Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 4 / Sunday
Readings: Jeremiah 1.4-5,17-19 / Ps 70. 1-2, 3-4a,5-6ab, 15ab, 17 (cf 15ab) / 1 Corinthians 12. 31-13.13 / Luke 4.21-30
“The word of the Lord was addressed to me” (Jeremiah 1.4)
These words from the Prophet Jeremiah echo a desire we all have: to hear the Lord speaking to us. The Lord celebrating when we are joyful and encouraging us when we need hope. The Lord comforting us when we grieve and assuring us when we are anxious. This desire is good and holy because it is God’s gift to us – to draw us nearer to him.
Jeremiah describes the depth of God’s desire for us. Listen to God’s words. “Before I formed you…I knew you”: here is God knowing us. “As though I would leave you”: here is God consoling us. “I am with you…to deliver you”: here is God promising us salvation. There’s an urgency in the Lord’s voice. He wants to reach out and remind us of his faithfulness.
The Psalm describes varied ways we respond to God. We seek his protection: “In you, O Lord, I take refuge.” We plead for his help: “In your justice rescue me…save me.” We entrust ourselves to Him: “You are my hope, O Lord…On you I depend.” Each one expresses our desires to hear His voice and experience His nearness.
What compels God to reach out and speak with us? What moves us to seek God and plead, as well as to thank and praise? Simply, Love.
Yes, Love is what Jeremiah and the Psalm speak about. Love that God and us share. We are entwined in a love relationship. To be honest, this is beyond our understanding. We can speak and sing about it. We can express it in art and film. We can experience it in prayer and liturgy. We try to makes sense of it in all the God moments in our lives. But our relationship with God always remains a mystery of love loving. God’s love, perfect and divine, and our love, imperfect and human, simply loving each other.
Remarkably, this love rings truest, I feel, when we sin. In two ways. In God’s continuing goodness to seek us out to forgive and restore us to life. And in our deepest yearning for God’s mercy to live better. Yes, God’s love is most present in the messiness of our sins.
What kind of love makes this possible? In 1 Corinthians Paul describes the essence of Love in clear and simple language, teaching what Love is and what it is not. “Love is patient…kind…trusts… hopes… endures…and rejoices with the truth.” “Love never fails.” “Love is not jealous….pompous…inflated… rude…and resentful” Here is Paul teaching Christians and non-Christians the truth of what God created us for. Listen again: “there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.” And “if (we) do not have love, we gain nothing.”
Jesus came to give everyone life to the fullest. Filled with the Spirit, he revealed life as God’s love to cure, to free, to restore, and to proclaim the Lord’s favour. All should see and hear and rejoice. Not all did however, including his own as we hear in the gospel; they wanted to get rid of him. Even now many act like them.
What about you and me? When are we like Jesus’s very own? Perhaps, doubting Him when we cannot find Him however much and hard we seek. Maybe, wanting to get rid of him when we judge Him failing us no matter our prayers and petitions.
If we do, we sadly forget how today’s Gospel story does not end but continues. Not with Jesus staying away. Rather, He returns again and again to God's people. To the sick who He heals with prayer and touch. To the despised who He eats and drinks with. To the hurt who He comforts. To the seekers who He teaches and enlightens. To those who despise, doubt or deny him, He still comes. The simple truth is: Jesus never abandons anyone. He always turns up on time for everyone and in time at every moment. This is indeed Good News.
Recognising this helps us see more clearly who Jesus is and what he does when he says, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” He is God’s word made flesh for us. His actions are God’s splendour in our midst.
It is therefore right we give thanks for God’s goodness we receive. It is even better to give thanks for what more God has in store for us each day to come. With faith, we need not wait to experience this goodness. We can believe that it will be so, ahead of time. We can live with expectant joy to come, ahead of time. We can thank God for this, ahead of time. As Christians, this is a startling, even radical, way to live in God’s love – always ahead of time.
Impossible? Think again. We are here at Eucharist, practising it already. We have come ahead of time to hear Jesus, God’s Word, and God has just fulfilled it. We have come ahead of time to receive Jesus as God’s Bread, and God will fulfil this shortly. We have come ahead of time hoping to be transformed for better, and God will do this in Communion. Then, he will sent us forth as God’s bread too, blessed, broken and given for many. Yes, we have come ahead of time to Eucharist to want to give God thanks.
All this is how the Lord is addressing us today. How shall we address God in return?
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo by Thomas Vitali on Unsplash
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