Third Sunday after Epiphany

 

Got Good News?

Luke's gospel puts Jesus' declaring his mission at the beginning:

“He has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free . . . .”

Jesus proclaims good news, like Ezra standing before the people who have become disheartened at the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple after returning from captivity in Babylon. Ezra, the great priest who inspired the rebuilding of the Temple in fifty days after returning to Jerusalem from being held captive in Babylon, reads from the writings of Moses (probably Deuteronomy) as a way to energize a dis-spirited people returning from exile only to find their homeland in ruins.  From this and with Nehemiah's leadership, the Temple is rebuilt in an amazing act of the community like Americans experienced immediately after 9/11.  Rebuilding the Temple was a metaphor for rebuilding a relationship with God through their tradition; it was the proto-Good News of the gospels.

After a week contemplating (celebrating?) Christian unity, Paul's letter to the Corinthians strikes me as good news as well; so in today's readings we have Ezra proclaiming good news, Jesus proclaiming good news, and Paul writing to the church at Corinth of unity that, if taken to heart, is certainly good news for such a difficult group of relatively wealthy, first-century Christians.

Got Good News?

Luke's gospel puts Jesus' declaring his mission at the beginning:

“He has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free . . . .”

Jesus proclaims good news, like Ezra standing before the people who have become disheartened at the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple after returning from captivity in Babylon. Ezra, the great priest who inspired the rebuilding of the Temple in fifty days after returning to Jerusalem from being held captive in Babylon, reads from the writings of Moses (probably Deuteronomy) as a way to energize a dis-spirited people returning from exile only to find their homeland in ruins.  From this and with Nehemiah's leadership, the Temple is rebuilt in an amazing act of the community like Americans experienced immediately after 9/11.  Rebuilding the Temple was a metaphor for rebuilding a relationship with God through their tradition; it was the proto-Good News of the gospels.

After a week contemplating (celebrating?) Christian unity, Paul's letter to the Corinthians strikes me as good news as well; so in today's readings we have Ezra proclaiming good news, Jesus proclaiming good news, and Paul writing to the church at Corinth of unity that, if taken to heart, is certainly good news for such a difficult group of relatively wealthy, first-century Christians.

Often, the reason why people don't react with overwhelming enthusiasm for the Gospel is that very often the promise of liberation, and of healing---two essential elements of Jesus' ministry come at the cost of realizing you are not well (or at the very least, not fit), and you are essentially a "dis-eased" by sin.  Want the good news now?  Some have characterized this realization as the "good news-bad news" of the Gospel.  While I believe that humility is essential for spiritual growth, the big mistake of much evangelization is that the Gospel is presented as a tool of humiliation rather than healing. There are essentially two models of evangelization I've witnessed in my life:

1. Evangelization as Persuasion to Join
2. Evangelization as Acts of Selfless, Healing Love

Jack London in his non-fiction work "People of the Abyss" wanders the streets of early 20th century London to gain insight into the plight of the poor.  He finds himself hungry and drawn to seek help from a Christian organization that provides food at the cost of standing for what seems like an eternity listening to a sermon, the "Good News" while hunger pangs persist, before being fed.  Essentially, the idea behind this rather misguided attempt at proclaiming Good News is that one must be fed spiritually before being fed physically; classical Christian fail.  Good News must be good news.

God becoming human is at the heart of all Christian understandings of true evangelization.  Because of this central truth, what we, purveyors of Good News must accept, is that meeting the immediate need of the one who seeks our help is the Good News of the Gospel.  Opening soup kitchens to increase church membership, planting tracts with a handy three-step process of "accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior" are all variations of meeting people where you would like them to be rather than where they are. The power of Christ to change lives is betrayed when we expect conversion as the end product of our help.  The old adage "let go and let God" is appropriate in these circumstances.  As evangelical Christians (there really are no other types, I suppose), the Good News is that true salvation does not lie at the conclusion of a tract, a testimonial, or a creed; it lies at the bottom of a bowl of soup.

Jack London in his non-fiction work "People of the Abyss" wanders the streets of early 20th century London to gain insight into the plight of the poor.  He finds himself hungry and drawn to seek help from a Christian organization that provides food at the cost of standing for what seems like an eternity listening to a sermon, the "Good News" while hunger pangs persist, before being fed.  Essentially, the idea behind this rather misguided attempt at proclaiming Good News is that one must be fed spiritually before being fed physically; classical Christian fail.  Good News must be good news.

God becoming human is at the heart of all Christian understandings of true evangelization.  Because of this central truth, what we, purveyors of Good News must accept, is that meeting the immediate need of the one who seeks our help is the Good News of the Gospel.  Opening soup kitchens to increase church membership, planting tracts with a handy three-step process of "accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior" are all variations of meeting people where you would like them to be rather than where they are. The power of Christ to change lives is betrayed when we expect conversion as the end product of our help.  The old adage "let go and let God" is appropriate in these circumstances.  As evangelical Christians (there really are no other types, I suppose), the Good News is that true salvation does not lie at the conclusion of a tract, a testimonial, or a creed; it lies at the bottom of a bowl of soup.

The Second Sunday after Epiphany

 

“Everyone serves the good wine first,
and then when people have drunk freely an inferior one;
but you have kept the good wine until now.”

One thing that strikes me as odd in this parable, aside from turning water into wine, is that Jesus associates new wine with superior wine.  Everyone knows newer wine is inferior to wine that has had time to ferment and age.  Why, then, is this “new wine” Jesus has transformed from water superior?

The account is that the head server tasted the newly created wine, not knowing its source, and declared it superior.  Had he been told this wine was just created a few minutes ago, he would have probably not even tasted it, confident in its inferior quality.

As Jesus’ first recorded “sign”, which is the terminology John uses rather than “miracle”, its significance lies in its link to Jesus’ passion.  In verse 4, Jesus responds rather strangely to Mary’s revelation that the wine has run out with “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”  Jesus implies that his only concern is with the fulfillment of his mission, and the miracle becomes a sign of this mission of transformation.

At the level of symbol, the water—the fundamental association being humanity—is transformed into wine, the symbol associated with divinity.  In the Mass, the priest says as he pours the water into the wine: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity”.  This symbolic act is charged with Christ’s mission to “divinize” humanity, to use an Orthodox term.  The forming of God into our human existence wasn’t so much the humanization of God, but the divinization of humanity; God didn’t need to experience us, we needed to experience God.

This “in-breaking” of divinity into our world as God who martyred Himself for His people out of love is the great sign and pathway to our divinization.  If we wish to follow Christ, we must be caught up in a life of sacrificial love.  In a world full of martyrs who blow themselves up for a political cause masked by pseudo-religion hobbled by hatred, God’s martyrdom was borne of perfect love that sought not the destruction of sinners but their salvation.

The “old wine” now becomes the wine of hatred of the other--- whatever the label: sinner, infidel, terrorist.  The “new wine” is the transformation of this self-seeking love of tribe, of country, of religion over that of neighbor to be transformed into a love that seeks out the other in an act of selfless love.  Jesus’ miracle at the wedding resonates with Isaiah’s imagery of God’s people as the bride, God as supreme lover---the promise that “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.”  

            The great revelation of the Gospel is the good news that God’s love is the counter-intuitive truth that the new wine is superior to the old.  Behold, God is doing something new!

 

"This is my beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased"

            It is easy to treat today’s Baptism of the Lord as an historical feast.  Indeed, there are good historical reasons to believe Jesus was baptized by John since there has always been a controversy between the Christians and “Baptists”(those who continued to follow John the Baptist) over this event; however, what is at work in today’s readings is connected with epiphany, God’s healing presence in the world shown in Jesus. God acts through Jesus and is therefore made manifest to the world.

            In the scripture reading from Isaiah, we learn of the servant-messiah.  Jesus, as this servant-messiah, will extend God’s covenant between his chosen as “a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”  Jesus’ baptism is a mandate of healing and a drawing together of the nations. In Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, which was originally a second part of the Gospel of Luke, it is God acting through Jesus, not Jesus simply obeying orders from on high; Jesus is in perfect relationship with the Father, and his life among us brings God’s blessings. This gives us a crucial insight as to what it means to be a follower of Christ.

            To follow Christ is more than an imitation of Jesus’ actions; it is a call to a deepening relationship with God the Father.  As Christians, we must become animated with God’s love for humanity, and that animation is only possible through God’s Holy Spirit.  As apprentices in our spiritual journey, we begin like all good apprentices: by imitation. We learn to love, to heal and represent ourselves as ethical and moral people with a high calling, but this is not our end.  Our end is perfect communion with God.  What we imitate in Christ goes beyond his actions on earth and focuses on his relationship with the Father.  It is only from this fuller communion with God the Father that our true vocation as Christians is being fulfilled.  While living a life based on high moral and ethical standards is important, the much more enduring significance of Jesus’ baptism resides in coming into full communion with God the Father from whom we have been estranged since Eden.

            This need for a deeper, fuller communion is achieved only through prayer and God’s grace received in the Spirit.  That is why baptism is so essential; it invites the Holy Spirit to enable this essential communion.  To put it a different way, Thomas Merton, a monk, and mystic wrote that the Christian must do more than simply do the will of God.  He or she must will the will of God.  We cannot have this deeper communion without the Holy Spirit and the baptism that bestows upon us the calling to move beyond imitation and to manifest God to the world as Jesus made God known to the world.