Restoring Order

Gospel: Matthew 4: 12-17, 23-25

After John the Baptist is imprisoned, Jesus takes up the ministry of John by proclaiming the same message: Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand.  But Jesus does not wait for people to show up for baptism at the Jordan River.  Instead, he goes from town to town healing people of their infirmities, delivering those possessed by demons, and sharing meals with people of all kinds.  There are no preconditions set for being healed, no qualifications of worthiness enforced to eat with Jesus.  

In the religious understanding of many in Jesus' time - and ours - the dynamic is continually reversed.  People have to perform deed after deed in order to prove one's worthiness.  Innumerable sacrifices were offered, endless prayers recited, and purifications undertaken in order to somehow curry God's favor, to fulfill some idea of preconditions to be met prior to a relationship with God.  But Jesus has put this idea away once and for all.

What Jesus has done is restored the order of creation.  God created the world as a free gift in the hopes of eliciting a response of love from humanity.  In the redemption of the world  - in its re-creation - Jesus restores that order.  He heals us and eats with us in the hopes that we will respond in love.  Today is a day to reflect on the fact that God has created us, healed us, delivered us, and nourished us hoping for our response in love - a response that has us heal, deliver, and nourish others as it was done for us.