We are going to hear principally from Matthew’s Gospel account as this Liturgical Year A proceeds, but today we will first hear a proclamation appropriate for the season’s beginning from John’s Gospel account. In it, John the Baptist, who only in last Sunday’s Gospel proclamation from Matthew helped Jesus inaugurate his public life, testifies that: Jesus is “the lamb of God” (as in “sacrificial lamb”), the one “coming after me [who] existed before me,” upon whom John witnessed the Holy Spirit come “down like a dove,” who will “baptize with the Holy Spirit,” and who is indeed “the Son of God.” These are Jesus’ credentials for ministry according to John, whom we Christians consider the final of the Old Testament prophets. The qualifications and descriptions of the public, adult, ministerial Jesus are impressive. They make explicit tremendous expectations. After all, to “baptize with the Holy Spirit” is an indication of nothing less than God’s own power! It is precisely through that divine power that sins will be forgiven, evil demons will be exorcised, crippled limbs will be made healthy, blind eyes will see either again or for the first time, lepers will be made healthy and whole, and ritually and socially acceptable, multitudes will be fed, the seas and the winds will be calmed by a spoken word, the dead will be raised, and hearts and minds set in their ways will be challenged, provoked, and changed! Indeed, the very real presence of God will be in the person and preaching, the touch and engagement, of this Jesus of Nazareth, the “Son of God.” So begins the various Gospel episodes for our Season of Ordinary Time.

Yet, Jesus was not a sudden and unexpected or odd manifestation of a god who only occasionally took an interest in the human creatures on this small and insignificant planet, Earth. Jesus came from a long-active divine endeavor to reveal the Divine Presence to a Chosen People who were perhaps the first very intimate target of this God whom another John, the inspired author of the Letters of John in the late 1^st Christian Century, described profoundly and simply as “love.” Those who heard the Liturgy of the Word in the weekdays after Epiphany heard that message. But, this God, who had first touched the hearts of Abraham and Sarah, and their various descendants, had formed an “people,” an ethnic tribe, which would eventually become both “a Chosen People,” and a religious people, who would be raised up to a new level of human and spiritual dignity with advent of Moses and God’s civilizing teaching, the Torah. It was by means of the Torah, and the Covenant from which it came, that the second contributor to the Book of Isaiah would remind the late 6^th Century BC Chosen People of their religious and human dignity. Yes, they were God’s chosen servants. Indeed, they were loved by this God even from their most ancient collective origins (“from the womb” of Sarah). Theirs had been a chain of interesting, engaging, and complex events in coming to appreciate the life they had been given. But theirs was to be life not merely like everyone else’s in the world. No, the life and lives of the Chosen People had purpose above and beyond survival and cultural comparison and contrast. Their call was not merely to survive, but to thrive in a relationship of intimate and familiar love with the God who was at once creator, redeemer, source of freedom and dignity, harbinger of love and humor. This Chosen People’s task was to give testimony about the very essential goodness of humanity which had originated in the very image and likeness of the God of Love. This 2^nd Isaiah reminded the recently Jews recently freed of Babylonian captivity of the special and intimate love of the God who had moved Emperor Cyrus the Great of Persia to restore them to their rightful and important place in the world. Their example now was to become not merely a private, religious group who kept to themselves and worshiped God in geographically contained simplicity. They were now (post-539 BC) to become public, world-class, heralds of God’s goodness, presence and power, “a light to the nations” (nations indicates ethnic birth-groups more than the idea of political nation states). Deutero-Isaiah was inspired to initiate what 20^th Century Christian theologians would recognize as “universal salvation.” “Universal Salvation” is an appreciation that God loves every human person and all human peoples. Thus, “salvation” in theological reflection evolving after the restoration of the Temple and Jerusalem (ca. 517 BC) would become less and less exclusive and more and more inclusive of everyone who might hear such good news. Jesus of Nazareth is the ultimate and definitive herald of God’s inclusive love and salvation raising from Judaism. John the Baptist’s preaching testified to Jesus’ prophetic ministerial task of announcing the Gospel of the nearness of God’s Kingdom by means of words of eloquence and deeds of power, even if it would cost his own life. Indeed, both John and Jesus earned death by their fidelity to God’s message.

Paul’s introductory greeting in the letter we know as 1^st Corinthians shows a glimpse of just how those words and deeds of power of Jesus had borne fruit by three decades after Jesus’ Paschal events. By Paul’s time – and through the workings of that powerful Holy Spirit and the memory and Gospel message of the Risen Jesus as Christ – great numbers of people, both Jew and Gentile, had “been sanctified.” In other words, the powerful Holy Spirit had come upon them and their personal and collective lives had changed profoundly. They had in turn attracted others by their examples and witness-giving. They had become “martyrs” for the Good News, which first means “witness-givers” before it means “dying for a just cause.” Paul who had changed so radically that he used his Greek name (Paul) more than his Jewish name (Saul), appreciated the universal nature of the Gospel message. He worked hard to fight against the exclusionary efforts of some early Christians who wanted to claim the messiah for their Jewish culture alone. Paul saw and appreciated the properly limitless scope and scale of the God who was both creator and savior. Paul knew there was enough “grace and peace” to go around for a “call to be holy with all . . . everywhere”. Hence, his opening blessing, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul would eventually lose his life for fidelity to this Gospel message of hope and freedom, justice and love.

John the Baptist’s own life changed upon encountering and engaging Jesus of Nazareth. He was killed before Jesus completed his Gospel mission. Deutero-Isaiah indeed only saw the beginnings of his mission the Chosen People and to instigate an invitation to the entire world to God’s salvation. According to our Christian lore, Paul testified even to the Roman Emperor Nero. He truly gloried in the Gospel, even though he knew it would likely cost him his life as it did his Lord before him. Let us resolve to be effective and enthusiastic witnesses for the Gospel of Jesus, the Christ! What love of life this brings to those who are open to God’s powerful, loving and wise Holy Spirit!

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