Sermon Tone Analysis

Title

Called to Love

Outline

If you are a typical person, you are like me and tend to be self-centered

That is natural, for when you became aware of yourself, you were the center of your world.

All that you experienced was what happened to you.

Later, this world expanded to your family, perhaps an extended family, and then your people, which might be ethnic or national.

You may have feared or at least been taught negative things about those who were different

Then sometime in your life you had an encounter with Jesus, perhaps in your call to this order, and you learned that Jesus had turned the world upside down, for he had taught about love.

As St Thomas Aquinas taught, love is not about you; it is seeking the good of the other.

That is how God lives and that is the way that Jesus, God incarnate, showed us to live.

In a sense our text today are all about love and its opposite

Jeremiah was called to act in love

It was not a reward for his great holiness, for it came in the womb.

It was not so that he would be exalted, the center of attention, not to be high priest, for his calling would cause people to fight against him

It was a call to serve the God of love and call his people back to their God without expecting anything in return.

His people would reject the call and it would break his heart, so he is called the weeping prophet.

God gave him that vision so that he would know that God was with him and defending him as he went through unpleasant experiences out of love.

1 Corinthians defines love

God is love, so love is greater than any ability that God can give us, for it unites us with God and will therefore last after all that is temporal is gone

So many times when God has gifted people they end up abusing their gifts and abilities for their own ends, for somewhere along the way they lost or failed to gain love, so they lost God

Paul, of course, has to define love, so that we do not think that it is a feeling, but I will leave to your meditation your taking St Thomas Aquinas’ definition and asking how each characteristic Paul names is either implied in love or is actually taken up in the definition

Then Jesus runs into the lack of love in Nazareth

Remember that just before this he has talked about God’s anointing him, not for his own good, but for the good of others - this was the acceptable year of the Lord

Now he points out that their very familiarity with him would make they reject him, for was not life about them and not about him.

“Do something for us!”

Yes, but love reaches out.

It reached out to a Canaanite woman in Elijah’s time and to the Aramean enemy in Elisha’s time.

It did good to them, while Israel, which had turned it back on God in general was left out.

The inhabitants of Nazareth thought they were good Jews who knew God and should be honored for it, so they were offended.

They rejected God, for they rejected love, and so they tried to kill Jesus, who would indeed die, but did so in an act of love for those who had rejected him.

Perhaps that is why some Catholics act like the people of Nazareth and react strongly against Lumen Gentium.

Sisters, if we get this we get the core of the life and teaching of Jesus

Jesus was a prophet (and of course more than a prophet) chosen before birth, not to be honored as king, but to give and give and give in love to others until he gave his own life.

Jesus’ life is described in Paul’s pean on love, for he was all of that and more.

And Jesus’ rejection is the pattern of rejection that we face if we really live in love.

Take these passages and lay them side by side with Jesus and see how they fit; take Jesus and “put him on” and you will be putting on love.

But expect to get the same response in return as Jeremiah and Paul and Jesus did from others who do not accept the love of God.

Readings

FIRST READING

Jeremiah 1:4–5, 17–19

4 The word of the LORD came to me:

5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

before you were born I dedicated you,

a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

17 But you, prepare yourself;

stand up and tell them

all that I command you.

Do not be terrified on account of them,

or I will terrify you before them;

18 For I am the one who today

makes you a fortified city,

A pillar of iron, a wall of bronze,

against the whole land:

Against Judah’s kings and princes,

its priests and the people of the land.

19 They will fight against you, but not prevail over you,

for I am with you to deliver you—oracle of the LORD.

RESPONSE

Psalm 71:15ab

15 My mouth shall proclaim your just deeds,

day after day your acts of deliverance,

though I cannot number them all.

PSALM

Psalm 71:1–6, 15, 17

1 In you, LORD, I take refuge;

let me never be put to shame.

2 In your justice rescue and deliver me;

listen to me and save me!

3 Be my rock of refuge,

my stronghold to give me safety;

for you are my rock and fortress.

4 My God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked,

from the clutches of the evil and violent.

5 You are my hope, Lord;

my trust, GOD, from my youth.

6 On you I have depended since birth;

from my mother’s womb you are my strength;

my hope in you never wavers.

15 My mouth shall proclaim your just deeds,

day after day your acts of deliverance,

though I cannot number them all.

17 God, you have taught me from my youth;

to this day I proclaim your wondrous deeds.

SECOND READING

Option A

1 Corinthians 12:31–13:13

31 Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts.

But I shall show you a still more excellent way.

CHAPTER 13*

1 If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. 2 And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

3 If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind.

It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, 5 it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, 6 it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.

7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails.

If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.

9 For we know partially and we prophesy partially, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

11 When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

12 At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face.