3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21

Video

“Do not be saddened this day,
for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”
Ezra and Nehemiah speak these words to the Israelites
who have returned to Jerusalem 
after seventy years of exile in Babylon.
Their long-desired return to their homeland
has proved to be not all that they had hoped for:
their society has been shattered by war;
their religious institutions are in shambles.
As they hear the Law of Moses read to them by Ezra,
they are overwhelmed with how far they have fallen
and how distant their daily lives have become
from all that was promised and demanded by God’s covenant.
And so they weep.

I kind of know how they feel.
We have not spent the past seventy years in exile,
but we have spent nearly two years in the grips of a pandemic
that has not only killed over 850,000 people in our country,
but has disrupted daily life and frayed our social fabric,
and has made many of us fearful of the very things
that give joy and color to life: 
travel, concerts, movie-going,
meals shared with family and friends,
and, perhaps most of all, gathering to worship.
Even when we do these things, as many of us do,
we are haunted by a nagging fear 
that perhaps we are being irresponsible,
perhaps we might get infected 
or, even worse,
infect some vulnerable person.
This nagging fear, this colorless grind,
this sorrowful shrinking of life’s horizon
slowly saddens and exhausts us.

But the words spoken to the Israelites
are spoken today to us as well:
“Do not be saddened this day,
for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”
These words are not focused on some day in the future
when outward circumstances will have changed enough
to make joy once again possible.
For the Israelites, it is that very day,
in the midst of their sad circumstances,
on which they are told to rejoice.
Because, even amid their sad circumstances,
God is still God.
God’s word of promise to them stands firm
despite what they see in the world around them.
To believe what you cannot see
is what we call faith;
and so the invitation to let 
rejoicing in the Lord be their strength
is an invitation to faith.

This same invitation is issued by Jesus 
in today’s Gospel reading.
In the synagogue he reads the words of Isaiah,
which speak of “a year acceptable to the Lord”:
the time of glad tidings to the poor,
the time of recovery of sight to the blind,
the time of setting the oppressed free,
the time in which the sorrow that drains 
all the color and joy from life will be banished.
And then, rolling up the scroll, Jesus says:
“Today this Scripture passage 
is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus not only announces 
the drawing near of God’s kingdom,
but offers an invitation to faith,
an invitation to his listeners 
to believe in that kingdom
that their eyes cannot yet see,
an invitation to let rejoicing in the Lord
be their strength.

Jesus not only makes this invitation to others,
but he lives it out himself.
For the strength that sustains Jesus throughout his ministry—
in the face of opposition and misunderstanding,
betrayal and the cross—
is not grim determination, but joy,
the joy of one for whom 
the promises of God are already fulfilled,
one whose mind is saturated with the vision of God.
The Letter to the Hebrews, 
calling Jesus “the leader and perfecter of faith,”
says that he endured the cross and despised its shame,
“for the sake of the joy that lay before him” (Heb. 12:12).
Jesus went to the cross 
not simply out of a sense to duty to his mission
but because rejoicing in the Lord was his strength.

And so, what of us?
Our Scriptures today invite us to look beyond
the narrowed horizon that the past two years
have imposed on our vision,
to not resign ourselves to lives drained of color and joy.
Our Scriptures invite us 
to let rejoicing in the Lord be our strength,
to let the promise of a year acceptable to the Lord
be fulfilled this day in our hearing.
This is not, however, an invitation 
to fantasy and shallow optimism;
it is not an invitation to ignore 
the real challenges we continue to face
or naively believe that we are about 
to turn the corner on the pandemic.
If life has taught me anything
it is that even when we do turn the corner,
as we surely will,
around that corner there will be another pandemic,
or a war or an economic crisis 
or some personal tragedy
or some scandal in the Church.
If life has taught me anything
it is that in our fallen world 
there is always something
that can drain life of joy and color.

This is why our Scriptures bid us 
to rejoice in faith this very day,
why they invite us to see in faith
God’s promise fulfilled on this very day.
Even in our days of sorrow we find strength in rejoicing
for our faith tells us that what we see is not all there is.
It is through the eyes of faith 
that we can see beyond the narrow horizon of now
to the reign of God already becoming present among us;
it is through the eyes of faith 
that small acts of kindness,
small acts of resistance,
small acts of hope
can manifest the time acceptable to the Lord;
it is through the eyes of faith 
that God’s light streams into our souls,
making all that seemed colorless 
to shine with divine glory.

Let us pray that God 
would grant us eyes of faith this very day,
so that rejoicing in the Lord might be our strength,
and God may have mercy on us all.

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Video

Why are you here?
On a cold winter’s day it is hard to imagine
that you could not have found some excuse 
to stay home rather than drag yourself to church. 
Yet here you are.
What brought you here?
Was it long ingrained habit;
going to church is simply what you do?
Was it fear of committing a mortal sin,
or perhaps a sense of obligation?
Was it perhaps an unnamed and unnamable yearning
to take part in some activity that breaks the spiraling cycle 
of labor and leisure that slowly works its way toward death?

Obviously I can’t ask anyone why they are not here
since…well…they’re not here.
But surveys of those who identify as Catholic 
do give us some idea of what people say
when asked why they no longer go to Mass. 
One survey of young adult Catholics, ages 18-35,
reports that 44% mention the sex abuse scandals,
42% mention the Church’s teachings on human sexuality,
and 33% mention the role of women in the Church.
None of this is particularly surprising,
since these are areas either of notable failure
on the part of Church leaders,
or where Church teachings are most at odds
with contemporary American culture.
And, alas, the number of those who are not here
seems to be growing.

But here’s the thing: 
I suspect that some of you might also feel 
difficulties within yourself 
concerning some Church teachings,
and I suspect almost all of you experience 
disappointment and disgust at the misdeeds
of some among the clergy.
And yet here you are.
Whatever difficulties or disappointments
we may feel with regard to the Church,
something has brought us here.
Maybe it was habit or fear or unnamable yearning,
but I believe that ultimately what has brought us here 
must be some good news 
that we have found here and nowhere else,
some glad tidings that can overcome,
or at least balalnce, 
our disillusionment and doubts
and even our lethargy.

What could that good news be?
Saint Paul proclaims in his letter to Titus:
“The grace of God has appeared, saving all…
The kindness and generous love
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds we had done
but because of his mercy.”
Notice what Paul is saying:
While we might like to think that God loves us 
because of some loveable quality that we possess
or because of some good deed we have done,
the truth is that God loves us
because of a quality that God possesses,
that quality that we call “mercy,”
and because of the great deed God has done,
taking flesh and dwelling among us 
in Jesus the Christ,
so that we might become 
“heirs in hope of eternal life.”

This is the good news,
the glad tidings that we have been celebrating 
in this Christmas season:
God is neither some far-off dictator
issuing our marching orders,
nor some vague gaseous presence
filling the leftover empty spaces of our lives,
but God is one who has become what we are
so that we might become what he is:
partakers of God’s own eternal happiness.
This is the good news that is at the heart
of the story of Jesus’ baptism.
Jesus comes, John the Baptist says,
to baptize us, “with the Holy Spirit and fire,”
to let his love burn away 
all that is frail,
all that is false.
He enters the river Jordan
to sanctify the waters of the earth
so that we might find in them, as St. Paul says,
“the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,”
so that heaven might be opened to us
and we might hear spoken to us
what Jesus heard spoken to him:
“you are my beloved… with you I am well pleased.”
And all this not because of anything we’ve done,
but simply because of who God is.

And if all of this is not true…
well then who could blame you 
for thinking your time is better spent
staying in your nice warm house.
But if this is true,
then everything changes.
If “the grace of God has appeared, saving all,”
if heaven is opened and the Spirit has descended,
if we are in fact God’s beloved,
then we have been remade,
and the world has been remade,
and nothing is the same.
Our disappointments and disillusion,
our doubts and difficulties
do not magically vanish,
but we can live with them,
we can grapple with them, 
with the glad tidings ringing in our ears:
heaven is open,
the Spirit is poured out,
God is with us,
we are beloved.

Why are we here?
We are here, not to be or do something
that will deserve God’s love,
but simply to let God love us,
to let that love have its way with us,
to let that love transform us.
We are here because love bids us welcome,
and who are we to refuse?