2nd Sunday Year A - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2011

Just a couple of days ago, I was talking to a man who said that he wondered if the recent floods in our own country, (as well as the floods, landslides, fires and earthquakes and so on elsewhere), might not be a case of [I forget how he put it exactly – but something like] “the things we do catching up on us”.  I don’t think he was referring to the effect of our human footprint on the world’s finely-balanced ecological systems – because he began to mention some of the imagery of the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse.  I didn’t have the chance to pursue the matter, but I think he meant that God might at last be punishing our world for all its sinfulness.  (The occasional archbishop, or televangelist, has been known to make a similar observation.)

In the Gospel today, John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the Lamb God who takes away the sin of the world – the Lamb, sent by God, entrusted by God to take away the sin of the world, not to punish the world or to get even.  John didn’t explain what he intended by lamb when he referred to Jesus – but he certainly didn’t use the image of lion.  There is no “getting even” in God.  There is no violence in God – just the determination to save us from our violence.

Did you notice in today’s Second Reading how St Paul prayed that God send grace and peace to the Christian community in Corinth;  or how we asked God, in the Gathering Prayer of today’s Mass, to show us the way to peace in the world?

Back to John the Baptist.  He saw Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  How did Jesus do it? We would probably answer that by saying: by his death and resurrection.  But how did his death and resurrection take away the sin of the world?

God did not put Jesus on the cross.  People did.  And the particular people who did so acted out the tendencies latent in every human heart.  The sin of the world put Jesus on the cross: the fear, the ambition, the need to control, the blindness, the violence, and the unquestioned readiness to carry out orders.

Importantly, Jesus clearly realised what would eventuate.  He could have backed off.  Perhaps he could have met violence with violence.  But with eyes wide open, fully deliberately, he let the sin of the world torture, and then kill, him…  And, on the third day, he appeared, risen, to the disciples; and his first words were: Peace be with you; and his second words were: As the Father sent me, I now send you.

What did he do to the sin of the world? He forgave it. How did he meet the sin, the violence lurking in every human heart? With forgiveness; with stubborn love.

And he sends us out to encounter the world’s sin and violence … and to meet them with forgiveness – not acquiescing in injustice, but forgiving, and, then, seeking practical ways to address the injustice.

What is God’s answer to the petition we made in the Gathering Prayer of today’s Mass, Show us the way to peace in the world? Forgiveness! That’s all right for God.  I can’t.  Sometimes I try.  I struggle.  It’s hard.  In fact, I think it’s impossible – alone.  But the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world also said to his disciples on that first Easter evening: Receive the Holy Spirit.  “Let yourselves be empowered by God, more precisely, by God’s love.  Believe God’s love for you.”  The Gospel, the Good News, is that God loves this sin-twisted world, and us sin-twisted people.  God loves me; God loves you; and none of us deserve it.

St Paul prayed for the Corinthians, as we do, incidentally, at the start of each Mass: The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you – the grace of God, the grace of Jesus, the graciousness of God, the graciousness of Jesus.

Show us the way to peace in the world?  Let God love us; let God forgive us.  Then, and only then, when we have opened ourselves to the empowering, transforming and divinizing graciousness of God and of Jesus, meet life, meet people, with forgiveness – only… consistently.