Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time - C January 28, 2007

Jeremiah 1: 4-5, 17-19 1 Corinthians 12: 31-13:13 Luke 4: 21-30

Before being assigned here as pastor (that’s now about seven year ago for you who are counting), I had the opportunity to assist at other parishes in celebrating the Eucharistic Liturgy, much like various priests have assisted here over the last couple of months. This was brought out recently when I pointed out to a visiting priest some of the features of our church building. I pointed out the front doors of the church, calling to his attention that they are clear glass. Thinking about this has made me realize how readily we take some things for granted. Most of you may not realize it because you do not face them as I do, but they are quite unusual. I have mentioned this before, but I will do so again because of their unusual nature. Most churches of solid doors. St. Mel’s however, has glass doors that face right into the street, in the middle of the city, offering the ability to look in and to look out.

I was reminded of this fact as I was considering the message of God spoken to us in the Scripture readings today. In making an effort to be present to us, we need to recognize that God makes use of at least two dynamics. On the one hand we hear God communicating to us through the Scripture that is read and the reflection that is offered. On the other hand, we receive God in the Eucharist, being refreshed and fortified by God to go out of this building and carry the message we have taken in into our lives and our world.

As we hear Jesus speak, teach, preach in the Gospel, we realize that he is experiencing life much as we do. Some who hear him are enthusiastic about what he says and respond to it. Others, however, did not like being challenged and told to live their lives differently. What Jesus is presenting then and now is a relatively simple message. He proclaims that God loves us and that the knowledge of this ought to gain a reaction of reflecting that experience, that message, in our lives.

As Jesus looked upon all of us, as Jeremiah the prophet suggests, he recognized that we all have an inherit ability given to us by God to live and act in this way in our lives. We are empowered by God to reflect godliness. The lives we lead give us many and varied opportunities to choose to do this.

We are something like the doors in the front of the church which give the ability to look in and to look out. We can look into ourselves and see if we do, indeed, choose to live in this way, responding to the message we hear. We act in a manner similar to someone looking into the doors of the church, seeing this as a place of worship with people assembled here in prayer, and allow themselves to be affected by this. We can also look out the doors at the regular activities of life that we see - walking, running, driving past - the regular activities of daily life, and consider how we carry the message we experience in joining in the Eucharist, being filled with the message and life of God, to that world.

What and how that message of Christ is to be heard and shown in our lives is summed up clearly and directly in what we have heard from Saint Paul. In this favorite passage of his writing heard so often at weddings, when a couple commits themselves to a permanent life with one another in the world, we are told that love, charity - the center of Christ’s message - is not simply a word. It is a reality that is to effect our daily lives. It is kind, not pompous or inflated. It is not selfish or temperamental. It aims to know truthfulness and to live truthfully. It puts up with things - things that are painful or challenging or difficult - and is believing, hoping and enduring. In many ways, such a life reflects what ought to be found in a mature, adult, wise outlook on life.

While we hear the message of Christ, we also recognize how challenging it truly is. It is to affect how we think, how we speak, how we act in the daily commerce of life. It suggests, as clear doors in the front of the church suggests, that we look at selves and at others, and that others look at us in a manner that is not judgmental. Rather, we look at on another in a manner that motivates Jesus’s mission - we can be, we are to be, genuine reflections and images of a good and gracious God.

All of this speaks to the highest qualities that we possess as creatures of God. We can live out the potential that we have, we can constantly attempt to do so. even though we sometimes fail, because we are confident of God’s continuing presence with us that enables us to tell the world of the goodness of our loving God.