Looking for miracles, encountering Jesus!

We live in an age which always looking for the silver bullet which will solve all our problems. There is a strong belief that some hero will come along who will provide all the answers and rescue us from our own dilemmas. There is a longing for an avatar who will control our lives and make all the difficult decisions for us. This may be the attraction of the cinema where we can escape every day and discover a person who always comes through for us. Yet in the midst of the Gospels with Jesus in Nazareth, we encounter a person who is well known to his audience and who have certain expectations that their familiarity with him will win them special favours. Yet somehow it is this very familiarity which disappoints them maybe because they have already made up their minds about who he is and their hearts remained closer to an expanded vision. In fact, they become so irate when he starts to talk of miracles worked among those who were considered alien to their community they seek his destruction. 

There may be a lesson in this for all of us the reading from 1st Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians Chapter 4. Here the emphasis is not so much on signs as on the intent of the person who seeks to live in union with God. It is not so much on gifts received but on how we become transformed by God's presence. There is an intention which seeks to be at one with the heart of God. In fact, it is so important that we would do well to consider how we seek to allow God to draw us to centre on not on our own needs but how we are present to others:

"Love is patient, love is kind.

It is not jealous, it is not pompous,

It is not inflated, it is not rude,

it does not seek its own interests,

it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,

it does not rejoice over wrongdoing

but rejoices with the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things endures all things."(http://usccb.org/bible/readings/020319.cfm, accessed 28th January 2019)

Maybe this is even something we need to consider each day in how we are present. We often ask God to seek us on our terms rather than surrendering ourselves to God's vision for our lives.  The central sense that we gain is that God's love is constant and undeterred by our human frailty. We are called to be people who return again and again to discover this person of Jesus in our prayer, our reflection and our actions that we discover a communion with God both inside us and with others. This is not undertaken by abstracting us from the world but in discovering how God is present to all things and all people in a way which transforms us.

Waiting on the Lord

With all the advantages of instant communication, we can know about events happening on the other side of the world before we know what is happening next door!  There is an appetite to consume information which will feed our view of the world and what needs to happen. The difficulty with this level of access is that rather than developing an open and enquiring mind it can rush us into a formation of an opinion which may be only partially true. This may well lead to the growing scepticism of level of scrutiny that is made of the facts to rather an impression about what the facts mean for our lives and our own circumstances. The news is shifted through certain preset criteria which cause us to respond to events in a way which can be disproportionate to their importance. We start to be formed by the news reports rather by the Good News that can lead us into life. Rather than becoming aware of how each person makes a contribution to the good of the whole, we can splinter ourselves into the diffusion of light which does not stand out against the darkness. We stop listening to the voice of God in the midst of the community but start to state how one person's opinion differs from our own. We can start to form factions and politicise the various gifts that are needed to strengthen and uphold the commonwealth that is entrusted to us.

This is bought into sharp relief at the beginning of the Gospel of look when Jesus talks about proclaiming good news to the poor, liberty to captives, new sight to those who are blind, freedom to the downtrodden and a sabbatical year! This recognises that we cannot just judge others from the position in which we stand but rather we need to grapple with the struggles which affect the whole body. No one person on their own can proclaim the solution to a problem but neither can we dismiss what another person says simply because it makes us uncomfortable. Rather we need to look at ways in which we can build up the dignity of each person by recognising that while gifts differ Christ draws us together as a whole. This means that as people who belong to Christian communities we need to listen attentively to how God's voice may speak both through the life of another but also through the scriptural traditions of our faith. I believe that attempts to divide people into orthodox and orthopraxis, liberal and conservative, compassionate and faithful can be too easily used to group people into a splintering of the truth. We are not called to follow Jesus Christ created in our own image and likeness but rather the person who draws us together from many different languages, abilities and nations to listen to a deeper communion with God. When we emphasise the differences between us we will find them and the darkness will overcome us. Rather we look for what draws us together and allows us to proclaim the Good News in our own time and space. We need to be people who look for the face of Christ in each other!

What happens when the wine runs out?

We can often approach God in the way we approach other activities of our life. We can tend to budget our time and resources around what we can afford to spend on a particular activity. We can become caught by a mindset which sees only scarcity and this can limit the demands we put on God and even on ourselves. We can start to think that God's grace is limited by our requests when weighed against the more pressing needs that we witness around us. Therefore, we tend to doubt that God can provide everything we need to live. We start to rely on our own efforts and then leave it up to God to fill in the gaps.

Yet the story of the wedding at Cana demonstrates the contrary view of life. Here God's grace is abundant and more than sufficient. God does not just provide what is needed it provides the best of wines. God takes what seems ordinary and every day and multiples it in a way in which the recipients rejoice and celebrate. It is the same with our own lives. Each day we bring before God the ordinary gifts of our lives and God transforms them in a way which we could hardly be imagining. God entrusts us with gifts which when we use them for the good of the communities in which we live they bring unity and abundance. God gives us this steam of life for a good purpose. God gives us six days in which to fill up the jars of our life and one day to relax and be filled. The other important thing to remember is that it is God who turns the water into wine!

The next obvious step!

So here we are at the end of Christmastide which we celebrate with the Baptism of our Lord. This seems a giant leap of faith where we have become used to contemplating Jesus as a tiny baby towards the image of a man about to embark on his public ministry. It may be similar to the rapid transition that some of us are making from spending time on holidays to the realities of returning to work. We know something has changed but we struggle to carry it over into our daily lives. There seems to be a separation between that space where we can relax towards a place where the old competitive demands for our time emerge. Don't despair! The message of Jesus' baptism recognises the call for us to be open to God's grace in our daily lives. People had been going to John the Baptist to sense a deeper meaning to their lives through a baptism of repentance. In Jesus' baptism, we see an invitation to encounter God in a way which brings life and hope. It brings a balance which does not just focus on our limitations but also on God's saving plan.

As we enter into a contemplation of who Jesus is for us what draws us to become aware of the His presence in our everyday activities. This growing awareness is that we are called to grow in prayerfulness in our daily lives and be present to the people we encounter. Baptism is never a private sacrament to please the grandparents or to remain connected even tenuously to the rites of the Church. Rather it is an invitation to allow Jesus to be at the centre of our lives and to listen to His voice. This calls us to read the scripture of our lives and the scripture of the Word; to be present to the sacramental moments which draw us into thanksgiving and to be present to Eucharist where we are drawn into a deeper sense of communion. The reflective spirit where we acknowledge both our daily joys and struggles and seeks to notice where God is accompanying us and inviting us to go deeper. To discover the places where we can proclaim the Gospel in our unique environment. Where God invites us to take the next obvious step.

At whose feet?

So here we are in 2019 and we start to see the pace quicken as people return from holidays and Christmas fades into the background. Yet much as Pentecost involves us in carrying on the mission of being disciples so Epiphany asks us questions about how we live our lives. These questions are not just about resolutions which seek to make us better but rather focus on who we are living our lives for. This seems to be a more fundamental question as it looks at the motivation for our actions and what will sustain us. Hence my question at whose feet will we lay our gifts?

So often we can struggle to regain control of our lives and seek to influence at least some more area to which we can claim ownership. There can be a sense of achievement when we successfully reach our goals and rightly so. However, if our life becomes driven by external factors we become shaped by influences beyond our control. Hence we start to become protective or overly concerned by anything that can threaten the security of what we want to achieve. We can put in a lot of emotional and spiritual energy into building protective walls around the things that we possess whether it be material goods, actual achievements or our own plans. We can start to hold these things up to the world and believe that they are us. We can start conversations talking about what we are doing rather than in learning to know who we are. We receive plaudits from people who praise this reality but do not actually know us. There can be a sense of pride which rises within us and after this, we will start to fight with all our heart, mind, strength and soul to protect what we have earned.

Yet what can we learn from the wise men who travelled to meet Jesus? The first thing is that they realised that the physical gifts that they bought to lay at his feet had a deep inner meaning. In presenting them before Jesus they drew attention to him and the life that he was called to live in them. They recognised what it was to allow them to listen for his voice, to trust that voice and to allow that voice to direct their lives. They also saw that while many people had opinions about the birth of Jesus they were called to listen to the quiet still voice within. It allowed them to not draw attention to themselves but allowed their actions to speak eloquently about how our lives can proclaim God's glory.

So we return to our fundamental question, at whose feet will we lay our gifts? Will we expect people to beat their way to our door to acclaim us or will we allow our lives to be drawn more closely to the life of Jesus within our own hearts?