The Peace Pulpit

The following homily was given by Bishop Gumbleton on January 30, because of the many snow storms it was delayed until posting today.

I think we understand today’s lessons, can understand them best of all, if we remember the context from which today’s gospel especially is being proclaimed.

Today, as we heard at the beginning, is the fourth Sunday in ordinary time, and the first Sunday of this, what we call ordinary time, we celebrated the baptism of Jesus, and Jesus himself received his call from God to proclaim the good news, but to do it in a special way, through gentleness and love, and in that way to bring justice to all of the nations.

I think as we hear the Gospel today, we’re not surprised, in a way, that John objects to Jesus when Jesus comes to John for baptism -- because John has the idea that he had been sent to prepare the way for the one who was to come.

And he thought that he recognized in Jesus that special one, and so he wanted to say to Jesus: “No, I shouldn’t baptize you. You’re the one who is to come, the special, chosen one of God. You should baptize me.”

We begin today, the last and fourth week of the season of Advent, the season in which we look forward to the celebration of the birth of Jesus. As we have been preparing throughout this season, we now want to put special attention on what we are preparing for. The readings if we listen to them carefully tell us about something that is astounding and yet I think that in many ways we have come to take it for granted. In fact, we have let many other things distract us from this message, an astounding message from God that God is coming in to our midst, the eternal God, all powerful, all loving. This God is going to become part of human history. Breaking into our history, becoming part of us.

When we hear this message today I hope that first of all and most of all we hear the words of John: "The reign of God is at hand."

This is what we will be celebrating when we celebrate the feast of Christmas. We remind ourselves and celebrate that the Son of God has come into human history and, from that point, the reign of God is ready to break forth in its fullness. It's at hand.

The three lessons today seem to put forth a very discouraging or even dismal and perhaps frightening perspective or picture of what judgment, death, end of the world, that type of thing. But to truly understanding these readings, the passages from Malachi and the letter from Paul to the church in Thessalonica and the Gospel of Luke, we must consider the context in which each of them was written so we really can begin to understand what the writer is trying to bring forth for us.