4th Sunday After Epiphany

Confidence and Conviction

Knowing and Preaching the Good News can lead to trouble

As a seminary student in our entry level preaching class we talked about nervous habits we have during Sunday services. Stepping into the pulpit brings with it certain fears. Some of us were paper shufflers, some of us tapped the pulpit, others sweat - and badly, for one her voice would get higher pitched as she went. Could we overcome these habits brought on by nerves? I was terrified of making eye contact with anyone for fear of loosing my place in my sermon. It was my job to preach it WORD FOR WORD.

The preacher was wired for sound with a lapel mike, and as he preached, he moved briskly about the platform, jerking the mike cord as he went.

Then he moved to one side, getting wound up in the cord and nearly tripping before jerking it again. After several circles and jerks, a little girl in the third pew leaned toward her mother and whispered, "If he gets loose, will he hurt us?"

⁶Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” ⁷But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, ⁸Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” ⁹Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. ¹⁰See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Jeremiah was a preacher called to reveal and plant God's Word in the hearts of a nation polarized and paralized by fear and difficult political times. Mirrors much like our own times eh?

¹⁷But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them. ¹⁸And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. ¹⁹They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.

Jeremiah was aware that even God's own children would fight against hope and promise - presence and revelation. Hearts were hardened to the possibility of hope and God being present. How is this different than our own present time? Who is God sending us to? Will the people of our community be receptive to a message of hope - a call to hear both law and Gospel? What do you see people of God?

A MISSION!

Applying the Text to Daily Life

Having the Confidence and Conviction to Share that:

1. Love is foundational for us as Christians.
1. John Denver:
1. Perhaps love is like a resting place
   A shelter from the storm
   It exists to give you comfort
   It is there to keep you warm
   And in those times of trouble
   When you are most alone
   The memory of love will bring you home
2. ⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
3. Agape love verses romantic love. Often when we hear these words from Corinthians we travel back to a wedding - the dashing bride the stressed out groom, the wedding party who is tired from all the pre-wedding preparations, and the nervous parents - romantic love. These words can speak to that - but Agape love is the love that God has for humankind. The love that we hear in these words comes from God to us and we are called to reflect that with the confidence we have received from God.
4. Loving Agape style takes courage, it takes trust and believing that we may not see a return of it, that we do it for the sake of being God in the world.
   
2. God is up to building up and replanting, rebirth and renewal!
1. "Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are."

   {radio address, September 15, 2001} President Bush.

2. ²¹Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” ²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
3. Yet in their amazement could they truly hear and go where Jesus was taking them? Would they be blinded by their hopes, not God's, their ideas about what a messiah ought to be - he was just Joseph's son right?
4. ²³He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” ²⁴And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. ²⁵But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; ²⁶yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
5. Their implied hopes of a messiah - militant King - were dashed. But nothing stops the power of God to rebuild with real hope, plant real seeds of renewal and new life - let us go with Jesus in the word and watch what happens.
6. God can take the greatest of all human failures and bring new life!
3. This might get you into trouble.
1. 8When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
2. We live in a nation in which we are not persecuted. Christians have a free voice most everywhere. But this is not a reality in other nations.
   
3. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
4. We know in part that God who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. That the convictions of our faith might indeed upset someone - that we are given the courage to speak the truth in love, to open the Word to our neighbor, and see how God can move mountains.
5. When faced with opposition Jesus passed right through and onto his set course - a course never imagined.