Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Feb. 3, 2019

First Reading: Jeremiah 1:4-10

As many of the biblical prophets learned, it is not easy to hear God’s call and shout it out to crowds that don’t want to hear it. But when God calls us, God stands with us. God knows us even before the moment of our birth.

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (1630), oil painting on oak panel by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. (Click image to enlarge.)

In Sunday’s first reading we hear of Jeremiah, one of the major Hebrew Bible prophets who saw destruction and exile coming for Israel because the people had abandoned their covenant to follow God’s way. God called Jeremiah when he was only a boy. Jeremiah thought he was too young for such a responsibility. He feared his message would anger his hearers. But God put words in his mouth and strength in his spine and sent him out all the same.

Psalm: Psalm 71:1-6

The Psalmist sings in harmony with God’s reassurance to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” In the Psalm, too, we sing gratitude to God who sustains us and provides our strength since before we were born, since we were carried in our mother’s womb. We sing only the first seven of the entire Psalm’s 24 verses, but its message is consistent: God is our rock and refuge. We sing thanksgiving for God’s presence and protection. Our trust in God’s strength gives us hope.

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

This week we hear Paul’s beloved celebration of love! Paul is not speaking of romantic love here but the gentle but powerful selfless love (from the Greek word “agape”) that binds us all as worshipers in Christian community, giving us the strength to carry out God’s work together. These words complete the readings that came before it, in which Paul spoke of the way that God gives us all different gifts and calls us to different duties, all working together like the parts of the body, each important and all necessary. Now we hear that love is the glue that holds the community together. Faith, hope and love abide, but love is the most important of all.

Gospel: Luke 4:21-30

We hear the second part of the Gospel account that began last Sunday, when we heard Jesus telling his neighbors in the synagogue at Nazareth that he had come to fulfill Isaiah’s call to bring good news to the poor. Now, as Luke’s account continues, Jesus pushes a little too hard. First, he predicts that his neighbors will reject him because they knew him as a child, adding, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town.” Then he recalls two Bible stories in which God’s grace was given not to the chosen people but to Gentiles. This is clearly the last straw, as the entire synagogue congregation rises up, drives him out of town and tries to throw him off a cliff! Jesus slips away safely, and in the next chapter he and the apostles will move along to Capernaum on the shores of Galilee to begin his public ministry.