The Living Jesus

January 19, 2014
2^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Isaiah 49, 3,5-6 / 1Cor 1, 1-3 / John 1, 29-34

 

The decorations are gone.  The crib is gone.  We have celebrated Christmas and Epiphany.  We have left behind the babe in the manger.  Now we are coming to meet the adult Jesus.  Liturgically we call this Ordinary Time – meaning we are focusing on Jesus’ everyday, unspectacular presence and ministry among us now.  Ordinary Time is a searching time when we look to find the Living Jesus among us here and now – not the Jesus of mere memory – but the Jesus of real presence who brings us grace and peace.

So Ordinary Time can be an exciting time.  In our first reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear this can be a time when we actually see God’s radiant glory being revealed among us.  For us as Christians this is the powerful presence of the Living Jesus.  But how – how do we search for and find Jesus’ real presence?  What are we to look for?

John the Baptist found Jesus.  He recognized him to be what he called “God’s lamb who leads us out of our sinfulness”.  But what did John actually see in Jesus?  What was he looking for?  John the Baptist can help us learn what to look for, as we search for the Living Jesus.

John’s testimony gets very interesting.  At the same time he is testifying to who Jesus is, he also tells us he did not know who he was.  Twice he tells us: “I did not know who he truly was.”  The only thing he sees in Jesus – and the only thing that really matters to John – is that he sees and senses God’s Spirit resting in Jesus.

So if we are going to find the Living Jesus, we have to look for the presence of God’s Spirit.  Traditionally, along with St. Paul, the Church has taught we can actually recognize the presence of God’s Spirit in what are called “the fruits of the Holy Spirit”.  Where God’s Spirit is present, this is what we see:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  But these things do not exist all by themselves.  Joy can only be found in joyful people and so too with love, peace and all the other signs of God’s Spirit.

We find God’s Spirit in people.  And that is where we find the Living Jesus.  The Living Jesus is people – is us.  That’s why we call the people who bring love, joy, peace into the world the Body of Christ.

We are recognizably the Living Jesus when we – like God’s Lamb – help people out of their sinfulness by being generously and gently loving to them.

There’s a woman – a poet who recalls having the very same experience as John the Baptist.  She recognized the Living Jesus, God’s Spirit resting in a person.  And this is how Alice Walker describes her experience of a minister in a little church in Oakland, California.  This is what she found in the minister.  Listen to her words.

…a Spirit that “helps us to love one another – to shed our fears of unworthiness – to shed our habits of self-hatefulness – to shed our greed to be accepted as something other than what we are.  …a Spirit helping us to see that so many of us “are starving for the sight of something Real – dying for the sound of something True.”  …a Spirit praying within each of us so we may “know that nothing stops a lie like being yourself.”

I would like to meet that minister in Oakland.  During this Ordinary Time we are called to search out and find the Living Jesus.  He will be found within each of us.  He will be found in people – in our families and friends.

But he will also be found – and this is so important for us to realize – the Living Jesus will also be found in those we call stranger – in those we call immigrant and undocumented – and even in those we call enemy.  We will just have to learn to admit as John the Baptist did: “I did not know who he truly was.”  It will be in just this way that the Living Jesus, God’s Lamb, will be leading us out of our sinful, dark world and into the bright world of his real presence – his real presence in each one of us.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ