Change!

January 26, 2014
3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Isaiah 8,23-9, 3 / 1Cor 1, 10-13, 17 / Mt 4, 12-23

 

This entire year we will be reading the Gospel of Matthew at our Sunday liturgies.  Matthew’s gospel is the longest of the four gospels, and one of the things it wants to do is present Jesus to us as a prophet.  But, what is a prophet?  Our first answer might be to say a prophet is someone who predicts the future.  To prophesy is to predict – to foretell what’s going to happen.  But that is not the biblical understanding of prophet and prophecy.  According to that understanding, a prophet stands before people and points to the presence of God among them.  The prophet announces God’s powerfully acting presence in our world and then urges us to join in with God’s work – to join in with God’s working presence among us.

In the Hebrew scriptures the prophet is always a kind of cheeky challenger taking on the religious establishment.  Whereas priests might urge people to more devotion and religious ceremonies, the prophet announces God’s real presence and work go beyond our safe sanctuaries and into our streets, homes and workplaces.  God’s grandeur is to be experienced in unlikely people and places.  What we think God-less, the prophet calls God-filled.  The prophet is controversial, unsettling – embarrassing.  He rarely lives a peaceful life or lets others live their lives peacefully.  For Matthew, Jesus is The Prophet – the prophet pointing to God’s presence in the world in an absolutely reliable way.  Jesus calls that powerful presence among us “the Kingdom of God”.  The “Kingdom” is where he finds God’s working clearly, unmistakably present in our midst.

Today’s gospel shows Jesus beginning his ministry as a prophet.  His first word – to all and to us – is “Change!”  “Change your life!”  And with that he is announcing God’s presence.  God’s work is our change.  God’s work is our lives being changed.  The change that Jesus announces is deep – very deep.  The Greek word Jesus uses for “change” is metanoia.  And that kind of change means a radical re-thinking and re-understanding – a radical re-valuing of life.  That’s God at work – both within us and among us: changing our perspective, changing our take on things.  We then start to understand what it is to really be alive.

To be alive – to be fully human – comes to mean:  being full of compassion –being compassionate as God our Father is compassionate: bringing mercy, help, support to those in need.  The change, the metanoia God is bringing about is truly something joyful.  It cleanses our hearts of the narrow, selfish interests that so diminish our daily lives.  It frees us from things we do not need and frees us for people who do need us.

Our God-worked change, our metanoia, our conversion begins when we discover that the truly important thing is not figuring out how to earn more money – but how to be more human.  Not how to get something – but how to become ourselves – how to become our fully human, compassionate selves.  That’s the Kingdom of God Jesus declares is coming upon us.

The Kingdom of God is God’s work and it is our change.  Jesus, our prophet, is pointing to God’s clear, unmistakable presence among us in an absolutely reliable way.  And he calls us to join in with God’s work.  He invites us to become part and partner in our own wonderful transformation.  He calls us to become his disciples.

“Follow me”, he says to us.  And together we will heal our sisters and brothers from everything that destroys and degrades their humanity.  Change!  Change your life!  And become my Church on earth!  Change!  Change your life!  And become God’s Kingdom come down to earth!  Change!

 

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ