the Memphis Public Library, was appointed to her job she decided to take the library beyond the shelf-stable card catalog. Today, the Benjamin C. Hooks Library in midtown Memphis is no longer a hushed repository of books, but is instead a vibrant hub of community where seniors learn to foxtrot, ukulele-playing flash mobs appear, and as many as 7,000 other events are hosted annually. You can check out books, of course, but also repair bicycles, use 3D printers, or record an album.
Leaders began seeing the library as a force for good in a community beset by poverty. One person noted: “The library has given me confidence and access to the resources I needed to make films,” she says. “In a place where you are traditionally supposed to be as quiet as possible, I have found my voice.”
All this reshaping and redesigning became an exercise of believing, hoping, and enduring all things. The core mission of the library remains the same: “We exist for the betterment of communities. We support literacy and learning. We want all our resources to be free and everyone to feel welcome.” Love has just led them in new ways.
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From team member Mary Austin:Psalm 71:1-6
Refuge
“In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame,” the psalmist says, with the certainty that there is help to be found with God. The Welcome Church in Philadelphia makes that claim come to life for people without housing in Philadelphia. The church began with the Rev. Violet Little noticing something many of us would look past. “On a cold day in 2006, the Reverend Violet Little walked into a public transit restroom in Philadelphia. She was exhausted. She’d been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease that causes weakness, vision problems and breathing difficulties. Unable to drive, she was dependent on the city’s transit system. Inside, she found a woman washing her hair in the sink. Another woman was attempting to dry her pants under a hand dryer. Little felt a deep empathy. They began to chat. Soon a police officer arrived and told the women to get out. They quickly packed up and left. Little was stunned. Where were they supposed to go? In that moment, she realized their vulnerability and marginalization, and felt a passionate calling to provide them with a community that would feel like a home. “My life,” Little says, “was forever changed.” It was then she left behind her congregation of fourteen years to create a refuge for the homeless that would become the “church without walls” called the Welcome Church.”
Ironically, the church has no physical refuge. “Led by an ecumenical team of Christian ministers, the Welcome Church is itself technically homeless, as it has no permanent headquarters. It holds teatime in a Methodist church, Bible Study in a Lutheran church, a women’s group in subsidized housing and worship services in a park. It also holds celebrations for members moving into permanent housing, coordinates medical services through local universities, helps people get into rehab or jobs, and offers educational services to the public on the causes of homelessness.”
“Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me,” the psalmist implores God, and this church brings that hope into being for many who need a refuge.
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Luke 4:21-30, Jeremiah 1:4-10
Identity, Up and Over
The passages from Jeremiah and Luke both explore the question of identity this week.
The writer Andrew Solomon explores the idea that we have both vertical and horizontal identities. Our vertical identity is our family — and in Jeremiah’s case, the God who is claiming him from birth. Our horizontal identity comes from the traits we don’t share with our family, including an identity in the LGBTQ+ community, or a disability, or a genius IQ.
Solomon says that vertical identities “are passed down from parent to child across the generations not only through strands of DNA, but also through shared cultural norms. Ethnicity, for example, is a vertical identity. Children of color are in general born to parents of color; the genetic fact of skin pigmentation is transmitted across generations along with a self-image as a person of color, even though that self-image may be subject to generational flux. Language is usually vertical, since most people who speak Greek raise their children to speak Greek, too, even if they inflect it differently or speak another language much of the time. Religion is moderately vertical.”
God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah’s identity is rooted in God.
Solomon adds, “Often, however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside the family. Physical disability tends to be horizontal, as does genius.”
If we have one of these identities, we need to get support for these identities outside the family. This is what becomes clear to Jesus, as he moves deeply into this ministry, and as his hometown becomes so inhospitable.
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Luke 4:21-30
Disappointment
It is often said that expectations are pre-loaded resentments, and the hometown folks in Nazareth are primed for disappointment when Jesus comes to town. They have a certain kind of favorite son in mind, and Jesus falls short of what they want. V.R. Ferose had a similar journey, on a smaller scale, when his young son was diagnosed with autism. He was heartbroken and disappointed that none of what he imagined for his son would come to pass, and yet he chose a different path. He says, “Like every parent with a child with Autism, I had spent a significant time trying to find a cure for Vivaan’s condition. I read books which spoke about a complete cure and triumph over autism, and I hoped it would magically cure Vivaan too. I believed Autism was a problem and I had to solve it. The more I was unable to, the more frustrated I got.
“Soon I realized that I was chasing the wrong goal. If I started looking at Vivaan as unique and enjoy him for what he is, life was fun. Not comparing Vivaan with others was key. At times, we had to overcome the social compulsions of throwing a birthday party like every other family did. We realized Vivaan enjoyed the solitude of the family and cutting birthday cakes socially made him more anxious. So we started celebrating birthday by pampering Vivaan and giving him a free day — no therapies and unlimited access to his favorite object, an iPAD!”
He adds, “We tend to overestimate our pain and underestimate others’ pain. As soon as we are able to detach ourselves from the expectations of the society, and stop comparing, life becomes easier. One of my realizations was, since Vivaan needed so much time and attention, worrying about others meant that much less time we spent on Vivaan. Hence we benchmarked Vivaan as normal (btw, who decides who is normal and who is not?) and started doing everything every other parent would do — go for dinners, watch movies and take vacations!”
He and his wife learned to change their expectations, and they found deep fulfillment in ways they didn’t expect.
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Luke 4:21-30
Disappointment, Part Two
The people listening to Jesus are deeply disappointed in him. They were hoping for so much more from him. Author and professor Kate Bowler notes that, at this time of year, our disappointment may be with ourselves, pointed inward instead of outward. “New Years is wrought with great plans. Plans to eat different. Act different. Save different. Be different. We want to believe that at the precipice of a new year we can become new versions of ourselves. We hope to change! Really! We do. But, then a few weeks in, we’re back. In the same routines. Same old habits. Same bodies and minds and frustrations. Stuck in webs of obligations and dependents and bodies and minds and entire systems that are sometimes out of our control.
“So, this year, what if we let ourselves off the hook for becoming someone different? For believing that our best selves are before us, if we just try XYZ. Yes, we are capable of change. But let’s take ourselves off the hook for being GOOD, BETTER, BEST. Perhaps today, it is enough to love and dream and hope and nap and search for beauty and truth and try again tomorrow.”
The people in the synagogue are disappointed with Jesus, and he may well be disappointed with them. As he leaves town, he gives us a good example of how to let disappointment roll away and to start again.
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From team member Katy Stenta:Luke 4:21-30
Good News
When Jesus preached the good news about and to the poor, the captive, and marginal, this is not what the privileged people, those who were able to access the temple, wanted to hear. Often time good news is this way. We in America have good news like this. The good news is we have enough empty houses to solve homelessness and solving homelessness solves a lot of other problems. The bad news is we are not certain that people deserve houses.
The good news is that feeding children at schools makes them healthy and increases test scores. The bad news is we don't want to do that because it feels socialist.
The good news is the Child Tax Refund pulled three million families out of poverty. The bad news is we are not going to renew that part of the tax laws.
The good news is we know how to stop Covid. The bad news is, we have to all work together to do it.
The thing is, the good news is out there, but it has to be inclusive to be good news. If its not inclusive, it’s not good news, it’s okay news. So often we would rather throw Jesus off of the cliff, than hear, be, and do the good news things. Friends — hear the good news.
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1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Volcano Monster or Mountain Goddess
The plot of the children's movie Moana is that she and the demi-god, Maui, have to go and return the heart to Te Fiti. Without the heart, Te Fiti is no longer an island goddess of life-giving power... and she shared it with the world. Maui took the heart, and transformed her into a heartless, gong without love, and became Te Ka. She has no love and no one can recognize her without her heart, until Moana understands what had happened.
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Jeremiah 1:4-10
No Words
Imposter syndrome is a real psychological state, where one cannot accept one’s own achievements, and worries that the praise is not worthy and that they do not deserve credit for their accomplishments. Here, God confronts imposter syndrome and says there is no “I am only a boy” excuse — for God calls us as we are. The safety net with God is that we are safe to be fully ourselves and therefore do not need to be imposters, which is different than the realities of our world.
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WORSHIPby George Reed
Call to Worship
One: In you, O God, we take refuge; let us never be put to shame.
All: In your righteousness incline your ear to us and save us.
One: Be to us a rock of refuge, a strong fortress.
All: Save us, for you are our rock and our fortress.
One: For you, O God, are our hope, our trust.
All: O God, our praise is continually of you.
OR
One: The God who gives love so freely comes among us.
All: We rejoice that God’s love shines upon us.
One: As God’s love caresses us it also calls us.
All: We receive God’s love and God’s call.
One: God calls us to love others as God loves us.
All: With thankfulness we will share God’s love with all.
Hymns and Songs
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
UMH: 89
H82: 376
PH: 464
AAHH: 120
NNBH: 40
NCH: 4
CH: 2
LBW: 551
ELW: 836
W&P: 59
AMEC: 75
STLT: 29
Come Down, O Love Divine
UMH: 475
H82: 516
PH: 313
NCH: 289
CH: 582
LBW: 508
ELW: 804
W&P: 330
The Gift of Love
UMH: 408
AAHH: 522
CH: 526
W&P: 397
Renew: 155
To God Be the Glory
UMH: 98
PH: 485
AAHH: 157
NNBH: 17
CH: 39
W&P: 66
AMEC: 21
Renew: 258
There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy
UMH: 121
H82: 469/470
PH: 298
NCH: 23
CH: 73
LBW: 290
ELW: 587/588
W&P: 61
AMEC: 78
STLT: 213
Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive
UMH: 390
H82: 674
PH: 347
LBW: 307
ELW: 605
W&P: 382
Renew: 184
All Who Love and Serve Your City
UMH: 433
H82: 570/571
PH: 413
CH: 670
LBW: 436
ELW: 724
W&P: 625
More Love to Thee, O Christ
UMH: 453
PH: 359
AAHH: 575
NNBH: 214
NCH: 456
CH: 527
AMEC: 460
Spirit of God, Descend upon My Heart
UMH: 500
PH: 326
AAHH: 312
NCH: 290
CH: 265
LBW: 486
ELW: 800
W&P: 132
AMEC: 189
Blest Be the Tie That Binds
UMH: 557
PH: 438
AAHH: 341
NNBH: 298
NCH: 393
CH: 433
LBW: 370
ELW: 656
W&P: 393
AMEC: 522
Help Us Accept Each Other
UMH: 560
PH: 358
NCH: 388
CH: 487
W&P: 596
AMEC: 558
Shine, Jesus, Shine
CCB: 81
Renew: 247
They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love
CCB: 78
Music Resources Key
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELW: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day/Collect
O God who is love and has created all through your love:
Grant us the grace to reflect your love back to you
and to all your children and all of your creation;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise you, O God, because you are love. You brought creation into being through your love and it reflects your presence. Help us to reflect your love back to you and to all your children. Help us to see your loving presence in all creation. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
One: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins and especially our failure to live in and through your love.
All: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. In love you created and in love you seek to redeem us. We have allowed our selfishness to block the image of your love from shining in our lives. Where we should be signs of your gracious presence we have been signs of division and hatred. Forgive us and renew your image within us that we might share your love with others. Amen.
One: God is love and is always striving to draw creation back to its true nature as a reflection of that love. Receive God’s grace and forgiveness and allow that love to shine through you.
Prayers of the People
We praise and glorify your name, O God, because your love is the foundation of all creation. Your gracious presence dwells within all that you have created.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. In love you created and in love you seek to redeem us. We have allowed our selfishness to block the image of your love from shining in our lives. Where we should be signs of your gracious presence we have been signs of division and hatred. Forgive us and renew your image within us that we might share your love with others.
We give you thanks for all the ways your love radiates from your creation. We thank you for the beauty of nature and for the love of family, friends, and folk in the congregation. We thank you for the kindness of strangers and for the opportunities you offer us to share you love with others, especially those who need it most.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We are aware of many who suffer and struggle in this world. Some of them we know and some we do not. We know that known or unknown to us they are all known and loved by you. We lift those in need up to you not because you do not know or because you do not care but because you invite us to be part of your caring, loving, healing presence in this world.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together saying:
Our Father....Amen.
(Or if the Our Father is not used at this point in the service.)
All this we ask in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
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CHILDREN'S SERMONAsking For Help Is Okay — Even If You Don't Know How
by Quantisha Mason-Doll
Psalm 71:1-6
Before you start: Kids Help Line has a detailed repository for how to talk and educate children on how to ask for help. It also has resources on educating adults.
King David loved to write songs for God. He was someone who enjoyed putting his thoughts, feelings, and prayers to music so that they would be gentle on God's ears. For him it was the best way he could communicate his feelings to God. Through the psalms King David models the best ways for us to speak with our God. There are psalms that are happy, there are psalms that are sad, there are even some that are angry. Today's song is no different. Our psalm today shows that it is okay for someone as mighty and powerful as David to ask for help. In fact, our psalm tells us it is never a burden or shameful to seek help from the right people.
(At this point it would be best to go into a short discussion about seeking help from the right people by identifying helpers. Also establishing when it’s best to seek help from both God and our earthly helpers.)
Prayer
Loving God we thank you for your Earthly helpers. We thank you for our ability to help others. Help us to know when it is best to ask for help. Guide us as we try to be better helpers in the world.
All praise be to your guiding hand.
Amen.
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The Immediate Word, January 30, 2022 issue.
Copyright 2022 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
