Love Takes Practice [Or Mirabel: Truth-Telling Saves the Miracle] Luke 4:21-30 and 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

sermon art: Madrigal family from the movie Encanto https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2953050/

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on January 30, 2022

[sermon begins after two Bible readings – reading the Corinthians reading is a real boost so go for it]

Luke 4:21-30 Then [Jesus] began to say to [all in the synagogue in Nazareth,] “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. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 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.” 28When 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. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
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.
8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 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.

[sermon begins]

Mirabel had a problem. The Madrigals, Mirabel’s family in the animated movie Encanto, were so focused on protecting their home that they struggled to tell the truth about their challenges. Challenges big and small that meant the Madrigals weren’t perfect. Mirabel could see the problem. She could see that the family was struggling. She could see that their house, in which they all lived as one big generational family, was cracking under the pressure of this really big problem that no one would talk about. Luisa wasn’t as strong as everyone thought. Abuela wasn’t as certain. And Bruno’s visions of the truth were such a threat that he left the family, and no one talked about Bruno – no, no, no. The Madrigals story is an allegory about the pressures that immigrants face to excel and be perfect so that they can keep their new homes. Their story also applies to families more generally – who gets to speak, who gets heard, and how the truth is told or not told. While Bruno was the one with the visions, Mirabel ended up being the truth-teller. Even her Abuela, her grandmother, finally listens to her but it was a tough sell. Mirabel paid a heavy price for being the Madrigals’ truth-teller.

Truth-teller is another word for prophet. Biblical prophecy is more about truth-telling, God’s truth in particular, and not about seeing the future. Jesus knew this when he said to his friends and family in Nazareth, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” Truth-tellers often bear the burden of push-back from people who don’t want to hear it, or in Jesus’ case, the threat of being pushed off a cliff. We heard the first part of Jesus’ story in the Nazarene synagogue last week when his friends and family were amazed to hear Jesus’ words and celebrated his teaching. Oh, how quickly the tide turned against him because he then said something they were not ready to hear. He changed gears on them, flipped the script, inverted the priorities (as Pastor Ann preached about last week). Jesus turned their expectations of him upside down and they were furious. Their rage had them ready to commit murder, to kill Jesus by hurling him off a cliff. The story is not clear how, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”  Truth-tellers attract painful encounters because people will go to great lengths to avoid and push-back at the truth.

One trick about telling the truth is not being a jerk about it. Part of Mirabel’s effectiveness in the movie story is how much she loves her family. Her love for them and their love for each other made space for the truth. Each member of the Madrigal family has a gift, even Mirabel. Their gifts each serve a greater purpose in the story than they’re able to see at the beginning. It becomes a story wider than just their family and greater than only saving their home. It kind of makes you wonder if the movie writers knew Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Tucked in the middle of Paul’s teaching about spiritual gifts in chapters 12 and 14, is this stunning section about love in chapter 13 – one of the most well-known parts of scripture because it’s often chosen as a reading at weddings. But Paul isn’t preaching at a wedding, he is writing to the church in Corinth. This Corinthian church had been arguing among themselves about all kinds of things, setting up hierarchies of leadership, gifts, and insiders and outsiders. Paul’s letter opens in gratitude for these wayward, faithful people and then unfolds a counter proposal to these hierarchies and their behavior around them. By nesting the love chapter within the gifts, Paul points to love as the reason for the gifts. Love is THE gift, the greatest of all. The gifts point to love. To paraphrase Paul, if I sing like an angel but without love, I’m just making noise; if I can solve every mystery and have oodles of faith but no love, it amounts to nothing; and if I give everything I own away without love, nothing is gained.

Love is as counter cultural as it gets right now in the United States – especially in public. It’s like there’s a $100 million dollar contest for who can be the meanest and most self-absorbed. It doesn’t help that most of our news sources dust up as much controversy as possible because there’s a very human inclination to find out what the fuss is about. And a riled-up, hateful community is more profitable than a calm, loving one. The algorithms, and the artificial intelligence behind the algorithms, lead us to topics that we’re already inclined to believe based on the choices we’ve been making, funneling us to ever more polarizing and agitating content. Here’s the thing. If we practice anger, we’re going to get really good at anger. Same thing with envy and arrogance. Want to be the best at being rude? Keep being rude. We’re not complicated creatures. We tend to do what we practice doing. Paul called his church folks to practice love based on Christ’s example because what they’d been doing was taking them down the wrong road. We’ve seen what it looks like when spiritual gifts are used to manipulate people. Charisma without love can rob people blind. It’s more than noisy gongs and clanging symbols. It’s dangerous. People will get hurt.[1]

Love is not ‘going along to get along.’ It’s neither unity through muting differences, nor is it giving up on finding solutions to problems because it’s too hard. Love means that each person is valuable. No one is expendable. Paul describes love as behavior. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love rejoices in the truth. Love bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. Here’s your homework for the week. Take home your bulletin. Read 1 Corinthians 13. Underline verses and make notes in the margins. What does love already look like in your life? How has who God created you to be, including your gifts, help point you to love? How can you practice love this week? Here’s a pro-tip. Buy yourself time. Ask for time if the situation allows for it. Time between your first reaction to something and how you would respond in love. For some that means counting or praying in their heads. Others might set a timer on their phone. Others may take a literal time out and move to a different room or take a bathroom break. However you do it, make time between your instinctive reaction, the reaction that only you are privy to because it happens in your mind and body, and how you want to respond if love is indeed the greatest of all things. Our bodies can’t go where our mind hasn’t gone. Sometimes we must buy time for our minds to prioritize love before we can respond in love. It’s a choice. Love takes practice.

We don’t know what other people are going through. We can’t know their whole situation. We see other people’s situations dimly and see God even more dimly. Paul reminds us that someday we’ll see God but, in the meantime, we are fully known by God. In the mess of who you actually are, God promises to love you no matter what. One of the things we do at church is practice God’s love through Jesus, imitating it and reminding each other about it. We confess the truth of our flaws and fragility and hear God’s love and forgiveness in return. We listen to scripture and the preacher’s interpretation. We welcome children and listen to them. We share peace and then we share the communion meal to which everyone is invited, even the newest visitor among us may come to Christ’s table of bread and wine. We sing in prayer and praise to God who knows us fully and has always loved us because God loves the world.

God loves us first. From God’s promise of love, we’re asked to practice God’s love with each other, our neighbors and our enemies. A patient, kind, and truthful love that bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things – the greatest of all gifts indeed.

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[1] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Dear Working Preacher: Staggering Love (re: 1 Corinthians 13). January 23, 2022. https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/staggering-love

Hope for a Different Way [OR Epiphany and the Magi’s Star] Matthew 2:1-12

**sermon art: Epiphany by Miki De Goodaboom

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on January 9, 2022

[sermon begins after Bible story]

Matthew 1:1-12 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
6‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”
7Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

[sermon begins]

As Christmas decorations get packed away, they often leave bits of themselves around, finding their way into corners and carpet fibers – pine needles either real or fake, tiny gingerbread house candies, and shimmery tinsel. Tinsel sparkles like glitter, but unlike glitter that is teeny-tiny and sticks to just about anything, tinsel shimmers in very thin strips, like super chill tin foil.[1] Tinsel is sometimes long, its strands tied together into snake-like garlands that drape across ceilings or coil around a Christmas tree. Tinsel reflects nearby light and sparkles even when the lights are dim. It’s inexpensive and widely available so it’s not surprising that tinsel fell into the hands of the five of us siblings when we were little. Just having left my dad who was losing his fight with mental illness, Mom and the five of us kids were starting over and getting ready for Christmas. Like anyone’s memory from childhood, mine are a bit spotty. But I remember sitting at a table with tinsel, scotch tape, and a hanger – watching my sister tape tinsel garland to the wire hanger that had been shaped into a star for the top of our Christmas tree. I now have that star with its singed scotch tape. It hangs by a thick red ribbon from my ceiling in the kitchen every year from the four weeks before Christmas through its 12 days, from Advent through Epiphany.

Six weeks of the shimmering tinsel star in my kitchen hardly compares to the years long journey of the Magi in our Bible story today. They’re sung about as kings or talked about as wise men, but those translation choices were made well after Jesus’ birth.[2] The Magi is what they were called in Biblical Greek. They were from the East, which at that time meant out towards Persia or Babylon now modern-day Iran and Iraq. Guided by a star, their journey ended with gifts of gold and spices given to a toddler Jesus by the time they finally arrived. We include the Magi in our nativity sets for simplicity’s sake not for Biblical accuracy. Simplicity is helpful. It helps us shorten a story into manageable parts so that we can tell the story and understand it.

The Magi capture our imagination. Not just ours. Early Christian writers, preachers, artists, and singers too. In the Ancient Near East, the Magi were astronomers and magicians who advised kings. Their visit to Jesus and the Feast of the Epiphany are a time to celebrate the good news of Jesus to the great joy of all the people.[3] Magi represent the inclusive good news for “all the people” because they couldn’t have been more foreign to our Jewish cousins in the faith who first heard this story. These magical advisors to kings also reveal God working through unexpected people in the Bible yet one more time.

The Magi are unexpected people, and they do unexpected things…well, after they do the expected thing by checking in with King Herod. It makes sense as advisors to Eastern kings that they would consult with King Herod to continue searching for the King of the Jews. Herod is so frightened by the Magi’s news that Jerusalem was frightened with him. I wonder if Jerusalem was frightened knowing that Herod was afraid, because a fearful king is a terrifying king. Fearful kings do violent things as their fear turns to anger. Case in point, after the Magi left town a different way to avoid Herod, the holy family escaped to Egypt just before Herod “sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, according to the time that he had learned from the [Magi].”[4] Herod was fearful and angry and violent to the point of killing children.

We too live in a time of violence, suffering and sickness. Caution is advised as we try to interpret God’s intentions or activity in any event. More recently we saw the carnage wrought by hundreds of insurrectionists in D.C. and a lone gunman closer to home, or the ashes of someone’s home destroyed by fire, or the deathbed of someone’s loved one in pandemic.[5] Proceed with caution when interpreting God’s intentions or activity in any event. We are not God. We can mistakenly imply that God was with some people and not others if we confuse God’s blessing with a house still standing after the fire or someone still breathing after an infection.[6] Epiphany isn’t only about the Magi’s star journey to see Jesus, the escape to Egypt, and the threat of Herod. It’s also about the Magi’s return home a different way after visiting Jesus. They first met Jesus when he was still little, the embodiment of hope not yet matured.  Scripture assures us that the King of the Jews’ birth, life, death, and resurrection means something different is happening along with what we see and experience. The short word for this is hope.

Kids have a way of making a way when it seems like all is lost. Like when my siblings and I made that star for the top of our Christmas tree. The tinsel star as reminder of resilience through trauma and making a way when all seems lost. For us, the child-like wonder of Christmas crafted a star of hope. Kids are great at making a way when the evidence presents a wall. Flash to the Magi who followed a star as months turned into years, finding their way through a perilous journey to give their gifts to Jesus. Christians through the centuries have also made a way through whatever the circumstances of the moment may be. On January 6 every year, Christians worldwide celebrate Epiphany. January 6 is also now recorded in our country’s history as one of violent conflict over power. As Jesus followers, we are offered a different way in the face of violence and power – the wonder of Christmas revealing Jesus as the star of hope.

We sang a Gathering Song at the beginning of worship today – Christ be our Light. The song led us in prayer as we praised Christ for lighting the way of peace, hope, and salvation. Quite often, maybe far too often, the ones we need saving from is ourselves. Prone to conflict, scape-goating, and violence as both catharsis and solution, Christ shines light on the futility of those ways while guiding us on a different way to love not just ourselves but our neighbors too; to love not just our neighbors but our enemies too. Christ shines the love of God first – the unconditional, ever-expanding love of God for you. Epiphany is a good day for hope as Christ shines Star-light on a different way for us. Thanks be to God and amen.

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[1] Tinsel has a history dating back to the 1600s. Check it out at https://www.thefactsite.com/history-of-tinsel/

[2] Sandra Sweeney Silver. Early Church History: Who Were the Magi? “In the ancient Middle Eastern world these Magi were trusted advisors to kings, were learned men proficient in the knowledge of mathematical calculations, astronomy, medicine, astrology, alchemy, dream interpretation and history as well as practitioners of magic and paranormal arts.” https://earlychurchhistory.org/beliefs-2/who-were-the-magi/

[3] Luke 2:10

[4] Matthew 2:13-18 These few verses summarize the holy family’s escape to Egypt and what is known as “The Slaughter of the Innocents.” The stories are worth reading because we don’t hear them in the regular schedule of Sunday worship scripture a.k.a. Revised Common Lectionary.

[5] Without preaching the details, the shooter who recently shot and killed people across Denver and Lakewood, the 1/6/2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Marshall fire in and around Boulder CO, and Covid deaths, are inferred.

[6] Ryan Warner interviews Isaac Sendros on Colorado Matters: When the evacuation order for the Marshall Fire came, the 600-member staff of Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville sprang into action. The hospital’s CEO Isaac Sendros recounts how they cleared everyone from preemies to COVID patients. https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/how-to-evacuate-a-hospital-the-story-of-clearing-out-avista-adventist/