3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time 2023

Homily: “Where It Begins”

What is the yoke that burdens you? What is the particular pole that stoops your shoulders? And who’s the taskmaster wielding his or her rod against you?

Our Psalmist today wonderfully reminds us of the one and only, the primary, task of the Christian: “That I may gaze on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple.” It is out of this fundamental posture that the promise of our life is born and reborn again and again. Our scriptures this Sunday remind us: Life is not a task to be mastered, but rather a gift to contemplate. Our life is not a duty done but a gift given.

Let’s look to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew today. Here he is, freshly baptized, just peeking out, as it were, from behind those 30 years of hiddenness in Nazareth. Just beginning, perhaps, to intuit the mission that lies ahead of him. Just beginning to feel the energy of purpose and uncovering the gift of self he is called to give. And then “the news” comes: John the Baptist has been arrested! And so Jesus, like any of us, withdraws, he moves away from the looming threat, but does he also perhaps move away from the promise he feels gestating inside of him? Right at the beginning Jesus sees his possible end. So was he tempted to return to the hiddenness he once knew?

It’s important in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus withdraw to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, the two northern tribes of Israel and the first of the tribes to be “degraded,” as Isaiah tells us, by the Assyrians. Which would lead, eventually, to a divided Israel and the end, so it would seem, of the promise given to the patriarchs. Jesus, in the midst of a surging promise coming alive within himself, withdraws to that place where it seemed, at least to the Israelite people, God had begun to withdraw his promise from them. For Jesus, though, it isn’t a withdrawal into hiddenness, but rather a return to the place where the promise first began to unravel, because only there, only from there, can the promise be restored.

I would venture to say at some point in our own histories, we may have been taught that life was not a promise given by God, but a task to be mastered by us. Perhaps at some precious moment of surging promise and possibility, while we were just beginning to peep out of hiddenness, something happened that threatened us, so maybe we withdrew and chose a safe hiddenness rather than risking the light and, as a result, an inner taskmaster was born. The one whose burden we still bear, whose pole still weighs down our shoulders, whose rod we still labor under.

Where was it in your own life where your own surging sense of promise came under threat? Did you withdraw? Did you hide yourself? What would it mean to go back to that “place,” like Jesus, not to hide but to restore the promise given… to begin the healing of division, within and without… to expose the light that shines no matter what the darkness?

Jesus’ withdraw to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali was not a choice to hide in fear, but rather a determination to live in the freedom of the life he was called to live. Because he knew first hand the threat that can silence promise he went to those who knew it as well, to begin the work of healing and hope, of reconciliation and restoration. At the beginning of promise, Jesus chooses possibility over threat, gift of self over hiddenness; he chooses to live out of the truth born from gazing on the loveliness of God and contemplating his dwelling.

I imagine when the Assyrians degraded the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, they bred into the people a deep long enduring division; a mistrust of promise and possibility; a posture that turned life into a task to be mastered rather than a gift to be contemplated. Such a people then could only live lives that, in turn, sowed division and mistrust. Jesus, refusing to cower to the threat that tempted him to withdraw from the promise, goes back to the starting place of degradation and division to reteach the people that life is not a task to be mastered but a gift to be contemplated, a gift to be received and a gift to be freely given away.

How is Jesus, perhaps, beckoning us back to the place where promise first got compromised, and life became a task? How is Jesus, right now, in our lives “smashing” the rod of that taskmaster within, to reteach us even now, no matter the years gone by, the fundamental posture of any disciple: “to contemplate the loveliness of the Lord” because it’s from there that Life’s promise opens, and God’s light of salvation shines.

Interestingly enough Jesus’ mission begins where John’s left off: “Repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” As if the heart of his message to each one of us is simply this: “Turn around! Because the renewal of life’s promise and possibility is always close at hand just waiting to be reborn in you!”