3 Sunday after the

Epiphany C
rd

3rd Sunday after the

Epiphany C

1. The covenant between God and the people of Israel required them to believe in one God and
worship only one God, but, even though that was their official religion, in reality people
continue to worship other God on the site
My wife is an archeologist who spent a couple of summers digging in Israel: in spite of the official religion,
archaeologists find lots of statuettes of various gods and goddesses people kept in their homes.
Remember al so that before the Babylonian exile, the prophets denounced this practice and warned the
people that if they continued to worship idols they would be punished. When the Babylonians invaded and
defeated the kingdom of Judah, Jeremiah and the other prophets told the people that the exile was Gods
punishment for their sins of polytheism and social injustice
The exile was a painful experience, but it produced 2 positive outcomes:
a. The belief in only one God was finally accepted by everyone. The exiled Jews accepted the explanation of
the prophets that Yahweh was angered by their unfaithfulness and so he had withheld his protection and
allowed their enemies to teach them a lesson by defeating them end taking them to Babylon in exile. After
the end of the exile everyone believed in only one God and monotheism became the cornerstone of Judaism.
b. Before the exile, the Bible existed as a set of oral traditions. While in exile, the leader of the Jews
understood that they were running the risked of losing their cultural identity and being absorbed in the
dominant Babylonian culture. So a group of priests and the scribes decided to write all their ancestral
traditions into a set of 5 books, the Torah. These 5 books contain stories about the origin of world, of the the
people of Israel, as well as their laws that they attributed to Moses. Over time other books were added to the
first 5 first the Prophets, and then the Wisdom books. Together they became the Hebrew Bible, or our Old
Testament.
.When the Jews retuned from the exile, they firmly believed in only one God and brought the Bible with them,
In the first lesson, we read that Ezra read the Torah to the people and they answered, Amen, Amen.

2. Five and half centuries later Jesus launched a major challenge to the notion that religion
should be based on strict observance of the Mosaic law as it had been read by the scribe Ezra.
.Jesus had just been baptized and, as he emerged from the water, the Spirit of God had descended on him,
and he had heard a voice from heaven proclaiming that he was the beloved son of God. So, when he returned
to his hometown, he entered the synagogue, read a passage from Isaiah and applied it to himself.

3rd Sunday after the

Epiphany C

The Gospel of Luke contains a quote from 3rd Isaiah. In it the prophet prophet stated that his
mission was to encourage the Jews returning from the Babylonian exile as they were rebuilding their
society
Jesus applied this passage to himself, and stated that he had been sent by God to proclaim to
everyone the good news that God is love, and that he had been sent by his Father to free not the
captives from Babylon, but the captives from the burden of all the laws, and to reveal the true
nature of God to all who were blind (ignorant about the true nature of God), and to proclaim that
God and humanity were being reconciled through his own redeeming activity.
Pharisaic Judaism, which was the dominant voice if Judaism at the time of Jesus, stressed the
importance of scrupulous obedience to every law in the book. The more perfect the obedience, the
more please would God be. So Jesus announced a major shift in the traditions of Judaism.
Jesus stressed that the entire law and prophets was contained in 2 principles: love of God and love
of neighbor, and dismissed the necessity to be burdened by the 613 rules that were so dear to the
Pharisees. The idea of God was revolutionized: God was not the law-giver and the harsh judge, but
a loving father. Salvation came from faith in Jesus, rather than from obedience to the laws of Moses.
The people of God were not just the Jews, but anyone from any race and nation willing to believe in
Jesus and to be baptized
When Jesus proclaimed this new message, his hometown folks at Capernaum turned against him,
and all the leadership of the Jews with them. This guy was a dangerous radical.

3. Jesus new vision of God, of the people of God, and of what was necessary to join the
people of God, was implemented thanks to the preaching of St. Paul in the city of
Corinth, Greece, some 25- 30 years after the death of Jesus.
Corinth was Pauls jewel in the crown. It was a very active, very lively community. The gifts of the
Holy Spirit were evident in many of the Corinthians. They were not perfect, but they were strong
and charismatic.
Given the presence of many strong people in Corinth, debates and divisions were inevitable. After a
few years in Corinth, Paul had moved on to start other churches and was communicating with the
Corinthians by mail. Other people ministered to the Corinthians, one of them was called Apollos.

3rd Sunday after the

Epiphany C

The church of Corinth struggled with a number of internal conflicts: among them were
1. Who should be recognized as leader of the Church: their founder Paul or their new pastor Apollos,
2. Was there a connection between faith and morality: some believe that to be a Christian was it enough to
have faith and ignore the law, while others believed that Christians were expected to behave according to a
set of rules (commandments)
.These were the growing pains of trying to the implementation Jesus message and his programs: Paul
answered with a letter (1st Corinthians) reminding them that:
1. They did not belong to Paul or to Apollos but to Christ, and using the metaphor of the body and of its
members to drive across the need for unity and for acting with a common purpose, and
2. Faith becomes real when we carry out what we believe in our actions and in our conduct. The split between
faith and good works is a false distinction: if one truly believes, then one must be coherent and act according
to his/her believes.

4. So if we look at these 3 readings together we see that Gods revelation becomes progressively
more clear in the readings from Nehemiah, Luke and Paul
.Some key elements of the O.T. have remained as the foundations of our faith: the belief that only one God
exists and that God is active in history. The belief that the Bible brings us the word of God
.Other things have been modified. Jesus rejected the Mosaic laws, summarized them in 2 principles love of
God and love of neighbor, and emphasized the need for faith in him.
.Paul reminded the Corinthians that their faith must be reflected in their conduct .

5. What can we take away from these 3 readings?

a. We stand at the end of a long process of revelation. We believe in one God and read the Gods words in the
Bible. We are called to carry out the prophetic message of Jesus and proclaim the good news to the world:
God is love, God loves us, and we are meant to love and support each other.
b. But, as Paul reminds us , it is not enough to talk the talk, we must walk the walk. Faith is not a matter of
agreeing with a list of statements, but of carrying our our believes in our conduct.
c. And finally, the body metaphor reminds us that we are not just a bunch of free agents, each out to do his or
her thing. But we are members of a community and we will succeed or fail as one body.