Jan 23, 2021
We've just begun a few weeks now of Ordinary Time and you can
surely tell by the readings on this Saturday of the 2nd week: the
Letter to the Hebrews is always trying to convert Hebrew ways of
thinking to the acceptance of Christian revelation, for example, in
this passage that Jesus' Blood shed in his Passion and Death is way
more efficacious than the former multiple animal sacrifices needed
to make humanity right with God.
" . . . how much more will the Blood of Christ, who through the
eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our
consciences from dead works to worship the living God." (Hebrews
9:14)
It's a bit of a stretch for us gentiles to be so deeply impressed
by that comparison, but we ARE extremely grateful for the God-Man's
sacrifice on our behalf, reconciling us with the Godhead and
literally showing us, in person, how to live as the beloved
community of God. But such enlightenment does not always come
easily to people. Even Jesus' own relatives were reluctant to
appreciate his magnetic appeal to people in need of healing,
physical or otherwise. The brief passage from Mark says:
" . . . they set out to seize him, for they said, 'He is out of his
mind.' ” (Mark 3:21)
It's a huge stretch for our 21st century christian minds to imagine
anyone calling Christ crazy---but it is there in the bible. You
know, movies about Christ have programmed us to see him as this
serene man-in-charge, but maybe he was more like the prophets of
our own day who often seem eccentric in their identification with a
cause---in Jesus' case, the cause of right living. Help us, O God,
not to cave, when our Christian practices are questioned or
ridiculed by others, even perhaps by relatives. Help us keep our
eyes on Jesus' perfect example of God's kind of community. Help us,
in fact, to bring it about within the circles of our lives. Amen.
Let it be.