The gospel reading today takes a strange swerve partway through. Jesus has been in his home town synagogue, reading the passage from Isaiah that speaks about the one who is anointed to bring God’s message of good news and liberation and healing, and he says that this is to be made real here and now, not in some distant future. And everyone is lapping it up: “All spoke well of him and were amazed at his gracious words.” (Luke 4:22)  This is their local boy, now a man, and full of shining potential.  

But then Jesus begins to talk about exclusion. He says, “No prophet is accepted in their home town.” And he makes some pointed references to stories from the Hebrew scriptures about those who were not Israelites who were nevertheless saved: a Phoenician woman from Sidon saved by the prophet Elijah from a famine that was ravaging the Israelites, and Naaman the Syrian who was cured of leprosy by the prophet Elisha, when many lepers in Israel went uncured.  

It’s as though Jesus is deliberately provoking the people to reject him, by pointing out that God has no favourites, and that they can’t take proud ownership of him as their local prophet. In fact, why would they even want their own homegrown prophet? Prophets are those who speak uncomfortable words, words of judgement and challenge, words of God that push us to change, to repent, to humble ourselves.  

And sure enough the people get angry and try to throw Jesus off a cliff. So much for their golden boy.  

You can also see resistance in the story of Jeremiah’s call. He was to become one of the great prophets of Israel at a time of intense suffering, calling the people to turn back from their evil ways or face terrible consequences. But he didn’t want that role. He tried to back out of it: “Uh uh, God! I don’t know how to speak. I’m just a kid.”  

But of course God never takes No as a final answer, and he reassures Jeremiah that he will be with him, and will give him the words he needs. Jeremiah’s sense of inadequacy is irrelevant.  

Our calling (and we each have one) is bigger than us. At the end of the day it’s actually not about us. Our calling is to allow ourselves to be channels of God’s grace, sometimes as a powerful mouthpiece, sometimes as a humble helping hand.  

And God’s saving work is not just for us and those like us, those on our team, those who believe what we believe. It’s for all – the worthy and the unworthy, the successful and the hopeless, the faithful and the faithless. That’s what Jesus was saying to his townsfolk: God has no favourites.  

The parameters of God’s salvation are far wider than us. And why? Because it’s not based on merit or history or our own behaviour; it’s based on love.  

And so we come to St Paul’s incredible essay to the Corinthians on love. Love is the beating heart of the universe, because it’s the defining characteristic of God. As St John puts it succinctly in his epistle, “God is love.” (1 John 4:16)  

Paul says that everything else fades away – prophecy, eloquent inspired words, knowledge. It all comes to an end, and it’s all limited, partial, incomplete. But love does not end, and love knows no bounds.  

This is not just a description of the gift of love that we might be fortunate enough to experience, but it also describes God’s very self. Try reading the passage substituting the word God for the word love:  

God is patient, God is kind. God is not envious or boastful or arrogant …. God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God has no end.  

So love, which flows from the very heart of God, never ends. Love’s parameters are wider than we can ever imagine. Love calls us to set aside ourselves, both our anxieties about ourselves (like Jeremiah questioning how he could possibly fulfil his calling) and our pride in ourselves and our stuff (like the townsfolk of Nazareth who thought they could own Jesus and brag about him).  

Our lives are not about us. Or as Paul puts it in another letter, “It is not I who live, only Christ in me.” (Galatians 2:20)  

When I’m feeling down and inadequate and worried about things, it helps a lot if I can remember that my life is not about me. And equally, when things are going fantastically well and life feels shiny and good, it’s helpful to remember again that my life is not about me. It’s about something far bigger – the love and mercy of God – of which I’m just a miniscule part.  

As Richard Rohr, the Franciscan teacher and priest writes:

Accepting that our lives are not about us comes as an epiphany, as pure grace and deliverance… After such a discovery, we are grateful to be a part—and only a part! We do not have to figure it all out, straighten it all out, or even do it perfectly by ourselves. We do not have to be God. It is an enormous weight off our backs. All we have to do is participate! After this epiphany, things like praise, gratitude and compassion come naturally – like breath. (Adapted from “Adam’s Return.”)  

And my friends, this epiphany is so important now: this realisation that it’s not about us; we’re not the centre of the universe, and we don’t own the God we worship.  

In this era of increased divisiveness, globally and nationally, with people split into bitter camps, and some claiming that their personal freedom trumps the collective wellbeing of the community, the gospel message is that God does not have favourites, and the individual thrives only when the community thrives. We’re invited to live in the kingdom or realm or community of heaven, not in exclusive subdivisions of heaven where only people like us are allowed. We’re a tiny part of the Body of Christ: salvation is not just a personal matter.  

This is World Interfaith Harmony Week. And yesterday marked the first observance of the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City mosque attack 5 years ago. Yet a vigil in Ottawa to commemorate that day was cancelled because of fear of violence from anti-Islamic extremists.  Some of whom would call themselves Christians.  

What would Jesus do?

He reminded the townsfolk of Nazareth that the prophets Elijah and Elisha reached out beyond the people of Israel. He taught that it is acts of compassion which are godly – not acts of violence or words of hatred. He told a story contrasting a compassionate Samaritan (a non-Jew) with hard hearted Jewish religious leaders. He sat and talked and ate and drank with people different from himself time and again – the Syro-Phoenician woman whose son he healed; the Samaritan woman at the well; the Roman commander.  

Our lives and our faith cannot just be about us and people like us. Love is bigger than that. God is bigger than that. The heart of God and the call of God are far, far bigger than that. Love opens the door to a vast horizon where we put down our self-importance and narrow certainties, and we confess our blinkers and our tunnel vision, and we look around at all the beautiful, diverse people around us – different from us and from each other, but all of us children of the one God.  

St Paul says that faith, hope and love abide.

Faith abides, yes. The faith I practise daily is vitally important to me, and all -encompassing.

Hope abides, yes. It’s hope that gets me up in the morning on cold, grey, difficult days.

Love abides. The love that has the power to build bridges over chasms of hatred. And so the greatest of these is love.  Amen.