By Fr Antony Christy, SDB-
3rd Sunday in Ordinary time: January 27, 2019
Nehemiah 8:2-6,8-10; 1 Corinthians 12: 12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21
Jesus came and lived here on earth amidst us to remind us about our call to be God’s people and to show us how to do it! People of God – that is our identity, that is our call and that is our mission.
But looking at history – sometimes, it has been a dangerous proposition too! We see that the people of Israel, calling themselves the chosen people of God, killed and butchered clans and clans of the so-called ‘others’; Jesus himself was killed because they thought it is better that one dies instead of the entire lot of the ‘chosen people’ being put to risk; think of those the times when we called ourselves the ‘people of God’ and went with flags marked with crosses menacing nations and even killing thousands; what about those who in the name of ‘superior race’ or the ‘chosen race’ wished to blot out the rest of the world; after all these have we anything to say when a group calls the rest as ‘infidels’ and threatens to eliminate people, if they don’t become one of them? All these have unmistakably and gravely gone wrong somewhere, somewhere right at the foundations!
When the Word tells us today we are called to be God’s People, it is not a statement of pride or superiority or elitism or some kind of messianism claiming that the entire world is at our mercies! Absolutely no. Certainly, it is a statement of an identity that God wishes to give us, but along with it comes a call and a mission that defines it all. Yes, there are three tasks outlined for us by the Word this Sunday:
1. Beginning with the Word – Our Identity
Being God’s people means beginning with the Word: our identity lies there, not in the structures we have and the statistics we boast about (that we are the greatest in number and that we have survived for 2000 years and so on!) Our identity is based on the Word, the Word which has always guided humanity, the Word which had become human and the Word which calls us everyday without ceasing to a life of love and compassion. Our identity has to be created on the foundation of the Word of God.
When Nehemiah the King and Ezra the priest wanted to give an identity to the heart broken people, they did it with the Word, reading it aloud to them and getting them to hear it and be strengthened by it. When Jesus wanted to establish his identity among his own people, he did it with the Word, teaching in the synagogue for the first time. As individuals, as families or as communities, if we wish to identify ourselves to others, we need to found ourselves on the Word.
2. Building up the Word – Our Call
The Word was made flesh, the flesh was given to us and we were made One Body in Christ. The Word invites us to build up our communities of faith, in communion and sharing, thus building up the Word into a formidable challenge to the ways of the world. This task is to build up our believing community, the Body of Christ, the Body of the Word.
The Word was made flesh, in order that God’s salvation plan could be brought to its culmination in Jesus Christ the Son of God. Today the same Word has to be made flesh… the Word has to become a Body, the Body of Christ, the Body of the Word… that is our Community of faith – united as one body with the head that is Christ, the Word who lives amidst us. When we build up the community, we build up the Body of the Word, we build up the Word. When we break, divide, shatter, weaken, dismember this Body, we are killing the Word! We have just finished celebrating the Unity Octave (18 to 25 January), praying for the unity of all Christians, are we really ready to forget our differences, leave aside our past and unite in the name of the Word?
3. Becoming the Word – Our Mission
The word you have heard is fulfilled today in your hearing, declared Jesus. He was the Word personified…and we are today called to model our lives after him, to become the Word, to grow into the Word, into the living Word, into living images of Christ for the world today, offering sight to the blind, liberty to captives and freedom to the oppressed.
Many a times we think our mission is to memorise a few verses from the Bible and go shout it in the face of people and get them some how by hook or by crook, by fears or by tears into our fold and say, “we have saved them”. What a sham! We are not sent merely to throw the Word at others; we are sent to live It amidst others! We are not expected to swallow the Word only to spit It elsewhere, but to become It. Our mission is to be nourished by the Word and Become the Word! Seeing us people should be able to look at us and say: ‘what we heard is being fulfilled in you!’
Becoming God’s People is an identity we need to found on the Word, a call to build our families and communities on the Word, and a mission to transform ourselves after the Word. Can our daily lives be truly fulfilments of the Word, here and now?
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.