2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time 2023

Friday was "Quitters' Day." Supposedly, the second Friday in January is the day that people are most likely to give up on their New Year’s Resolutions. Did you survive "Quitters' Day?" Have your New Year’s resolutions already fallen by the wayside? 

Luckily you’re in church today. Here in the church, we are different, and today we start anew. Today we start the liturgical season we call Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time isn’t ho-hum time, nor is it "bide your time until Lent" season. Ordinary Time is the time for growth in our faith. It's the time to let the experience of the celebration of the birth of Jesus help our faith mature. Rather than quit deepening our relationship with God, Ordinary Time encourages us to begin again and let it grow. 

We find starting anew to be difficult because we haven’t dealt with our past. We all carry burdens and hurts from our past that drain our energy and hampers our attempts at fresh beginnings. Our reluctance to forgive saps away our power and blocks our ability to begin fresh. Forgiveness is the willingness to write off or cancel something owed to us so we can start fresh. We offer forgiveness when we cancel an obligation we have a legitimate claim to collect. 

Recently college loan forgiveness has been in the news. Some economists and politicians advocate for the forgiveness of billions of dollars in student loans because they say it is a weight on hundreds of thousands of people, preventing them from being able to purchase homes and other capital items. They claim forgiving this debt will stimulate more economic benefit than its cost.  

Opponents object, saying forgiveness would cost taxpayers and be unfair to students who worked for their education without going into debt. They claim forgiveness would send the wrong signal and damage moral behavior. It would be unjust to those who abandoned the possibility of higher education because it was an expense they were unable or unwilling to assume.

Forgiveness is difficult because it comes with a high cost. Someone has to pay or be willing to sacrifice its price. We tend to believe forgiveness is good for someone else, but not in our particular situation. Few of us are eager to make the sacrifice to grant forgiveness, and we believe it isn’t fair or demands too great a cost. 

Forgiveness has three stages. The first stage is denial. Many people refuse to accept that a situation deserves forgiveness. They make excuses or dismiss the severity of the hurt they caused or feel and claim the situation that needs forgiving was really no big deal. That belief can damage our well-being because, over time, suppressing our wounds can lead to a meltdown when the hurts blow up in our faces. 

Denial also plays out when we feel the hurt we have suffered unforgivable, and to offer forgiveness would be condoning the behavior that hurt us. These feelings damage our relationship with the person who offended us and make us suspicious in all of our relationships.  

Acknowledging the need for forgiveness is the second stage. It comes along when we recognize that forgiveness would be a good thing, but we struggle to know where to begin. Maybe the incident that was so hurtful happened years ago. While it is still in our minds, we wonder if the person who inflicted the pain on us even remembers it happening. We fear they would think us silly to still hold on to the occurrence. Sometimes we have believed that time would heal the wound we feel from a hurt, but it hasn’t come about. It still sticks in our hearts and heads. 

Finally comes true forgiveness. It is when we realize that holding on to our grudge hurts us more than the other person. Forgiveness comes when we recognize the cost of the debt owed is more than its worth. The person who hurt us isn’t willing or able to cancel the hurt, so if we are going to become whole again, we have to let it go.  

This talk has undoubtedly made you think of someone you need to forgive. A relationship in your life is damaged, and it is blocking your ability to move on in life. You recognize the hurt you are clutching will only be healed if you cancel it. This week start making an effort to forgive. You don’t need to confront the person who has hurt you because that might cause even greater hurt if you do. Don’t play the martyr, either. Just recognize forgiveness is meant to heal you. 

In today’s Gospel passage, John the Baptist calls Jesus the Lamb of God. That term has a rich history for the Jewish people. The Lamb of God was to come and take away the people’s sins forever. 

This hope goes back to when the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt. God instructed the Hebrews to sacrifice a lamb on the night of the first Passover. This lamb was to be a perfect specimen. It needed to be the best lamb of the entire flock. The blood of the lamb was to be used to mark their homes. Protected by this blood, God’s angel spared the Hebrews’ death. The angel who struck down the firstborn of Egypt- man and beast alike, from Pharaoh down to the slaves- passed over the house marked with the lamb’s blood. The blood of the sacrificed lamb saved the Hebrew homes from death. 

In our first reading from Isaiah, we hear that years later, God told the Hebrews to anticipate a suffering servant sent by God to take away their sins so they could return to God. This suffering servant would be as meek as a lamb, assume all the people’s sins, and, like the Passover lamb, be sacrificed for them. 

In the Temple of Jesus’ day, every morning and evening, lambs were killed as a sin offering. The sacrifice reminded the people of their iniquities and the debt owed to God for them. The people always committed more sins, so their sacrifice had to go on day after day. One of the hopes for the Messiah, the Lamb of God, was that He would take away the people’s sins once and for all. 

John the Baptist looked up and saw Jesus. Although he may have known Jesus, John hadn’t recognized Jesus as the Lamb of God. When he saw the Spirit settle on Jesus, John saw Jesus’ true identity. At that instant, John realized Jesus was the perfect unblemished Lamb of God who had come to ransom humankind from sin and offer God’s unconditional love.

Jesus was the Lamb of God who came into the world to settle all humanity’s debts of sin. Jesus didn’t only die for the people. It was as if Jesus came into the world to buy up all the outstanding debt of our sinfulness and take it on himself. Jesus assumed it all and took it to the cross so we could be free of our sins once and for all. 

As disciples of Jesus, we have had our sins forgiven. Through our baptism, we have been washed clean of Original Sin. We have become part of the Body of Christ- the Church- and have experienced forgiveness. God continues to offer us forgiveness of our sins whenever we request absolution in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. If it has been a while since you have gone to confession, make plans to ask for forgiveness of your sins in the sacrament soon. I’m in the Reconciliation Room at the back of the church every Saturday afternoon from 3:00-3:45 PM. You can also make an appointment with me for confession at your convenience. 

God generously offers us forgiveness whenever we ask. Forgiven people experience joy and a sense of relief. When we experience forgiveness and mercy, we become anxious to begin again with a fresh start. Being relieved of our sinfulness fills us with hope for a new beginning. Forgiven people want to share that joy and hope for a new start with others, so they forgive. They want to save others from their sins, so they offer mercy. 

Forgiveness is supernatural. Our world doesn’t naturally give us the inclination to forgive those who have hurt the ones we love or us. To forgive is divine, it comes directly from God. We need the gift of God’s grace to do it. God fills us with His loving presence so we can offer forgiveness and enjoy the fullness of life. 

Later in this Mass, we will begin the Liturgy of the Eucharist. God will send Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world to offer us forgiveness. Again today, Jesus Christ will give us His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in reparation for our sins. Jesus will again buy up all the debts of sin we owe God. Jesus will wash away our guilt with the blood of the lamb and offer us God’s love. Allow God’s grace to strengthen you today so you can offer forgiveness to those who have hurt you. Allow God’s grace to fill your heart so you can be God’s vessel of mercy.