Lectionary Notes: Feb 2, 2025

tl;dr: This week includes themes of prophecy, love, and in-group/out-group dynamics.

I've joined a group spanning a few churches (a United, my Mennonite, and another Mennonite - a Unitarian was also invited but they all withdrew late) to share reactions to the lectionary text for the week. Here are my notes going into the second week, February 2, 2025, the fourth Sunday after Epiphany.

The Texts

Here are the texts.

Jeremiah 1:4-10

The calling of Jeremiah follows a fairly standard formula for prophetic calls in Scripture. He says he isn't worthy and God says "too bad, I've empowered you to do it anyway." This is true of basically all the prophets, except Jonah who is arrogant and thinks he knows better than God, which is part of why Jonah is probably best understood as a satire.

What has God empowered Jeremiah to do? To be "over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." That's an interesting mix of building something new/better as well as destroying things that are bad. It's maybe especially interesting Jeremiah is generally the most depressing prophet, with the most focus on how bad things are and less silver linings of hope than most.

Psalm 71:1-6

The psalm picks up on similar themes of leaning on God's strength when you don't have your own.

It also picks up on some of the language of being chosen from birth, if not before it. Some of that "before birth" language does make me a little nervous sometimes since it gets used for anti-abortion rhetoric, but that rhetoric is definitely a stretch of the text to make it fit a certain predetermined argument, so I don't want to get too hung up on it.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

This is a well-known text, with the love portion often read at weddings. There's a lot of value in that on its own, emphasizing how love is the way that we treat each other well. Love is not the boastful or arrogant dictation of what is best for others, but the patient and kind connecting with the beloved in order to seek their true wellbeing as equals.

But what's really interesting when paired with the other texts is the "if I have prophetic powers... but do not have love, I am nothing." The Jeremiah text sounds like prophecy is pretty great and important. And it is. But it isn't an end goal in itself. If there isn't love connected to that, it means nothing that Jeremiah was chosen to do those great things.

Luke 4:21-30

This is the second half of last week's story, where it really picks up. Last week's was relatively easy to think it was a nice friendly declaration of liberation, but in the second half, we see the story turn.

Jesus has started quoting from Isaiah 61, but then stops before the part promising God's vengeance, which in their context would have been primarily seen as against the Romans. He declares that the promises of liberation have been fulfilled right then, without mentioning the vengeance.

The listeners were then amazed at the "gracious words", which I can only interpret as surprising grace toward the Romans by leaving that part out since the parts he did say were simply quoting Isaiah. Then they wonder if this is really their local Jesus, the son of Joseph. This is the part where it hit me differently than it ever had before. Normally I hear this preached as them being surprised that this guy they knew could grow up to be such a powerful teacher and healer (they'd already heard what he'd done in Capernaum). That's a fairly innocent reaction of pride for their local boy all grown up now. But another way to read this, in light of Jesus skipping the part about Roman vengeance, might be more like: "this guy grew up here, poor and oppressed under Roman authority like the rest of us, and he dares to declare this Scripture fulfilled while the Romans are still ruling over us? We're still waiting for that freedom and for that vengeance!"

Jesus makes what might sound like a topic change, saying no prophet is accepted in his hometown, then tells the story of how Elijah and Elisha went to help foreigners at a time when a lot of Israelites could have really used that help. That's when they get so enraged they are ready to throw him off a cliff before stopping for an unspoken reason as he passes through them (perhaps because this being a Sabbath, they were not willing to travel farther than the Law allowed).

So... maybe the reason why the prophet is never accepted in their hometown is because the hometown demands that the prophet give them special favour, declare that they are more important and more loved by God than anyone else, declaring that they will win and exact their revenge on their enemies soon? But like Jeremiah, who largely prophesied that Babylon was coming to conquer them, Jesus didn't do that.

A key takeaway for me: real prophetic work is often likely to invoke a lot of anger, especially if those being prophesied to feel betrayed by a prophet who was supposed to be on "their side," because real prophetic work includes dismantling some of that framework of "sides." It's not dismissing the evils of Roman oppression or any other oppressive systems, but it is also rejecting simple violent revenge as the solution to it.