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.

2nd Sunday of Christmas - Year A (John 1:10-18)

This Sunday’s text focuses on recognition and, more importantly, lack of recognition.  John’s gospel is, in many ways, all about spiritual blindness.  Human beings, apart from grace, are unable to see things as they really are.  This blindness leads to frequent incidents of misunderstanding and misidentification.  Faith brings grace and grace brings sight.  Once we can see, we are able to see Jesus Christ for who he truly is, the Word by whom all things were created become flesh.  Through that incarnate Word, we are able to see God.  Whatever we want to know about God we can know in and through our knowledge of Jesus Christ.

1st Sunday of Christmas - Year A (Matthew 2:13-23)

Joseph, like the patriarch for whom he was named, appears to have been a dreamer.  Our contemporary culture doesn’t put much stock in dreams and even less in dreams as a direct communication from God.  Acting on information received in a dream is simply unreasonable.  And yet, as the philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “love has reasons which reason cannot understand”.   Lovers do believe in dreams.  Couples dream of a future together.  Parents dream futures for their children.  God, it seems, has dreams for us – divine dreams united with our human dreams.  The prophet Joel promised that the old would dream dreams and young see visions.   God’s promise is revealed to us in the totality of our human experience, not simply through our intellect.  Joseph’s openness to God’s dream for the world allowed him to move beyond righteousness to grace and to thwart the powers of this world set on foiling God’s redemptive plan. 

Being a "good" dreamer ironically requires a perpetual kind of wakefulness.  In other words, we have to pay attention.  We pray for eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts filled with desire.

4th Sunday of Advent - Year A (Matthew 1:18-25)

Except for the wise men which popular imagination tacks on to the end of the Lucan nativity account and the quote from the Septuagint version of Isaiah, Matthew’s telling of the story plays very little role in our Christmas traditions. It seems to me however that what might be called the “Annunciation to Joseph” has some important lessons to teach us. First among those is the fact that although Joseph is “righteous”, that righteousness based on the Law is insufficient for the task at hand. The angel (the evangelist) announces the Gospel to Joseph who then, by grace, is lead to take Mary and her child into his home. Joseph acts on faith in the promise of God.
Secondly, it is important to note that despite our later romanticizing of the event, Joseph’s relationship to both Mary and Jesus falls well outside what we have come to call the traditional family. The presence in our world of “God with us” reorders human relationships in new and surprising ways; even creating a family where there was none. As Christians, all of our relationships are contingent upon our relationship with Jesus. New family structures are evaluated in light of that relationship with Christ and not the demands of the law which did not allow for the formation of what we have come to call the “holy family”.

3rd Sunday of Advent – Year A (Matthew 11:2-11)

The Baptizer’s disciples ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come. Jesus replies that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. I am not blind, lame, a leper, deaf, dead or poor. Of course it is possible to spiritualize this list to make it applicable to everyone, but I think Jesus’ intentions were quite literal. So what, then, does the advent of the Christ have to do with me or, depending on your circumstances, you? For those of us outside these categories, Jesus asks only that we do not take offence at his preference for the outcast. It is to the homeless shelter, the AIDs clinic, the mental hospital and the welfare office that Christ comes. His advent is first of all for them and it is from the abundance of blessing and healing for them that we too find the free gift of grace. Blessed are those who do not take offence.