The Gospel and epistle appointed for today are all about community. This is particularly appropriate as we just concluded our Diocesan Convention yesterday, gathering as a community that is a part of the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. The struggle in our church today about how we are to share our lives together, what it means to be a community, is not a new argument. Jesus encountered this very thing in Nazareth!

Jesus arrived in Nazareth after doing many wonders in Capernaum. Word of these had reached the Nazarenes. They were particularly concerned as Capernaum was a gentile city, hence it was unclean. The Nazarenes were Essenes, zealous in keeping the law. They were satisfied with their own heritage, certain they had the only answers and both classist and exclusive. Augsburger has said that :Jesus was born into a world of prejudice, partisanship, and fanatical intolerance…a land of obstinate, opinionated, bigoted and dogmatic zealots…(and) the Nazarenes liked it that way!" (Copied)

It is with this information that we read the passage. Jesus arrived home, went to the temple and read this Isaiah passage from the scroll:

"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, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
(Luke 4:18 from Isaiah)

He concluded by saying: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:21) In other words, he was saying that this described his vocation.

The Nazarenes were disbelieving…perhaps crying out the first century equivalent of: "Show me the money! Do the tricks and wonders you did in that unholy city of Capernaum, now that you are in our special city where we faithfully keep the law!"

Jesus answered them with, what must have been for them, horrifying examples of the two prophets, Elijah and Elisha. He noted that Elijah was sent to a widow in the gentile Sidon rather than to one in Israel, and that Elisha cured the Syrian leper, Naaman, not an Israeli leper. He was saying, in other words, that God comes to and cares for all, not jst Israel. The Gentile mission was presaged. Jesus threw up a mirror to the Nazarene's and they did not like it one little bit! They were filled with rage and tried to hurl him off the cliff.

The passage from Corinthians is often used in weddings to describe love between two persons. However, it was not written for that purpose. The Christians in Corinth, to whom Paul was writing, were also into exclusivity. They had an elevated view of the gifts or charisms that they had been given - particularly that of speaking in tongues. It was their way or the highway. Paul determined that their exaggerated sense of self-importance needed discipline. Therefore, he reminded them that no gift of the spirit is of God unless it is grounded in love.

Frederick J. Parrella has said: "Christians today should learn a mighty lesson from Jesus' visit to Nazareth; the God who is really God is not theirs alone. God does not belong to them, but they belong to God. A parochial God is not God; God's revelation in Christ is to everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. In their intolerance of others, of different churches or radically different faiths, Christians today model the rage of the Nazarenes in driving Jesus out of town. Those Christians who cannot accept that God's goodness and saving grace is for all make it impossible to receive this grace themselves."(R. Alan Culpepper, "The Gospel of Luke," in The New Interpreter's Bible, vol. IX (Nashville: Abington, 1005). 108.)

We are called to be one, even as Jesus and God are one. That requires what the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire calls: "Infinite Respect, and Radical Hospitality." (Going to Heaven, Elizabeth Adams, Soft Skull Press, Brooklyn, NY 2006, p. 210) As Christians we find our unity, despite our differences, in the Holy Eucharist, in communion with one another and with Christ. The most shocking news that has come from some of the Primates who are to attend the Primate gathering in Tanzania in February is that they may refuse to share communion with our new Presiding Bishop. Thomas Merton has said:

"…The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear Brothers, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. Whatever we have to be is what we are."
(Thomas Merton in Seeds, Synthesis, 2/1/2004)

When we insist that our point of view is the only right one, when we assert that our covenant with God is the only valid one, when we refuse to hear and include all others we are claiming to know the mind of God. That is very, very dangerous business, my brothers and sisters.

Let us continue to pray for the church universal, for the Anglican Communion, and for our own Episcopal Church. Help us have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts of love, not of stone. Christ's vocation is our vocation…to reach out to all around us in love and forgiveness, excluding no one. God help all of us in the days ahead. AMEN