Homily for 2nd Sunday of the Year 2008

A common complaint of parents these days is the tendency of many young people to stay at home for years after finishing school. Many parents worry about their children who do not want to leave home. Their wages are often spent on leading the modern life style. So they have little left to move into a place of their own. The family home offers cheap accommodation even if they make some contribution to its upkeep.

Certainly at times marriage was a way to escape home and parental supervision. Now days young people are so mobile they only need a place to sleep occasionally! Parents have little control over their movements at they get older anyway. On top of this a lot of people will not take just any job. They will forgoe a well paying position if it does not fit in with their plans and continue to depend on parents for support. If you were brought up in time with a strict work ethic this behaviour does seem a kind of selfish way of life. But that is the world that we and modern technology have created and such freedom is seen as the norm.

Whatever about the rights and wrongs of that social agenda it does raise questions for the Christian about vocation. Can there be a call beyond ourselves from community or Church or God any more? Can we even hear it?

Many of us do see ourselves as having a vocation be it in Marriage or Priesthood or some particular profession as a life's commitment. These are the public face of our lives.

But we soon discover that beyond this obvious vocation to be a partner in marriage or parent there can be a call that is not chosen by us at all. It is hidden and revealed only gradually. It may be, for example, to carry the cross of raising a child who is born with a disability or a partner who becomes chronically ill. What we could have expected to be our life's work is transformed into something else and can make great demands on us.

Last Sunday we heard of Jesus' Baptism in Matthew's Gospel. Today we hear a reflection on that Baptism from John's Gospel. John through the mouth of John the Baptist tells us that Jesus' Baptism also means a mission from God. The Baptist describes Jesus as the "Lamb of God." We are very familiar with this phrase in the litany we pray before communion at the breaking of bread at Mass: "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us." Jesus mission as Son of God entails preaching the good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God. Hidden within this vocation is another: to be Lamb of God.

This title, Lamb of God, links Jesus with the Passover Lamb sacrificed at the Exodus and henceforth at every Passover. Families or groups of families took one of their own lambs to the Temple as a sacrifice for sin. Then took the flesh home for the Passover meal, a communion meal. The offering of the innocent, blameless lamb for their sins was to try to create a bridge between them in their sinfulness and God. And there is the difficulty. We cannot reach God by our own efforts. However, God can reach us.

But Jesus is not a lamb taken from our own flock, from within our midst. Jesus is a Lamb of God. In Jesus, God touches us and offers forgiveness, healing and life.

To be the Lamb of God is a kind of hidden vocation of Jesus. It only became clear as his life unfolded that his life was not just what people observed. Everyone, including his disciples, had difficulty accepting this part of his life as it became clear that preaching the Kingdom would come at a great cost. He would indeed give his life for us like the Passover lamb.

Here God transcends the cultic sacrifices of the Temple. These sacrifices, devoutly made certainly, were often criticized by the prophets as being in vain. Many burnt offerings are as nothing compared to a humble and contrite heart (cf Psalm 51:17). What I want is mercy not sacrifice (cf Matthew 9:13). Or as we heard in todays responsorial psalm, "You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings, but an open ear. You do not ask for holocaust and victim. Instead, hear am I" (Psalm 39:6,7).

Our second reading from First Corinthians mentioned a person called Sosthenes. When Paul preached in Corinth Sosthenes was the synagogue leader who had Paul arrested and brought before the Roman governor. But the governor dismissed the case and the crowd turned on Sosthenese and beat him up (Acts 18:17). Subsequently, Sosthenes possibly as a result of this event, converted and became, as we heard in our second reading today, a disciple and brother to Paul (1Corinthians 1:1). There can be those kinds of unexpected calls to change in our lives that only God knows.

Each of us has a vocation. But as our lives unfold there a hidden purpose can often be seen . The things that happen to us do happen for a purpose. Bad things do not happen to us as punishment. God does not work that way. They happen to call us deeper in to the mystery of God's purpose for us. Our vocation is often found through suffering which in turn becomes our sacrifice. We will not know it completely in this life I am sure. But we live full of hope and confident in God's saving purpose for us. In the Eucharist we are invited to unite our offering with that of Jesus the Lamb of God.

Fr Graham