A Homily - The First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B)

First Reading – Isaiah 55:1-11 ©

Responsorial Psalm – Isaiah 12 ©

Second Reading – 1 John 5:1-9 ©

Gospel Acclamation – John 1:29

The Gospel According to Mark 1:7 – 11 ©

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

 The grace of God, the creator of the universe, the grace of God is free, and all the good things God has in store for us come with it; God promises to deliver to everyone.

 The covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the covenant God made with Moses, Joshua and David, is the same covenant God made the prophets and with Jesus; it is meant to a blessing for all people wherever they are, no matter how near or how far. God promises to deliver the stranger and the sinner this is the grace of God, this is the way Jesus instructed us to follow, this is the way that leads to paradise.

 There is here, be patient; salvation flows from the wellspring of God, from this life into the next world.

 Be mindful.

 Everyone who is, was begotten by God…everyone.

 Out of your love for God you are called on to love all of God’s children, to love them equally and without preference as God does.

 Know this.

 To profess an ideology or to articulate a doctrine is not the same as an expression of love. Keep God’s commandment; do as Jesus said: love your neighbor as you love yourself, care for them as you care for your own.

 Do not assume that just because a person professes to love God that this person actually has love in their heart. Everyone has the capacity for love, and such a profession is a good first step, but it is not proof of anything.

Be mindful.

 Being a Christian, being a follower of Jesus, does not confer any special benefit on a person, not in this life or the next; it only confers a special responsibility on the believer: to treat all people as God would, as beloved members of the divine family.

 Consider the gospel for today:

 The Gospel of John was written more than one hundred and twenty years after the death of Jesus. None of its authors knew Jesus, or John, and none of them knew anyone who knew them.

 Like all of the other Gospels, John was not written by a single person. It was written by a community of people, and more than any of the other Gospels, it was written as propaganda. It was written with the intention of arguing for what that community believed about who Jesus was, what the meaning of his life was, and what his death meant to the early church, to the world and to the entire creation.

 Unlike the synoptic Gospels (Mark Luke and Matthew), by the time John’s Gospel was written, the early church no longer had any concern about ameliorating John the Baptist’s followers. The ethnic Jews in John’s community had either become Christians, or were considered to be enemies of the nascent Church.

 John’s Gospel is overwhelmingly concerned with depicting Jesus as the cosmic savior. Jesus as the Word of God, Jesus the divine sacrifice who takes away the sins of the World…Jesus as God.

 When John the Baptist encounters Jesus, he is merely a witness.

 When John sees Jesus he announces to his followers that he has come, a man greater than himself, one who existed before him (even though he was born in time after him), one on whom the Spirit of God rests, one who will complete the baptism of every believer, because he will baptize with the Holy Spirit, not water.

 This was the crowning achievement of early Christian propaganda. Through this vehicle the Church transformed the man, Joshua son of Joseph, into the being through whom the entire universe came into existence…it is a fine piece of mythology, but it must be understood for what it is, the expressions of faith and hope, not the recitation of history and fact.

 John’s take on this moment stands in stark contradistinction to how it was presented by Mark, who’s Gospel was written closest in time to the actual life of Jesus. Mark’s gospel illustrates a movement from the ministry of John to the ministry of Jesus. It is depicted with minimal fanfare, and only a slight suggestion that the transposition from John to Jesus was ordained by God.

 In Mark’s narrative the Baptist acknowledges the authority of Jesus, and Jesus is presented depicted as a son of God, but not necessarily as God’s own self, as John’s Gospel would later suggest.

 Mark does not claim that Jesus is God, merely that he has the favor of God, as John did before he was arrested and murdered. Jesus is depicted as accepting the mission that John handed him, and receives the sanction of the Holy Spirit at the moment he comes up out of the water, when the baptism is complete.

 It is wise to study the differences in the Gospels, not to be hung up on them because they say present different accounts of the same events, and not for the purpose of reconciling those events through some tortured logic, but to see the evolution of belief as it developed over many decades in the early church.

 

First Reading – Isaiah 55:1-11 ©

Come to Me and Your Soul Will Live, and I Will Make an Everlasting Covenant with You

Thus says the Lord:

Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come!

Buy corn without money, and eat, and, at no cost, wine and milk.

Why spend money on what is not bread, your wages on what fails to satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and you will have good things to eat and rich food to enjoy.

Pay attention, come to me; listen, and your soul will live.

With you I will make an everlasting covenant out of the favours promised to David.

See, I have made of you a witness to the peoples, a leader and a master of the nations.

See, you will summon a nation you never knew, those unknown will come hurrying to you,

for the sake of the Lord your God, of the Holy One of Israel who will glorify you.

Seek the Lord while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near.

Let the wicked man abandon his way, the evil man his thoughts.

Let him turn back to the Lord who will take pity on him, to our God who is rich in forgiving; for my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways – it is the Lord who speaks.

Yes, the heavens are as high above earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.

Yes, as the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.

 

Responsorial Psalm – Isaiah 12 ©

The Rejoicing of a Redeemed People

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Truly, God is my salvation,

  I trust, I shall not fear.

For the Lord is my strength, my song,

  he became my saviour.

With joy you will draw water

  from the wells of salvation.

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Give thanks to the Lord, give praise to his name!

  Make his mighty deeds known to the peoples!

  Declare the greatness of his name.

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Sing a psalm to the Lord

  for he has done glorious deeds;

  make them known to all the earth!

People of Zion, sing and shout for joy,

  for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

 

Second Reading – 1 John 5:1-9 ©

Jesus Christ Came by Water and Blood

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten by God; and whoever loves the Father that begot him loves the child whom he begets.

We can be sure that we love God’s children if we love God himself and do what he has commanded us; this is what loving God is – keeping his commandments; and his commandments are not difficult, because anyone who has been begotten by God has already overcome the world;

this is the victory over the world – our faith.

Who can overcome the world?

Only the man who believes that Jesus is the Son of God:

Jesus Christ who came by water and blood, not with water only, but with water and blood;

with the Spirit as another witness – since the Spirit is the truth – so that there are three witnesses,

the Spirit, the water and the blood, and all three of them agree.

We accept the testimony of human witnesses, but God’s testimony is much greater, and this is God’s testimony, given as evidence for his Son.

 

Gospel Acclamation – John 1:29

Alleluia, alleluia!

John saw Jesus coming towards him, and said: this is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to Mark 1:7 – 11 ©

'You are My Son, the Beloved; My Favour Rests on You'

In the course of his preaching John the Baptist said:

‘Someone is following me, someone who is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’

It was at this time that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised in the Jordan by John. No sooner had he come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’

 

The First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B)