Signs of Favor

1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30

This is the day we’ve been waiting for: time for miracles, blessings, abundance, healing and strength and success – everyone will see God’s favor here!

Last week we heard Jesus proclaim that to his old neighbors in the congregation at Nazareth.

It’s a great day.

Or maybe not.

Because Jesus goes right on without hesitation, saying: You want some miracles, don’t you? Well, remember, there were many widows in Israel in the famine, and Elijah was sent to bring food and healing only to a foreign widow. Many lepers in Israel, and Elisha only cleansed that one rich arrogant foreign general.

It’s time for miracles, oh yes. But not for you.

Is it any wonder the congregation was suddenly furious at Jesus?
The local boy comes home, surrounded by tales of healing and miracles and power. He sits down in front of the congregation and tells them that God’s favor is being fulfilled right among them.

And then – while they’re all rejoicing in amazement – yanks the rug right out from under them.

You think I’ve come to bring God’s healing here? Oh, no. Think again. God’s going to give all that good news to the unrighteous.

They’re so furious they try to throw him off a cliff.

This is no way to preach your first hometown sermon. It’s like doing the whole wedding ceremony, and then announcing right before the big kiss that there’s no legal marriage and, by the way, the party’s off.

But somehow, this is what God wants Nazareth, wants us, to hear.

It’s going to be glorious!   But not for you.

The signs of God’s favor are going to be everywhere. But don’t look for them here.

I’m not really happy with Jesus myself, right this moment. It sounds like he’s saying God is not really all that interested in us; in the local faithful.

And in some ways, I’m fine with that. I can look around and see that there are plenty of people who need God’s healing more than I do; need God’s miracles and good news and success much more than I do, or we do. We already have signs of God’s favor among us.
But it’s not like we have no need of more.

There’s plenty of need for abundance and healing right in Moorestown. Plenty of poverty that needs good news. And boy would I love to see God’s blessing shining out of Trinity so strongly that no one can miss it.

I feel like that’s a good thing to want from God.   

First-century Nazareth wasn’t any different from twenty-first century Moorestown in those ways. And Jesus says no. Or at least, “you’re not getting what you’re looking for.”

And so does Paul.

He’s writing to a congregation in Corinth that’s gotten all wrapped up in looking for the spectacular spiritual gifts, powerful signs of God’s touch on someone’s life, clear indications of God’s favor for individuals and the community. They’re apparently getting jealous of each other over this, wary about why God gives the spectacular miracles of prophecy and speaking in tongues or healing power to some and not to others.

Now, I think it’s perfectly human and natural to want some signs of assurance that God cares about us, about me. Perfectly reasonable to want our congregation to succeed, to want people to be so impressed with God’s power here that they want some too.

In Corinth, though, it’s becoming a problem. They’re cutting each other down, getting braggy and pushy, or envious and spiteful. Their longing for the tangible proof of God’s favor, for miracles and wonders, has gotten toxic.

And Paul tells them to just cut it out. Stop wanting the sexy, showy spiritual gifts. Pay attention to what’s even more important: Love.

If I speak in tongues and know everything, he says, if I move mountains with my faith and do not have love, I am nothing but noisy nonsense. Love doesn’t need pride and pushiness and envy; love makes those things impossible.

We often read Paul’s great love poetry at weddings, because it’s true about what makes our marriages and deep relationships strong, but Paul’s not talking about couples. He’s talking about communities. About us.

We don’t need all those showy signs of God’s favor if we have love, he says. In fact, we don’t need any other signs of God’s favor because we have love.

Not the sweet feeling of romance for one another. We have the love of God.

And Paul is absolutely right: when you have God’s love, when you receive the love that God pours out before we ask for it or earn it, receive that all-encompassing, generous, miraculous belovedness – the love of God believing in us, hoping for us, enduring with us – envy and pride and bitterness are just impossible. Patience, kindness, honesty, generosity come naturally.

The single greatest sign of God’s favor, the only sign that even matters, is love.
The love we receive from God, un-asked and un-earned, and the way that love flows through us, becoming our love for one another, is the ultimate, eternal evidence of God’s favor.

That love isn’t shown through miracles and spectacular gifts. Paul tries to explain to his friends in Corinth that even the showiest miracles, even the most powerful spiritual gifts, are just temporary fixes, bandaids God gives for the world’s hurts or our own hurts, until the completeness of God’s kingdom comes.

Love – God’s love – is the only thing that’s eternal.

It’s natural to long for miracles when the world we live in is full of brokenness – from Congress to car trouble, untimely deaths and intractable problems to irritating colleagues and family who just need so much help. It’s natural to long for powerful demonstrations of God’s favor when the days are gray and the work is too much and we feel alone. Natural to think someone else is more spiritual, more connected with God, that someone else must shine with holy light.
It’s natural, but not necessary.

Because love is greater than all of that; love endures and abides and overcomes all. And love lives in the least spiritual and most outsider-ish and lonely of all of us, just as strongly as in the folks who memorize the Bible and lay claim to a history of miracles.

Jesus knew that, of course. Jesus lived that.

Jesus knew that all the miracles and healings and wonders that Nazareth longed for were temporary fixes, patches, for the world’s deep injuries that God has been working to transform and heal since the first ruptures of creation.

And he might be trying to tell his neighbors that when he reminds them of how God’s miracles go mostly to outsiders. When he tells them that the year of the Lord’s favor bursting forth in their midst doesn’t mean miracles for us, he might be trying to remind them that God’s love is already theirs. Not by earning or by asking, but because God chose to love Israel, to love us, entirely in spite of ourselves.

And that without that love, the miracles we wish we’d see, the unmistakable, glamorous shows of power, are just noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Powerful, but not what we actually crave.

That what we long for and need is, most of all, the long, slow, patient, kind, humble, generous, honest, trusting, hoping, eternal dailyness of the love God pours over and in and through us. The love God has already given, unasked and unearned, to Nazareth, and Corinth, and Moorestown, and you and me.