Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m all for this kind of romantic love, and I’m not a Valentine’s Day Grinch. But real love, true Christian love is much more than these warm fuzzies and romantic expressions. Real love is tough stuff. Our readings today remind us of that, and call us to real Christian love as a means of being prophets – of prophetically announcing God’s good news.
Both our first reading and our Gospel give examples of prophets called by God, but opposed and rejected by those to whom they were sent. Indeed, both readings have am overtone of violence to them.
In the first reading, Jeremiah is told that, “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you – I dedicated you and appointed you as prophet to the nations.” But God also tells Jeremiah to gird his loins, to prepare for battle. “They will fight against you but not prevail,” God says, because “I have made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass.”
This sets the stage for the Gospel, in which St. Luke recounts Jesus’ first trip home to Nazareth after he began His public ministry healing and teaching in Capernaum. At first, Jesus is enthusiastically received: “they were amazed at the gracious words that came from His mouth.” But then the crowd begins to wonder, “isn’t this the Son of Joseph?” In other words, “who does this guy think He is?”
Jesus knows their real thoughts: the people want Him to perform for them the same kind of mighty deeds they know He has done elsewhere. They think they know Him, and they want to control Him, and to benefit from this home-town boy who has made it big.
But Jesus makes it clear that “no prophet is accepted in His own native place.” And indeed the people of Nazareth are so infuriated, they “drove Him out of the town and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl Him down headlong.” Jesus, of course, escapes – but it is clear that He has Himself become the rejected prophet prefigured in all the Old Testament.
Brothers and sisters, you may be asking, how does any of this affect us, here and now? By virtue of our Baptism we have been called to participate in the mission of Jesus Christ. We have been anointed with Christ as priests, prophets and kings. We are called, even from the womb, to be prophets, announcing God’s reign! And that’s where we return to the theme of love, and grapple with St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.
In our second reading, St. Paul gives us an instruction about how we can best serve as prophets in the world – how we can announce God’s good news. St. Paul says, “if I have the gift of prophecy, and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, but do not have love, I am nothing. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing.” Love, he says, is the greatest means of being a prophet of God, because God is love, and love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
No, Paul is not speaking of the romantic love of Valentine’s candies and hearts – but the love of Christ which is patient and kind, which rejoices in the truth and is not jealous or pompous, or inflated or rude.
As we hear in today’s reading, this list of love’s characteristics, we realize just how countercultural this kind of love really is – and we understand why prophets are not easily accepted, and why we should expect, like Jeremiah and Jesus to face opposition and rejection when we actually live such a life of love.
Our modern American culture simply doesn’t encourage us to be patient or kind. In fact, it often encourages us to look out for number one. It applauds and even idolizes pomposity and ego in celebrities and athletes. It peddles an easy kind of love – one that accepts the sweet romance and the easy situations of life, that takes care of ones own needs, but turns and runs when love requires something hard. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we often fall into the trap of thinking and acting this way ourselves.
St. Paul’s great discourse on love calls us to “pass through the midst” of this exterior opposition, and this interior timidity and to embrace with courage the self-emptying, self-sacrificing, true love of Christ. Then we will have lived up to our high calling as prophets. Then we will have witnessed to the world about the power that has created, ordered, sustained and saved the entire world!
Nothing that powerful could possibly be easy. Of course, anything that great will require something of us. But, as St. Paul assures us – in the end, only “faith, hope and love remain; these three. But the greatest of these is love.”
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