YEAR A Homily for 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ordinary Time, which we begin today has a bit of an innocuous name, doesn’t it.  It is rather like a pause between two great seasons of Christmas and Lent. And basically, that is what it is. Over all, in Ordinary Time we don’t usually dwell on the future events of the passion, death and resurrection, but we focus more on what it means to be a follower or disciple of Christ.  The readings tend to be non-specific and just follow the order that they are in the original book – this year Matthew’s Gospel, with occasional interjections of another Gospel, usually John.

On this second Sunday in Ordinary Time, we have another telling of the story we were told by Matthew last week, but this time by the Evangelist John. Those of you who have listened carefully might note that there are a few differences in this version of Jesus’ baptism. First of all, it is completely from John the Baptist’s point of view, and secondly, it shows a progression in thought of the early church.

The Baptist does all the speaking in John’s version. In fact, the whole reading is basically John the Baptist’s witness and testimony. John recognizes Jesus immediately as the Lamb of God, the one sent to take away the world’s sins. In earlier versions, if you remember, John the Baptist apparently wasn’t sure who Jesus was, and sent his disciples to Jesus to ask if he was the one he had been prophesying.  In the first version, Mark’s, no one even heard the voice of God but Jesus.  In Matthew’s version everyone heard it.  In John’s version, John sees the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus and has been told by God, that the one who receives the spirit is the Son of God, the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. We are told, then, from the outset of John’s Gospel what the early church knew and had come to believe – Jesus was the Son of God, and he died for our sins and the salvation of the world. This was quite a development of thought over a period of about eighty years.

The first reading today is called a Servant Song. Commentators are not sure whether the servant himself is the prophet Isaiah or if it is the nation Israel, and some feel it is a veiled reference to Jesus himself as a servant of God. In any case, God feels glorified in Israel the servant, which means that God is proud of Israel and likes to boast about its faithfulness and love for him. God will be glorified not through the accomplishments of Israel but because God intends to work through them to bring about something great: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation shall reach the ends of the earth.” Obviously, the Christian church has seen this prophecy as being fulfilled in Jesus who has become our light, and who offers salvation to all people.

If a servant can also be seen to be a disciple, the reading today from Paul more fully begins our study for the next few weeks of discipleship. The section from Paul today is really just the salutation of a letter.  It some ways it is like saying the reading from Paul today is “Dear Friends”. And that’s it. But there must be something more to it than just the opening address of a letter. I want you to note that Paul calls himself an Apostle – “From Paul, called to be an Apostle”. It is interesting that St. Luke defined an Apostle as someone who was with Jesus during his life time.  Paul disagrees with that, and often claims that he was called by Christ to Apostleship. The idea of calling to Apostleship is an important one.  Just as in the first reading, Israel did nothing, but God did the calling, God did the working through them, so too, Paul feels that he has been called and that God is working through him. The word “called” appears  three times in this short introduction to the longer letter of Paul, so obviously Paul feels that the call is part of discipleship.

This same theme is picked up in the psalm today as well: “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.” God has also called the psalmist who has waited patiently, and accepted the call when it came. God also works through the psalmist for he has “put a new song in my mouth” the psalmist says. Again, God does the calling and the gifting. Being called means being chosen by God, and being a vessel for God’s work.

Now getting back to the Gospel today, we see the same theme now running through this section of John. John, too, has been called, and his call involves some serious preaching and predicting and baptizing. But is through the voice of God that John has received his call, and the voice of God works through him to a recognition of God’s Son. Jesus was for John no longer just an ordinary person. John says that he didn’t know who Jesus was until God told him.  He was to look for a sign – the person on whom the Spirit descended as a dove would be the one. So similarly to the psalmist, John let God “put a new song in his mouth”. In that way John can say that he has seen and can testify that Jesus is the Son of God. God has chosen, and is working through, John. I imagine that John in actuality would probably not have called Jesus the Son of God. This title was a reflection of the theology that had developed by the time John wrote. However, he probably saw him as some sort of Messiah.

I think that what can apply to us today, and what is being suggested by the Church liturgists, who have placed these readings side by side for us, is that we need to put ourselves into a position where we can listen for God. We know through the Gospels that he has chosen each of us, and that through our baptism we have been made disciples of Christ, but remember that we do not work by ourselves or in a vacuum.  No, it is God who works through us to his glory.  Anything that we do that is worthwhile is done by the will of God, by our listening and responding to God.

This theme of discipleship which is set up for us today will follow through in the following weeks in the Gospel of Matthew.

A kite was consumed by envy of the eagle. “How come he can fly so high? Everyone admires him and no one admires me.” One day the kite sees a hunter and calls out to him to shoot the eagle. The hunter replies that he would need to add some feathers to his arrow for it to reach the eagle. The kite pulled one of his best feathers and gave it to the hunter. That was not enough to reach the eagle. So the kite pulled another and then another and yet the arrow was not quite able to reach the eagle. Before long all the kite’s best feathers were gone and he was no longer able to fly. The hunter simply turned round and shot the kite as his catch for the day. The moral of the story: envy and jealousy consume the person who harbours them before the person for whom they are harboured.

There is a difference between envy and jealousy. Envy is dissatisfaction with what belongs to us and coveting what belongs to another. We can envy people for their looks, their possessions or their relationships, wishing we could take their place. Jealousy, on the other hand, is the fear that what is ours may be lost to another. Both envy and jealousy rob people of their inner peace as they devise ways to eliminate the person they perceive as standing in the way to their personal fulfilment.

Looking at the way things are in our world today, it would seem that envy and jealousy are normal human traits. But the example of John the Baptist shows us that true personal fulfilment and greatness lies not in how we may compare with others but in how faithful we are to our God-given roles in life.

How many people like to hear that the person who succeeded them is doing better than they did? Nobody. Here John is a rare example. John started the Kingdom of God movement. Jesus succeeded him as leader of the movement after Herod imprisoned John and had him executed. Yet whenever John speaks of Jesus he speaks of Jesus as better than him. He describes Jesus as the bridegroom and himself as only his best man (John 3:29). Notice how he introduces Jesus to his own disciples in today’s gospel:

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me” (John 1:29-30).

As a result of this endorsement, two of his disciples left him and followed Jesus (verse 37). These were the first disciples of Jesus according to John’s Gospel. John summarised his whole attitude to Jesus in one statement: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Why is John so content and satisfied with playing the second fiddle rather than vying with Jesus for the limelight? It is because he knows exactly the reason for him being in the world. He knows why he came into this life: “I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel” (John 1:30). Because he knows why he is here, John can tell when he has done his bit. He can tell when it is time to hand the baton to another. Why did you come into the world? What is God’s plan for your life? If you do not have a personal answer to this question, chances are that you will spend your life chasing after everything and nothing, in a rat-race of envy and jealousy with those you perceive as better than you. Instead of living and working in harmony and cooperation with others, people who do not know the reason for their being are often driven by rivalry and competition.

But look at the flowers in the field. Some are shrubs and some are herbs, some are red and some are white, some are yellow and some are blue; yet all of them are beautiful. The poinsettia, the daffodil, the rose, all are beautiful because they have their different purposes. As we come to the long period of Sundays in ordinary time marked by the liturgical colour green, let us have John the Baptist before us as a great example of what it means to be ordinary. Fact is, there is much greatness in being ordinary. Even though John felt he was not worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals, Jesus did turn round to say of him, “Among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11).

Henry III of Bavaria was a God-fearing king but the demands of being a ruler did not leave him much time for spiritual exercises. One day he got so fed up with being a king that he went to Prior Richard at the local monastery and asked to be admitted as a monk for the rest of his life. “Your Majesty,” said Prior Richard, “do you understand that the pledge here is one of obedience? That will be hard because you have been a king.” “I understand,” said Henry. “The rest of my life I will be obedient to you, as Christ leads you.” “Then I will tell you what to do,” said Prior Richard. “Go back to your throne and serve faithfully in the place where God has put you.” King Henry returned to his throne, ruled his people with the fear of God, and became a saintly king. In today’s second reading, Paul reminds us that we are “called to be saints” (1 Corinthians1:2).

Like King Henry we sometimes believe that we need to run away from the demands of family and profession and escape to a monastery, a convent or the desert, where it will be easy to become a saint. But, as we learn from the wise counsel of Prior Richard, God expects us to be saints in the concrete situations of our personal, family and business or professional lives.

Our second reading today is just the opening section of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. It consists of three verses: verse 1 in which Paul introduces himself and Sosthenes as the writers of the letter, verse 2 in which he speaks of the Corinthians as those to whom the letter is addressed, and verse 3 in which he gives them his opening greeting. Why does the church offer us this reading for our spiritual nourishment today as we begin the long period of Sundays in Ordinary Time? It is because of the deep spiritual message contained in verse 2. We shall look at this verse more closely.

Paul … To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours (1 Corinthians 1:2)

There are two interesting points in this verse. (1) Paul does not address the word of God to the Corinthians alone but also to “all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That includes us gathered here today to call on the Lord’s name. The word of God we shall be reading all this year will be addressed to various local churches – Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and so on. It helps to know that, though we live in different times and cultures, the same word is also, in some way, addressed to us. (2) Paul refers to those to whom the word is addresses as men and women “called to be saints.” Again that includes us. We may not feel like we are saints yet, but that is the purpose for which God has called us. We are all called to holiness.

A saint or someone who has been sanctified literally means someone who has been set apart. That God has called us to be saints means that God means for us to be special people in the world, not people who simply follow the crowd wherever the current wind blows.

For some of us the call of God may require a change of state in life. God may require of us what Jesus required of his disciples, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21). The life of such a disciple is a life-long quest for perfection according to the mind of Jesus.

For most of us, however, God calls us to be His faithful children in the midst of the trials and challenges of normal life in society. The call of God is that we be in the world but not of the world. We participate fully in society, in politics, in business, including show business, in education, in health-care delivery, and in dispensing justice through making and implementing just laws.

It is possible to be a saint even in the entertainment industry. Mel Gibson has shown that one can make a blockbuster movie without compromising one’s Christian principles. His “Passion of the Christ” was at the same time engaging and uplifting, captivating and inspiring. That is a good example of how one can participate fully in business and professional life without hiding one’s light under a bushel. God has called us to be saints. Let us ask God today to teach us how to live saintly lives in our families and in whatever occupation in which we find ourselves.

One commentator I read, Diane Bergant, suggested that we keep in mind that our religion is a religion that is historical and that it is a religion that grew in its understanding of Jesus. That is why we can see development of thought in the four Gospels. She says that Paul doesn’t just repeat the past stories but Paul reinterprets them for his own time and his own congregations. And that is what a homilist tries to do each Sunday – find a way to help people understand the Scriptures in their own time and place, but placing them in the clear context of their own time and place. It is history, but relevant to our own time. Because we have been called into discipleship through our own baptisms, we need constantly to place that discipleship, that following of Jesus into the context of our own lives and our own historical moment.

We need to be beacons of light in our own time, and tell the world, like John the Baptist, that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and can give his saving grace to everyone. What can we do this week to lighten the way for someone, to help them through darkness or depression, to change their lives in some little way. How can we be Christ in this time and place? How can we be disciples?  Let’s start by listening and trusting that God will show us the way.

By Rt.Rev.Prof.Kasomo Daniel

Bishop Kasomo is the Bishop of The Society of St. Peter and Paul (SSPP)