{"id":136,"date":"2019-02-04T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/?p=136"},"modified":"2019-02-04T14:55:22","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T14:55:22","slug":"fourth-sunday-after-epiphany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/2019\/02\/04\/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth Sunday after Epiphany"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Luke\n4:21-30<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grace to you and peace\nfrom God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philadelphia\nis a city of neighborhoods, not that it is all that much different from most\ncities, but I know Philadelphia best. Growing up in Philly, there were sections\nthat were largely Italian, Jewish, Black, Hispanic, German, Asian and so on. The\nsection that I grew up in was largely German, dominated by St. Henry\u2019s Roman\nCatholic Church, the German church, the church that had regular German Masses;\nthere were also Tabor and St. Paul\u2019s, two German Lutheran churches. This is not\nto say that there were not people of other ethnic groups in the neighborhood,\nthere were. My best friend was Irish and a few doors down from me there was\nanother friend, a Jewish girl. For the most part though, the neighborhoods were\njust sections of the city marked by ethnic origins that did not always match\ntheir geographic designations; when I was just a young teen, the older guys\nwould roam into other neighborhoods looking for fights. It was not a good time;\nthere was a lot of violence based usually on ethnic and racial differences. The\ntruth is, all the neighborhoods had gangs that made lots of trouble. There were\nfights, more than fights, all out brawls, in the schools, in the playgrounds\nand on the street corners. But by the time I was of age to be a part of these\nfights, the gang war stuff had somewhat died down. I was a victim of this once,\nbut I was able to avoid it for the most part. Still, there are strong loyalties\nto our communities, to our ethnic origins, and our religions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\ntoday, our neighborhoods are often more ethnically and racially mixed; the loyalty\ngroups have changed. The loyalties to one group or another are based more on\nlocation, schools, sports organizations or some other local consideration. Things\nchange, but they don\u2019t. My point is that when I was a kid and even back far\nbeyond the times of Paul and Jesus, people were known to develop great\nloyalties to their communities. In fact, we can see the intensity of such\nloyalty, centered around ethnic and religious concerns, showing its ugly head,\nin today\u2019s Gospel. The people were loving Jesus; they were amazed by his words;\nhe had them \u201ceating out of his hand\u201d and then Jesus began saying things that\nseemed designed to get them angry with him. Jesus appears as though he was\nintent on, \u201cpoking the bear\u201d, \u201cstoking the fires\u201d, \u201cstirring the pot\u201d; Jesus,\nit seems, was purposely getting the people riled up. Their initial amazement\nled them to question, \u201cIs not this Joseph\u2019s son?\u201d To which Jesus responded,\nbringing up a proverb, calling upon a doctor to heal himself, suggesting to Jesus\nthat, as a prophet, they were expecting him to now do in his community the\ngreat deeds he had done in other communities. What followed was Jesus telling\nthe people that they were not going to accept him and then he seemed to be challenging\ntheir religious and national loyalties by pointing out how Elijah provided for\na Gentile woman and her son during the famine and that Elisha healed a Gentile\nleper at a time when there were certainly Jews suffering from leprosy that he\ndid not help. The people turned on Jesus; they were literally ready to kill\nJesus; he had insulted their national allegiance, he had diminished the\nimportance of their religious affiliation, challenging all that they believed\nabout God as being their God and their God alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis a strange passage, one the paints Jesus as an instigator of trouble. No\ndoubt he was an instigator, but why? Was it all about questioning their\nloyalties; or was it about questioning whether they had lost sight of God\u2019s\ncalling, of all Israel, to be a light to the nations? You see, Jesus wanted\nthem to face up to the fact that their lives were not all about, what they were\ngoing to get from Jesus, from God; (and) it\u2019s not all about what we are going\nto get from Jesus, from God; it\u2019s sometimes about what we are going to do in\nresponse to the love we receive from God and about our fulfilling our calling\nto be a light to the world, to share the good news of Jesus Christ in both word\nand deed. And not just to our families, not just to our close friends and\nneighbors, and not just to those who believe and think like us. Jesus is making\nit very clear that his ministry is to the world, and so also to the Gentiles. I\nknow I\u2019ve told you this before, but Gentile is a word that simply means nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nthe Jews of Jesus day, the world was divided into Jews, them, and everyone else,\nthe Gentiles, the nations. For Jews there were prohibitions against sharing\nfood with Gentiles; you certainly would not want to marry one; you could do\nbusiness with them, but you needed to take care; you always wanted to keep them\nseparated from you. A Gentile who came to believe in God, was only half\naccepted; it would take a generation for full acceptance of the believer\u2019s\nfamily. Little was done to share the word of God\u2019s love with Gentiles. This was\nnot, as God had planned it; this was the point that Jesus was making to the\ngood Jews of his childhood community. Jesus said it, \u201cno prophet is accepted in\nthe prophet\u2019s hometown. But that doesn\u2019t change the importance of his message! Being\na light to the world is not easy, but look if you will at the Disciples and the\nearly church. They got the message! The Disciples went out into the world;\nPeter\u2019s first act of ministry was to Samaritans and then his second to Gentiles.\nPhilip was sent to an Ethiopian eunuch. Tradition tells us that Thomas went all\nthe way to India. Paul\u2019s letters tell us about Christian community members who went\nto Rome and elsewhere to share the Gospel. And Paul, himself was all over the\nplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nwas certainly ministry to Jesus\u2019 hometown, to the Jews throughout Israel, but\nthe Messiah of God and his story and message was not for Jews alone. The\nApostle Paul, as he traveled to a new place, would first stop at the village synagogue,\nbut would then go out into the village and speak also with the Gentiles. We\ntoday are called upon to minister, within the Christian community, but then take\nour ministry out in the world, to people we know and don\u2019t know, to people that\nare unlike us and like us, to people who believe, think and act differently\nthan us and like us. Go out into the world and share the love and word of Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke 4:21-30 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods, not that it is all that much different from most cities, but I know Philadelphia best. Growing up in Philly, there were sections that were largely Italian, Jewish, Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-and-services"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}