Something New? Get Outta Here Epiphany 3c

 Last week we were introduced to the beginning of Jesus’s ministry according to John…the wedding at Cana. Today, Luke introduces us to Jesus’s ministry in Nazareth, Jesus’s hometown.
Because the chronology of these beginning stories is confusing, let me set the scene from Luke:  Following Jesus’s baptism, which we heard two Sundays ago, Jesus is thrust into a time of discernment in the wilderness, 40 days and nights of hunger, thirst, temptation and fear. After that ordeal Jesus goes home.
Makes sense, right? He’s been through a lot so he goes home to hang with Mom and Dad. They must have been overjoyed at his return and thrilled that he voluntarily goes to the synagogue. No doubt all the folks at synagogue were excited to see him as well. Until.
    Until he offers an outlandish midrash (interpretation) of the prophet Isaiah by proclaiming that the scripture pre-figuring the arrival of the Messiah has been fulfilled right then and there, in the person of Joseph and Mary’s son.
Outraged by what they consider blasphemy they (we don’t hear this part this year)—the people Jesus grew up with and around—drive him out of town. They want no part of his preaching.
    Now, in Paul’s letter to the churches in Corinth, written some 20 years after the scene in Nazareth, Paul’s urging the churches to embrace one another. Corinth was one of the places where early Christianity, due to the preaching of Paul and Timothy, really took off. There are home churches throughout this great Roman metropolis. [Now, we can liken the home churches to individual congregations and the moniker  “the Church in Corinth” as the diocese]  After just a short time these home churches are at odds with each other—  bickering over the different ways each congregation chose to follow The Way of Christ.  They were intolerant of difference and Paul, in his long-winded and winding prose tries to get through to the Corinthians that difference within the community was good, healthy.
Last week we heard Paul say—there are a variety of gifts, a variety of charisms that everyone has—What xxx is good at, xxx may not be good at, what xxx good at, xxx might not be good at but xxx is good at this and so on and so on. Then in today’s part of Paul’s letter Paul waxes metaphorically about how all parts of a community—the Body—- function in complementary fashion. The eye does the eye’s job, the ears the ear’s job etc. An eye can’t be an ear, an ear can’t be an eye… Paul is saying, difference/variety is what makes us strong, a myriad of gifts allows for the message of God’s saving love for us, given to us in Jesus, to be expressed in as many different ways as there are different types of people and gifts.
         Here’s where the rubber meets the road on this Annual Meeting Sunday:
We may listen to Paul’s reasonings and shake our heads in agreement thinking, “oh yes, difference is good.”
And then someone shows up here with a whole other way of looking at things, a whole different set of gifts—-like Jesus when he returns home to the synagogue—and it shakes us up, irritates us, maybe even threatens us, it just doesn’t sit well with us. So what do we do? Often, maybe even usually, we figuratively run them out of town.
We hear of the townsfolk in Nazareth rejecting Jesus and think—those fools! But the truth, as Paul tells us, is that we do the same thing. When something or someone different comes along our human nature leads us to buckle down on what we’re familiar with, comfortable with—whether it’s serving us well or not.
Paul’s telling us that  Difference isn’t bad, it’s just different. Challenge isn’t bad, it’s just challenging. Now, different and challenging are a little unnerving—it’s ok to be shaken up a bit —this is where our trust and strength in the love of God comes into play. For when we’re feeling unsettled we’re to bring all that to this altar —-for Jesus doesn’t expect us to not be unsettled or nervous or unsure Jesus just expects us to feel those things give them to him and then, emboldened through our trust in him, move into the different and challenging.
There are a variety of ways to be Jesus in this world, in this place, at this time, and it takes all our gifts, strengths, and passions to fully serve him.
Amen.