A Vital Church I Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30

January 31, 2010 Rochelle A. Stackhouse

“Well,” thought the people in the synagogue in Nazareth that day as Jesus read, “we really must be doing something right here! Look at this man, Joseph and Mary’s son. Why he was raised right here in this synagogue! Samuel over there helped him learn to read, and Deborah back in the women’s room made the prayer shawl he wore the day he first read Torah in this very room! And they say Nazareth is a hick town, middle of nowhere! Well, we surely showed the folk over in Capernaum who think they’re so hot! Let’s see one of their sons do miracles!”

And I expect the people of Nazareth were right. Their community undoubtedly was deeply faithful , not only teaching the faith but living it out, and therefore a wonderful place for Jesus to be raised and prepared for the ministry ahead of him. We might have expected Jesus to thank them for all their help as he grew up, for their encouragement and protection. We might have expected Jesus to conclude this reading by saying, “This reading is fulfilled in your hearing today and I know you will join me as partners in this ministry of healing and freedom, of proclamation and challenge. You, a vital and faithful people, are going to be my base of operations, my partners in bringing in the reign of God!” Humbled and joyful, then, the people would fall to their knees and rise up singing!

But three gospel writers all agree that’s not how it happened. Jesus’ inner circle, those twelve disciples and the women who traveled with them did not come from Nazareth. In fact Mark and Matthew write that Jesus could do almost no acts of healing or other miracles in Nazareth. At Bible Study the other night, we all agreed that Jesus seemed kind of harsh here. Is this how Jesus repaid the love of his hometown people?

Well, undoubtedly there is a lot of context here we do not know. But the hints we get from the Biblical stories to which Jesus refers in Luke’s telling of the story indicate that although the Nazareth faith community may have been loving, they apparently stopped that love at the boundaries of Nazareth. They may have been faithful, but they also may have been closed in that faith, unable to see that God might do something new in the world, indeed that God might invite people other than those from Nazareth or even Israel to be children of God. The people of Nazareth may have been proud of their son and his future, but they were also content to live in the past. Jesus wanted them to stretch, to take some risks, to reach out, to open themselves to the workings of God’s transformational spirit, which is what that Isaiah reading Jesus quoted is all about, and all they could do was sit and congratulate themselves on what a good job they had done helping Mary and Joseph raise a talented young man. It is a cautionary tale, I think, for every religious community.

Today is our annual meeting here, a day we review the life of the past year of our congregation and consider how we may move forward in the year to come. We are also at the beginning of a new project in partnership with the Connecticut Conference called the Threshold Initiative which is working with a small group of churches to increase their vitality as faith communities. Redeemer was chosen for this project because we were seen as already having a number of the marks of vitality noted on the insert in your bulletin.

And I believe they are right. This “mighty little church” as our moderator calls us, is a wonderfully vibrant, vital, faithful congregation. If you look at that list, many different aspects of our life come to mind. We are on the last day today of a remarkable effort called Abraham’s Tent where, partnered with Christ Church and YDS, we have provided food and housing and companionship to 10 men who are homeless. This has been a gargantuan organizational effort, and Cheryl Bergman has been an absolute wizard at making this happen, but lots of the rest of you have given of yourselves to do so as well, and all of you, as stewards of this building for God, participated by agreeing to allow this to happen here. Jesus called Nazareth to step out and love beyond what was easy, beyond loving those they knew, and God called us to do the same, and we have stepped up this week and I am so happy and proud of us.

Although this was a large and very public ministry, there are dozens of others that happen through this congregation all the time, marks of our faithfulness and vitality and love. Look at the questions on the back of that vitality page. Church Council asked me to use this sermon to invite you into our discernment process, so please take a minute now, if you will, to jot down a few notes for question one on how you see us living out the ministry God has given us. Visitors, I invite you to jot down for either one of these questions what marks of vitality you look for in a congregation.

Now, lest we are tempted to become self-congratulatory and rest on our laurels, a la Nazareth with Jesus, I challenge us to remember how Jesus pushed his home town folk, how he called them to risk stretching, and how they rejected that opportunity and interpreted it as an insult to them, such that they threw Jesus out and, as far as we know, he never went back.

I know the Spirit continues to push us as faithful disciples to continually respond to God’s activity in our world. To be the kind of vital disciples that Jesus called his hometown to be; to be the kind of community that loves with the depth and breadth and power Paul called on the Corinthian church to be, that means we need to keep eyes, ears, hearts, minds and spirits ready to discern God’s movement among us, to receive those who may come to us as did Elijah to the widow, Naaman to Elisha, Jesus to Nazareth or Paul to Corinth, bringing challenge and opportunity. It’s happening all the time. I invite you to take a moment of quiet, consider how God might be moving among us now, and then jot down on that paper any responses you have to that second question.

When we receive the offering today, I invite you not just to put in money, but to put in your responses as your offerings of discernment for us as a congregation. I invite you as well to commit to continuing that discernment together and offering your thoughts in the future as we continue to pursue vitality and growth. Most of all, I invite us to do all of this, and everything we do together as a community, holding up this chapter from Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church as the context in which we do everything. For if we do anything here, even something that seems wonderful, without love, the task is only half done. Of all the challenges ahead of us, of any congregation, this is the most important, most challenging, and most hopeful of all: to love. Love is patient and kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Amen.