Mass readings for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time:
1 Samuel 3.3b-10, 19 Psalm 40.1, 3, 6-9 1 Corinthians 6.13-15, 17-20 John 1.25-42
The readings today reminded me of the Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel. Among his many celebrated books are two entitled, God in Search of Man, and Man’s Quest for God. And we see the themes of these two books in our readings as God calls out to the boy Samuel and disciples of John the Baptist pursue Jesus after the Baptist identifies our Lord as “the Lamb of God.”
It’s very important for us to consider this mutual search; of course, recognizing that it is God who has made the first move, who as Saint Paul tells us, said “yes” to us before we even thought of him. Heschel, in his work, lays out in detail how this is central to the Scriptures, that they tell this story of God’s reaching out to us, and our often-inept search for Him. We see this in the story of Adam and Eve, when the sinful couple tries to hide from God, and he comes looking for them in the Garden of Eden; again, as father Abraham walks in the night air of his home town of Ur, God speaks to him out of the starry sky and prompts Abraham to go on his great quest, and so on.
We also have humanity looking for God in this world – think of Moses, climbing up a mountain to see the burning bush; consider the prophet Elijah, in his hour of desperation, looking for God in the desolation of the storm that wracked his mountain top refuge; of course, today, we hear about Andrew approaching Jesus with the thought that here is the Messiah.
But in all our searching, we had better answer the question Jesus puts to Andrew. Jesus pointedly asks, “what are you looking for?” Andrew might think he knows, but I ask, “does he really?”
When we go looking for God, do we really understand what we’re looking for? Do we want the truth regardless of how it may challenge everything we value, everything we think is true?
We are apt to fool ourselves into thinking we’re searching for life’s meaning because we call ourselves Christian, because we go to mass and say our nightly prayers, when instead we’re looking for something to validate our beliefs, confirm us in our convictions, justify our actions. That is, we don’t go looking for the God, but for a god we can use for our own purposes. That kind of search for God gives credence to the atheist charge that we make God in our image; and of course, then, this is no god at all, but an idol. And we can make of Jesus Christ that idol, not concerning ourselves with who he really is, but rather choosing to regard him as who we want him to be.
And we see this already in the encounter between Andrew and Jesus. Jesus may be the Messiah, but not the Messiah that Andrew is looking for.
It’s important to remember that this is not a chance meeting. No, the scene here is the encampment of John the Baptist by the River Jordan. Here is a gathering from across Judea, and surrounding regions such as the Galilee, of people searching for answers, and doing so with a great sense of urgency. They’ve been drawn to John because he is voicing their concern, and calling Israel to action. They’ve been listening to John the Baptist preach, and have been discussing his ideas, his message. And we know the Baptist’s message: Repent!
And we know to whom he was addressing it: everyone.
John the Baptist called out the religious leadership, the temple priests and the scribes, and the Pharisees. He called out the political leadership, notably Herod Antipas. And he condemned their sinfulness, Antipas’ adultery, the greed of the temple officials, the Pharisees’ pride. But he also called out the common people for all their sins.
And so, we have laid out the problem; it’s sin. It’s a walking away from God in a relationship sundered by sin. But what is the answer to this? What is the solution? What repairs the rift between humanity and God?
Well, John doesn’t offer one, but tells everyone it’s coming. Now, John has offered a baptism, but as I mentioned in Advent, it’s a baptism of repentance. That is, it doesn’t wash away sin, but it does prepare people for the remission of sin. And that makes sense if we think about the religious practice of making atonement for Jews of that time.
People would pay for their sins by purchasing animals to be sacrificed on the altar in the Jerusalem Temple. Part of the process of making that offering involved bathing. Purifying one’s body was necessary before entering the holy precincts of the temple to witness the sacrifice, the killing of the animal on the altar, and then it’s being placed in the holy fire. We read about these baths in the gospels, they were called mikvot. There are stories in the gospels of Jesus meeting people at these baths that surrounded the Temple complex.
But if John’s baptism of repentance is analogous to the ritual bath before going up to the Temple to make the sacrifice, what then is to follow John’s baptism? What “temple” are they to go to? What sacrifice is being offered? What can atone for the sins of the whole nation? It’s an important question because clearly, the offering of sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem was simply not working; the people, the nation, clearly had a sense that they were not redeemed, not free, but oppressed.
For many, that oppression was most apparent in the Roman occupation, but the people were also sufficiently spiritual to know it wasn’t simply a political problem, that it was a sickness of their souls that needed to be treated.
So, it’s rather amazing to me, that when John looks at Jesus, indicates to Andrew and the other man that there he is, “Behold the Lamb of God,” they don’t seem to get what he’s saying – there’s the answer; there’s the atoning sacrifice. It doesn’t register; and that’s because that’s not what they are looking for. For all the talk of sin and repentance they’ve been part of, they are nonetheless focused on finding a Messiah who they conceive of as a political saviour, a military leader, and a religious reformer, who would affect change by worldly means. He would overthrow the corrupt leadership, he would vanquish the Romans, he would cleanse the Temple and establish proper worship by a purge of the priesthood from his position of power as a successful ruler. That the real Messiah is to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of Israel, indeed, for the world, doesn’t figure into Andrew and his friend’s thinking. We know this because they don’t ask John what he means he calls Jesus the lamb, and not the Messiah. We know this from what we see of the apostles in the gospels who struggle to grasp this, and even refuse at times to believe it.
The Church goes through this periodically, it likes to make of Jesus a god for our times instead of presenting Christ as the incarnation of the God of all eternity. I’ve mentioned before the orthodox scholar, Jaroslav Pelikan’s popular work, Jesus Through the Centuries, and how it chronicles this tendency to remake the Saviour according to priorities and preoccupations of each era of history. In each instance, while we can understand the motivation, the pastoral concern that led to this, we also see how it distorted the gospel, and made Christianity into something other than its authentic self. So, it grew moribund, sick even and the faith declines and the Church’s fortunes fail; and then followed, out of necessity, religious revival.
As we look out at what is going on in Christianity, in the Church, we see this tendency again manifest. And we perceive its effects; how there is division as all see a need for change, with some advocating for the Church to be what the world wants of her, against those who argue that she must be unfashionably authentic to herself so as to save the world. For many, sin is not to a focus of concern, but rather those other aspects of ecclesiastical life should be emphasized, those that express that unconditional love that we know God has for us.
But if the problem is sin, and the remedy repentance and the embrace of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, our dying spiritually so as to be reborn through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then there are no other options.
Anything else is fraudulent, a misrepresentation of the gospel, of the Church’s mission, of Christ himself.
How much easier it would seem if the Church’s mission was one of saving the natural environment, or realizing a just economic and political order. But we’ve long understood, even as we’ve forgotten too frequently, that none of those can ever be realized as long as sin abounds with no agent of grace to resist it, and no sacrifice to defeat it. If we sense the world slipping back into chaos, we need to recognize that it is a consequence of sin and death being embraced rather than fought against, blessed by the world and regarded with ambiguity by the Church.
No, we are not to contribute to the mess, but rather help with the cleaning up; preparing the world through the bath of repentance, the rebirth in the baptism of Christ’s death, and our washing in the blood of the lamb of God, the one who takes away the sin of the world.
Amen.