January 31, 2010
The Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany
Luke 4:21-30
Holy Trinity Parish, Decatur, Georgia
The Very Reverend William Thomas Deneke, rector


We may have heard the reading from the first letter to the Corinthians at a wedding or as a pleasant devotional statement. Paul’s ode to love has now days taken on a sentimental, romantic flavor, far from the original context of the words. Paul was actually addressing a situation that was tearing the young church apart. Christians in Corinth were doing real and potentially destructive battle with one another over a number of issues revealed in the letter. Everything he said love was, they were not. And everything he said love was not, they were. Rather than hear sweetness in Paul’s letter, the Christians may have found it offensive in pointing out their shortcomings. But it was what needed to be said.

The verse that follows what we heard this morning should not be left out. Paul says, Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts. The Corinthians had sought to exercise their ministries and gifts without love. And it was not working. All of their judgments, prophesies, and exercises of gifts were like noisy gongs or a clanging symbols that graded on people’s nerves. Paul said to first learn to love and then prophesy.

Learning to love is always the first task we have. In fact the church is primarily a laboratory for learning to love.

One of my early memories of church was entering a children’s beginner’s Sunday School Class. I was nervous, shy and not at all sure I wanted to be there. The teacher, Mrs. Stinson, came over to me, welcomed me warmly, and assured me that I belonged in that class. After all these years, I remember her smile and her greeting. On that very first day at church I was already learning to love because of Mrs. Stinson.

As we grow in spiritual formation, we discover that love has many dimensions. In today’s gospel reading, the Nazareth congregation had not fully considered love’s implications. Jesus challenged them to a deeper understanding. Love was not only feeling good with your friends, but something much more powerful. When Jesus said, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” here is the scripture of which he was speaking.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

These words were familiar to Jesus’ audience. They liked to hear them, but they were not prepared to take them seriously. They heard them like we might hear today’s epistle at a wedding. Sweet words, but not life changing. Jesus forced the issue with them and they threw him out.
Maybe what Jesus was saying in part is that his hometown synagogue was not much of a laboratory for learning to love if it did not bring good news to the poor or proclaim release to the captives or offer recovery of sight to the blind or promise freedom for the oppressed or proclaim in word and deed the compassion of God. These were measures of love that kept congregations from being only hearers of the word and not doers.

As we are called to be a laboratory for learning and practicing love, there are gospel standards to guide us. And, if these standards are neglected, God will choose others to do the work of salvation. The God we worship calls us out of complacency, bids us to move beyond childish ways, and reveals to us a realm of justice and love that blesses all humanity.

On this day of our Annual Parish Meeting, it is appropriate for us to consider how Holy Trinity is striving to be a faithful parish. How are we doing as a laboratory for learning how to love?

Our parish mission is to open hearts to God. A mission that begins with the love of God. If we are to be true to the call of Jesus, we begin by opening our hearts to God. We begin with what Paul called the pursuit of love. We look to God because God is love.

I want to commend the commitment of so many to spiritual growth. Learning to love God, living to love God, loving to love God are practices seen in this congregation. I urge that this be a central mission, a top priority more and more. As we grow in love, the fruits of our mission will continue to be revealed in amazing ways. People will indeed know we are Christians by our love – authentic love such as Paul described and such as we behold in Jesus.

But that is only half of our parish mission. We are also committed to open doors to community. Another way of stating this is to say we are not only called to love God, but also to love our neighbor.

It is loving our neighbor that got Jesus into trouble in Nazareth and later elsewhere. Yet when we open our hearts to God, the Spirit that comes upon us moves us deeper and deeper into love just as the prophet Isaiah declared and Jesus proclaimed.

I see the mission of building community and loving our neighbor being carried out everyday at Holy Trinity. I see a passion for social justice, a burning desire to reach out to those in need, a welcome smile for all with whom we minister, a genuine concern and love for one another, and hospitality for the stranger.

We would not have dug clean water wells all along the northern coast of Haiti were we not committed to open doors to community. We would not welcome guests to this parish if we did not seek to open doors to community. We would not have provided emergency funds to Honduras Outreach in its financial crisis or built facilities for DEAM or sustained mission trips to New Orleans or be ready to put a solar array on the roof of Tisdale Hall if we were not interested in what it means to live in community, in what it means to love our neighbor.
Yesterday there was a meeting of over fifty representatives from around the diocese here at Holy Trinity to discuss how we in the Diocese of Atlanta can best minister in Haiti. I was so impressed with what congregations are doing and with what they have been doing for some time. There is support for schools, churches, medical facilities, clean water wells, and resources for feeding people. These ministries are aimed toward bringing good news to the poor, releasing people captive to everyday horrors including those of Haitian prisons, recovery of sight to the blind, – One parish is collecting glasses to be sent to Port au Prince. - and letting oppressed people of all ages go free. This is gospel work.

In Holy Trinity’s laboratory for learning how to love, we need always to connect love for God with love for neighbor. Our mission statement joins these two and that is what makes it vibrant. Our mission, like the Great Commandment, gives shape to who we are and what we are about.

Everyday we are called anew to open our hearts to God. That is quite a calling. We need to support one another in this call and we need support from one another. Our worship, our small groups, our parish life are vehicles to nurture and challenge us to grow in Christ. Acts such as listening to one another, greeting friends and guests, maintaining time for discernment and energy for prayer will help us to grow in love. And as we continue to grow, we may be amazed to see where the Spirit leads us. The Spirit’s track record at Holy Trinity is pretty good. As we open our hearts to God more and more, we may find ourselves anointed to open doors to community in new and continued wonderful ways.

We give thanks today. We are blessed by the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. We are blessed by the love made known at Holy Trinity. And we pray, that as God’s people gathered in this community, our hearts will be opened more and more to the wonders of God, and our doors will swing wide to welcome all who come, and to encourage all who go forth to love and serve the Lord. Indeed, ours is the mission, ours is the wonder of learning to love!