When Jesus began to speak, you see, he had words of truth that stung the very people who had raised him.  For he didn’t come to them with easy words, with praise for their faithfulness or reassurances from God.  He didn’t say that their benevolence giving was on track or their faith was enough to heal their ills.  Jesus reminded them that God had chosen to heal a Syrian leper and a widow who was an outcast from society, of another race and ethnicity.  Both the leper and the widow would surely have been shunned by those gathered in the synagogue at Nazareth that day.  They would have been considered outsiders and poor, hungry, sick ones at that.  They would not have been welcomed, these two whom God preferred.
  
 And so just as quickly as they had accepted him, they chased him out of the synagogue and tried to throw him off a cliff. 

 Being a prophet, preaching the word of God, sharing the faith is usually not an easy thing.  I have been mentoring a person who has just begun the candidacy process.  He will enter seminary in the fall. When we met this past week, I decided to throw some of the hard stuff at him.  I told him of the ways those who proclaim the hard truth of the gospel are sometimes treated and I cited today’s reading.  I gave him examples, and there are far too many, of people whose lives crumbled around them as they began to be obedient to this call from God to share the good news.  He responded that God protects those called and loved by God.  I asked if he’d ever read the book of Job.  He was not happy with me.  He wanted to hear me tell him that this would be an easy path.  That seminary would go well and that his personal life would not suffer because of the necessary sacrifices.  He wanted me to assure him that the debt he would accumulate in order to serve God’s church would not be crippling.  He wanted a promise that the starting salary for a new pastor would be enough to meet the financial obligations he would face. He wanted me to assure him that being a pastor would mean a 40 hour work week with nights and weekends free.   He wanted me to guarantee that he would not stand to preach and find himself dangling at the edge of a cliff with an angry congregation on his heels.
 
 He dashed quickly away from our meeting.  But we will meet again next week and I will share with him what I think is the rest of the story.  It comes from another one of our lessons today. 

 When we are come together as the Body of Christ we are called to come together as people who love one another.  It doesn’t mean we have to like one another or agree with one another, but we do love one another.  Our reading from First Corinthians is most often read at weddings, but these words from St. Paul were not directed at individuals.  They were written to a group of believers struggling with the everyday conflict inherent in life together.  There were old grievances over who said what and who did what and who hurt whose feelings and who forgot to call and who called too often and who never visited and who would never leave and who took over whose job and who never got a job and who had been at the same job forever and wouldn’t give it up.  There were insecurities about being left out, left in, and left behind.  There were family feuds.  And Paul wrote to them of a more excellent way. 

 Paul said: You know I might be the best preacher you’ve ever had.  My words might just melt your hearts and drip off my tongue but if I don’t have love, it’s all just noise.  And if I understand everything in the Bible and understand it in a way that just solidifies my faith, but don’t have love, I’m worthless.  And if I take care of the poor and give them my things, but don’t do it with love, I am nothing. 

 Then Paul lays it out for us: Love is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It is not self centered, irritable or resentful.  It rejoices over righteousness.  It bears, believes, hopes, and endures everything.
 
 This is a tall order for anyone, don’t you think?  Especially for a congregation.  I have been a member of twelve congregations in my lifetime…count ‘em…twelve.  I have served in three more.  That’s fifteen congregations I have been actively involved in.  And I have seen patience, kindness, and right rejoicing.  But I have seen the other side as well.  It’s everywhere.  Because God’s church is made up of God’s people…and we are broken people.  All of us.  Even your pastors.  Perhaps especially your pastors.
 
 Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, writes that to be a priest or pastor is to know that things are not as they should be and yet to care for them the way they are, to suspect that there is always something more urgent that you should be doing, no matter what you are doing, and to make peace with the fact that the work will never get done. 

 We are only human.  We will miss the mark.  Or sometimes we will hit it right on the nose, preaching the message of a God who prefers the least and the lowly and we will find ourselves balancing on the edge of that cliff.  

 But here’s the best part.  Here’s the best verse.  Here’s what I want you to remember today if you remember nothing else.  It’s verse eight of the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians.  Love never ends.  That’s right.  Love never ends.  All that other stuff?  It will come to an end, says Paul.  There will come a time and a place where it will just not matter anymore.  Whether our feelings were hurt or we hurt someone’s feelings, whether the sermons were great or mediocre, whether the reports were done on time or the old red hymnal was better than the new red hymnal, whether the acolyte wore orange flip flops, it just won’t matter anymore.  Because, my sisters and brothers, when it all comes to an end we will see clearly.  We will know the answers to our heart’s urgent questions.  We will understand.  Paul says we will know even as we are fully known by the One who created us.  What will it be about?  Will it be about committees and choirs, acolytes and apostles,  reports and reformation, potlucks and prophecies? Those things, Paul says will come to an end.  And it will be about love…the love that is from God and is God.  The love that never ends.  
Thanks be to God.
Amen.