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Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven
and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and
in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.

I don’t know if you need to hear what I’m about to

say this morning—but I assure you that I need to hear

it.

I love books.

My wife would say that I love books . . . too much.

One day, she cast a rather disgusted look at stacks

of books I had in an alcove of our bedroom and said

“You need to get rid of some of these books.”

I had a one word response: “HERESY!”

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Some years ago, she gave me a cartoon, which I

believe she found in the New Yorker. It was a drawing

of a man sitting in an easy chair, reading a book.

Books lined all the walls in the room where he sat. But,

as you examined the drawing further, the chair upon

which the man sat, the ottoman upon which he rested

his feet, the table next to the chair, were all made of

stacks of books..

I had a one word response to this, too: “Heaven.”

Remember that episode of “The Twilight Zone,”

“Time Enough at Last?” The one where Burgess

Meredith where he was a bookworm, hassled by his

boss, by his wife. He works in a bank and sneaks down

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in the vault to read one day and a bomb blast does

away with everyone but him—so he finds the library

and gets all the books and sits down to read, but

breaks his glasses, and is blind without them. I found

that story particularly heartbreaking.

I suppose my father had a lot to do with this love

of books. He was an avid reader. When I was really

young, we had a bookcase in our house that my

parents bought when they were first married. My dad

had a set of books from Black’s Reader’s Service in this

bookcase. They were inexpensive cloth-bound books,

but they were red, and they had gold inlaid designs,

and were written by people with really exotic names:

people like Zola, and Gautier, and Ibsen.

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He had a copy of H. G. Wells’s “Outline of History;”

oddly enough, for many years, it held the bouquet from

my parent’s wedding. I still have this book; the flowers

are long gone, but the pages are still stained from

where the flowers rested.

And nestled in between were two books that we

lost somewhere along the way, but I can still see them

in the little mahogany bookcase—Milton’s “Paradise

Regained,” and another entitled “Angel Unaware.” It

was written by Dale Evans Rogers, Roy Rogers’s wife,

and was the story of their child, Robin Elizabeth

Rogers,” who had Down’s Syndrome.

The title was, obviously, taken from Hebrews 13:2:

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby

some have entertained angels unawares.”

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The Gospel lesson for today is a rather curious

story. I remember the first time I really encountered

the narrative. I took some religious studies courses in

college to fulfill some elective requirements. The

professor, Dr. John McRay, was wonderful, passionate

teacher, and it was he that exposed us to how the story

really unfolds. We’ve heard it many times in church,

and it often gets recalled that Jesus read from the scroll

of the prophet Isaiah, sat down and told those present

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

And, when the people heard this, if we were an episode

of “The Sopranos,” we might say “ever’ body went

nuts.”

But that’s not what happened.

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What happens is more like that Jesus makes his

proclamation, and the crowd goes “YES, AMEN!

HALLELUJAH! PRAISE YOU JESUS!!”

The scripture actually says “All spoke well of him

and were amazed at the gracious words that came

from his mouth.”

So it wasn’t that Jesus told everybody that the

scripture was fulfilled by Him that “cheesed them off.”

It was what He said next that, as we say in

Tennessee, “got ever’ body’s panties in a wad.”

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“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the

prophet’s home town. But the truth is, there were

many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the

heaven was shut up for three years and six months,

and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet

Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at

Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in

Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of

them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

And it was at THIS point, we observe, that “ever’

body went NUTS!”

But why? And what does it mean to us?

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These are the thoughts I wish for us to explore this

morning.

First—let’s think about the widow.

“In every code except the Hebrew,” one biblical

scholar writes, “the widow has rights of inheritance, but

in Hebrew law she is completely ignored.” Another

scholar writes “One reason for this strange neglect may

be the Hebrew belief that death before old age was a

calamity, a judgment for sin which was extended to the

wife that was left.”

The prophets later sought to address this issue and

change the culture; the prophet Malachi, speaking for

God, wrote “Then I will draw near to you for judgement;

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I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers,

against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely,

against those who oppress the hired workers in their

wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who

thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the

Lord of hosts.”

By the time of the New Testament, “As a member

of the covenant community the widow must receive the

same merciful treatment as that which is given to the

sojourner and the fatherless.” Indeed, the Jewish

widow eventually became a special citizen of the

community, recognized to be under the special care of

God.

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Speaking to those present in the synagogue at

Nazareth, Jesus said “. . . there were many widows in

Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut

up for three years and six months, and there was a

severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to

none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in

Sidon.”

In other words, while there were many Hebrew

widows, many of these special citizens of the covenant

community present in the time of the famine, God sent

Elijah to none of them—He sent Elijah to a Gentile

widow.

That alone must have caused the hairs on the back

of the necks of those present to stand straight up.

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What about the leper?

Of course, lepers were ritually unclean in the

Jewish culture. The thirteenth chapter of Leviticus

describes how priests examined individuals suspected

of having leprosy, and how they are to be separated

from the rest of the community and confined for

specified amounts of time while their disease

progresses. If, at the end of those blocks of time, the

disease had not abated, the law demanded: “. . . The

priest shall pronounce him unclean . . The person who

has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let

the hair of his head be dishevelled; and he shall cover

his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall

remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is

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unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be

outside the camp.” I suspect this expulsion from the

community was because it was known by that time that

leprosy could be contagious. But there was always

hope for healing for these pitiable creatures.

It was to such an one that came to Elisha for

healing—but he, too, was not a Hebrew; he, too, was a

Gentile.

And this exposition, this exegesis by Jesus, as the

Gospel lesson tells us, was more than the Jewish

community at Nazareth could bear.

For the longest time, I thought that the underlying

message might be that Jesus was telling those present

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that they didn’t have a “monopoly” on God. There was,

and continues to be, a nationalistic undercurrent within

the Jewish culture. When I was with you last, we

shared together about Yah-Weh, the tribal god, the

warrior god. Yah-Weh was theirs and theirs alone. So it

was that I wondered that Jesus might be telling those

present that it just wasn’t so; God was not to be bound

in such a manner. In the ninth chapter of the book of

Romans, Paul wrote: “For he says to Moses, ‘I will have

mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have

compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So it

depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who

shows mercy.”

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No, God is Creator of all; God is God to all. His

lovingkindess is to be given to all men, not just those

descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

I suppose this was enough to raise the hackles of

the Jewish people of Nazareth, and make them want to

do away with this prophet that had been raised among

them.

But as I have pondered this story anew, and

considered why those whose responsibility it is to array

the passages that form the lectionary might have

paired it with 1 Corinthians 13, the great poem on love,

another notion, another possibility, has presented itself.

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There are several Greek words that translate as

“love” into English.

There is eros, which connotes sexual love and

beauty. Our word “erotic” comes from this word. It is

not found in the New Testament, but is found in the

Septuagint, the Greek translation of the entire Bible, in

the seventh chapter of Proverbs: “Then a woman

comes towards him, decked out like a prostitute, wily of

heart. Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;

let us delight ourselves with love.”

Then there are the word phileo and agape.

Phileo means the community kind of love; in the

book of Titus it is used: “All who are with me send

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greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith.”

Philadelphia is the “City of Brotherly Love,” and takes

its name from this word.

But agape it is agape of which Paul speaks in the

thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Agape is

something altogether different. It is an aggressive,

outward reaching kind of love. It is a self-sacrificing

kind of love.

At the end of the Gospel of John, there is an

exchange between Jesus and Peter that illustrates the

difference in these words; it doesn’t get borne out well

in our English versions of the Bible:

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“When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to

Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you agape me

more than these?’ But Peter dodges the question:

‘Yes, Lord; you know that I phileo you.’ Jesus said to

him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him,

‘Simon son of John, do you agape me?’ Again, Peter

doesn’t give Jesus a straight answer: ‘Yes, Lord; you

know that I phileo you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my

sheep.’ He said to him the third time (and this is where

Jesus changes His approach) ‘Simon son of John, do you

phileo me?’ (In other words, ‘Peter, is phileo the best

you can muster?’) Peter felt hurt (perhaps know we

know why) because he said to him the third time, ‘Do

you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know

everything; you know that I phileo you.’ Jesus said to

him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you

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were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to

go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you

will stretch out your hands, and someone else will

fasten a belt around you and take you where you do

not wish to go.’”

It is this agape love that the thirteenth chapter of

First Corinthians speaks. It is a love that is above our

carnal desires, a love that is above our feelings of

camaraderie and community. It is a love that

transcends all of this and says that the life of the

beloved is more important than the life of the one who

expresses such love.

We have a ritual in our wedding ceremonies where

the bride and the groom cut the wedding cake and feed

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it to each other. Today it too often takes on the air of

low comedy, as they elicit laughter from those present

by shoving it into each other’s face. But its origin is

very solemn and speaks of agape; it is really a pledge

where the bride and the groom covenant with each

other and effectively say “I will feed you from my own

body before I let you die from starvation.” This is the

nature of agape love, and it is of agape love that

Corinthians speaks.

While agape best describes the love that God has

for His people—for God so loved the world that He gave

His only begotten Son—our experience of agape is not

passive.

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The love, the agape, of God is not intended to

make us feel all “goopy” inside about ourselves.

The love, the agape, of God is not to be hoarded

within the confines of our “tribe,” such that we just sit

around a campfire and sing “Kum Bah Yah” to each

other.

The love, the agape, of God is drives us out into

the world to find objects to whom we may express it—

regardless of their condition or their tribal affiliation.

The love, the agape, of God is participatory; it is

experiential. And it is this notion, I submit to you, that

caused the Jewish people of Nazareth to drive Jesus out

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of town to the brow of the hill upon which their town

was built.

A Gentile widow; a Gentile leper.

If Jesus was nothing else, He was a masterful

storyteller. Remember the story of the prodigal son,

from the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel? The young

man demanded of his father his share of the

inheritance, and he “squandered his property in

dissolute living.”

When everything was gone, including the friends

that had taken advantage of him, the only work he

could find was as a tender of swine. His situation was

so desperate that “He would gladly have filled himself

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with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one

gave him anything.”

This must have been a horrific picture in the minds

of the Jewish hearers: a Jewish man having to take care

of pigs—there could be no animal in zoology more

unclean than a pig. And this young man was so hungry

that eating the slop he fed to those pigs would have

made his heart glad. There could be no more horrid

condition in the Jewish mind, there could be no point

lower—a Jew couldn’t sink past this point.

I believe this is why Jesus chose the images of the

widow of Zarephath and the story of Naaman, the

Syrian leper as object lessons.

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It seems that there could be no images more

abhorrent to the Jewish mind than these two individuals

whose stories would have been familiar lore.

And this, too, is the message to us, I believe.

I said earlier that the love, the agape, of God is

participatory, it is experiential.

What I mean by that, and what I feel Jesus was

teaching was this: if the whole of your idea of the love

of God is summed in your experience of the way you

believe He loves you and those closest to you, then

your God, as we say in Tennessee, “ain’t worth a

plugged nickel.”

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Do you want to experience, truly experience, the

love, the agape of God? Then get off of your backside

and find someone that is absolutely abhorrent to you,

someone whose mere visage you consider a

defilement, someone with whom the mere touch would

defile you--and let that agape flow through you to

them. Then, and only then, will you understand, truly

understand, the agape—not just the philos--of God.

Who might that be? It probably will be different for

each of us; but I am sure that each of us has someone

within our personal spheres who would qualify.

For some of us, it might be a homosexual. For

some of us, it might be someone of a different race.

For some of us, it might be someone who has hurt us

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deeply. For some of us, it might be someone that we

just find offensive.

There is a marvelous story in the first “Chicken

Soup for the Soul” book. It is the story of Terry Dobson,

who, as a young man went to Tokyo to study Aikido,

one of the martial arts. One spring afternoon, he was

on a train as it rattled through the city. At one station,

a drunk and belligerent man boarded the train. He was

filthy and began menacing the people on the train.

Terry Dobson stood up from his seat, preparing to act if

he needed—but recalling that his teacher curiously, but

repeatedly told him and his fellow students that Aikido

is the art of reconciliation.

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The drunk man saw him and shouted “Aha! A

foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!”

But just as the man began to lunge, they both

heard someone shout “Hey!” It came from a little old

Japanese man. He said to the drunk “Hey! C’mere and

talk with me.” The drunk shouted back “Why the hell

should I talk to you?” But the little old man just smiled

and asked “What’cha been drinkin’?”

“Been drinkin’ SAKE,” the drunk bellowed. “And

it’s none of your business!” The old man was spattered

with spittle from the drunk.

“That’s wonderful,” said the old man. And he

proceeded to tell the drunk man about his wife, and

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how they like to warm a little bottle of sake, take it to

the garden in the evening, watch the sun go down, and

see how their persimmon tree is doing. He tells the

man that it was his grandfather who planted the tree,

and that he and his wife like to go to the garden with

their sake every day, even when it rains.

The drunk man began to ease and replied, “Yeah . .

. I love persimmons, too.” The old man said to him “I’m

sure you have a wonderful wife.”

“No,” the drunk man replied. “My wife died.” He

began to sob. “I don’t got no wife; I don’t got no home.

I don’t got no job. I’m so ashamed of myself.” And

tears rolled down his cheeks.

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“That’s a difficult predicament,” the old man said.

“Sit down here and tell me about it.”

The train arrived at Terry Dobson’s stop. As he

exited the train, he saw the man lying on the seat with

his head in the old man’s lap. As he talked, the old

man was stroking his filthy, matted hair.

“What I had wanted to do with muscle had been

accomplished with kind words,” Terry Dobson observed.

“I had just seen Aikido in action, and the essence of it

was love.”

Agape is patient; agape is kind; love is not envious

or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its

own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not

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rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears

all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures

all things.

If we want to know firsthand the agape of God,

then we must change our inward focus to an outward

focus. And if we wish to know deeply and personally

the agape of God, then, I propose, it is best known

when we allow it to flow through us, and manifest itself

to someone for whom the mere thought is abhorrent to

us.

This is difficult, I know. And personally, I don’t

know how we can do this as an act of volition, as a

mere act of our will. We can, I believe, only accomplish

this by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit.

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And, while the one that becomes the object will

experience a benefit, I believe the larger benefit will

accrue to our account. While it is important that such

people come to know the love of Christ, it seems to me

that what is more vital is what we become in the

process. By loving the unlovable, we become more like

God.

I read somewhere that Teilhard de Chardian said

that our task is not to do as God wills, but to will as God

does.

By allowing His agape to flow through us,

especially towards those that we find most repulsive,

those who become for us “angels unaware,” it seems to

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me that we draw closer to that ideal, that our will is

drawn more into parallel with the heart of the Father.

I can’t speak for you—but I can tell you that, as I

age, I grow more and more weary of my own will.

Finding that place of rest where I could feel more the

heart of the Father sounds like a very welcome place.

Rather than rid the world of those we despise, it

seems to me that God calls us to a place where, by His

Holy Spirit, we can love them, we can agape them. If

there is to be true and lasting peace, this is the only

way I can fathom its manifestion.

And thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.

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AMEN.

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