4C22.    Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19.     Yahweh proclaims that, as God, he knew Jeremiah from all eternity.  Yahweh set Jeremiah to be “a prophet to the nations.”  Because Jeremiah told the Israelites what they did not want to hear, they opposed him.  However Yahweh tells Jeremiah, “Be not crushed on their account;” I “have made you a fortified city” “against the whole land.”  “They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”  This world’s ways are not God’s ways and in the end God is always victorious.

Luke 4:21-30.  The people Jesus grew up with in Nazareth rejected Jesus’ claim that he is anything more than the son of Joseph.  They saw him to be just an ordinary person who is making an unacceptable claim to being extraordinary.  On the other hand, when Jesus points out that they, as Jews, have no claim to be extraordinary in the sight of God, since God singled out non-Jews (the widow in Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian) to receive his special favor and not Jews, they attempted “to hurl him down headlong” “from the brow of the hill.”  However, by the power of God “Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.”  We grow up with set ways of thinking that the world around us has imbued us with. It is a great challenge to let God be the world around us and to begin thinking as God thinks and not as this world does. (Matthew 16:23c)  Rather than trying to affirm his own messianic claim, Jesus challenged his hometown folks to seek to belong to God’s ways and not to humans’ ways.

1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13.  God is love. (1 John 4:8 & 16)  God’s way is love.  Human beings are, biologically speaking, animals of this earth.  The ways of the animals of this earth are to be the predators and those preyed upon. There are many ways and levels of acting in a predatory way.  While acting civilly may avoid any predatory activity, Christian love, which is to love as God loves, means that we care for others as God cares for us.  Jesus said, “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.” Christian love calls upon us to go infinity beyond the avoidance of being predatory but, far beyond that, to be genuinely concerned for one another.  Jesus crucified defines what love means in Christianity.