Sunday, 1/24/16
Each of today’s three readings is worth a second listen. The
first reading tells how in 450 b.c. the people of Jerusalem decided on taking
out of mothballs the old law of Moses, making it their current civil law. The
priest Ezra, standing high on a platform before the water gate, read the old
law to the people; and they bound themselves to observe it.
The second reading reflects on the fact that all humanity
has been created in God’s image, and it asks us to see how in God’s eyes we are
not just billions of strangers, scattered over seven continents. Rather, we are all parts of the one body, the Body
of Christ.
There days this Body of Christ is experiencing so much
suffering. Two days ago forty women and children died in boats that capsized while
attempting to escape to Greece. Here, in our freezing north, in the long backups
or cars on or interstates, the people in stalled cars without gas or water are shivering to death. Those miserable souls are our fellow members in the body
of Christ.
In this opening sentences of his Gospel, St. Luke introduced
himself. As the only non-Jew to write a book of the Bible, Luke came along
twenty years after the death and resurrection of Christ, Then, travelling to
Jerusalem, he went about gathering stories about him from the people who had lived with Jesus.
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