4th Sunday After Epiphany - Year A (Matt. 5:1-12

In this Sunday’s account of the Beatitudes from Matthew, we celebrate a God who transforms curses into blessings. There are several tendencies that we need to be aware of as we look at this text.
The first is our tendency to turn this announcement of the Gospel into a law. Instead of a list of blessings, we read this as a list of musts. We must become poorer in spirit. We must become more merciful. Etc. We must do these things or the blessings turn back into curses. As much as the church and world need more poverty of spirit and more mercy, and as good a thing as it might be for any one of us to seek to grow in such virtues, our “blessedness” is not dependent on our ability to do better. It is precisely that notion of blessing being tied to achievement that Jesus’ teaching seeks to overturn.
Secondly, we have a tendency to see the Beatitudes as an exhaustive list rather than as shorthand for a radical reversal of the world’s values. Blessedness is a state of utter dependence on God. Every aspect of human life that stands in contrast to wealth, prestige, power, and authority is blessed. The ideal of the self-made person is completely contrary to today’s Gospel. This is indeed good news because none of us is ever able to live up to that cultural ideal.

Third Sunday afte Epiphany - Year A (Matt. 4:12-23)

In many ways, the teaching, proclaiming, and curing that Jesus does throughout Galilee are all facets of the same activity and so to address them individually might seem a bit arbitrary but I think it helpful.


• In this context, teaching is about imparting information and helping people to understand their faith tradition. To borrow a common metaphor from the Gospel tradition, teaching is about preparing the ground for the kingdom.

• Proclamation, to continue the metaphor, is about actually sowing the seeds of God’s reign. Through his announcement of the immanent reign of God, Jesus plants the kingdom in the hearts of his listeners.
• Curing, finally, is the fruit of the kingdom. Mental, physical and spiritual healing is all evidence of God’s powerful activity in the world. The reign of God inaugurated in Jesus is not simply an idea but a transformational reality.
This activity, then, of teaching, proclaiming and curing is how the followers of Jesus go about being fishers of people. Evangelization is an oft used word in religious circles today. These activities of Jesus are the “stuff” of evangelization.

2nd Sunday after Epiphany - Year A (John 1:29-42)

Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child frequently include a chubby baby John the Baptist in a lower corner, wearing animal skins, holding a banner that says Ecce Agnus Dei (behold the Lamb of God), and pointing up at Jesus.   In many ways, that is the vocation of every Christian, from the youngest to the oldest.  Everything we do and say must point to Jesus.  While few of us have been called to be “full time” prophets, everyone is baptized into a royal, priestly, and prophetic vocation.  The Christian points to Lamb of God who forgives sins, heals broken hearts and lives, loves without boundaries, and dies for all.  Christians point prophetically to the Jesus whose face is hidden in the schizophrenic homeless veteran, the unwed teenage mother collecting food stamps, the lonely elder and the annoying neighbor. 

Baptism of the Lord - Year A (Matthew 3:13-17)

The fact that the evangelists struggle to understand why Jesus would have allowed himself be baptized by John is a strong indication that this is an historical event. Mathew, perhaps even in spite of himself (the real meaning of biblical inspiration?), manages to bring together creation, incarnation and baptism.
The same voice that spoke the words of creation over the waters of chaos, speaks over the waters of the Jordan with the “with whom I am well pleased” echoing the “God saw it was good” of Genesis 1. The incarnate Word steps into the waters of the river Jordan, submitting to John’s baptism for the sake of righteousness, our righteousness. And so baptism becomes a sacrament, a means of grace, through which human beings are linked, once again, to the divine.