Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Jeremiah’s Call as a Prophet
4 This message from the Lord came to me:
5 “I knew you before I formed you in the womb;
I set you apart for me before you were born;
I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”
6 I replied, “Ah, Lord God! Look, I don’t know how to speak, because I’m only[a] a young man.”
7 Then the Lord told me, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only[b] a young man,’ for you will go everywhere I send you, and you will speak everything I command you. 8 Don’t be afraid of them, because I am with you to deliver you,” declares the Lord.
9 The Lord stretched out his hand, touched my mouth, and then told me, “Look, I’ve put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I’ve appointed you to prophesy about nations and kingdoms, to pull up and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”
A Prayer for Deliverance
71 In you, Lord, I take refuge;
let me never be humiliated.
2 Rescue and deliver me,[a] because you are righteous.
Turn your ear to me and save me.
3 Be my sheltering refuge where I may go continuously;
command my deliverance
for you are my rock and fortress.
The Supremacy of Love
13 If I speak in the languages of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand all secrets and every form of knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains but have no love, I am nothing. 3 Even if I give away everything that I have and sacrifice myself,[a] but have no love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is always patient;
love is always kind;
love is never envious
or arrogant with pride.
Nor is she conceited,
5 and she is never rude;
she never thinks just of herself
or ever gets annoyed.
She never is resentful;
6 is never glad with sin;
she’s always glad to side with truth,
and pleased that truth will win.[b]
7 She bears up under everything;
believes the best in all;
there is no limit to her hope,
and never will she fall.
8 Love never fails. Now if there are prophecies, they will be done away with. If there are languages, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 9 For what we know is incomplete and what we prophesy is incomplete. 10 But when what is complete[c] comes, then what is incomplete will be done away with.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways. 12 Now we see only an indistinct image in a mirror, but then we will be face to face. Now what I know is incomplete, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
21 he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled, as you’ve heard it read aloud.”[a]
22 All the people began to speak well of him and to wonder at the gracious words that flowed from his mouth. They said, “This is Joseph’s son, isn’t it?”
23 So he told them, “You will probably quote this proverb to me, ‘Doctor, heal yourself! Do everything here in your hometown that we hear you did in Capernaum.’”
24 He added, “I tell all of you[b] with certainty, a prophet is not accepted in his hometown. 25 I’m telling you the truth—there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when it didn’t rain[c] for three years and six months and there was a severe famine everywhere in the land. 26 Yet Elijah wasn’t sent to a single one of those widows except to one at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the prophet Elisha’s time, yet not one of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
28 All the people in the synagogue became furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, forced Jesus[d] out of the city, and led him to the edge of the hill on which their city was built, intending to throw him off. 30 But he walked right through the middle of them and went away.
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