January 26, 2024 – The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time [YEAR C]
Fr. Michael Brungardt
Nehemiah 8:2-4,5-6,8-10 + 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 [or 12:12-14,27] + Luke 1:1-4;4:14-21
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) – January 26, 2025
Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19:8-10, 15; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Ordinary Time is not just “boring time,” waiting for Lent, Easter, Advent, and Christmas. Rather, it gives us time to grow in faith. Faith is not just “believing God exists,” or that “Jesus is real” (that’s not “faith”). Rather, faith is entrusting our lives to Him, to God, to the Father. Ordinary Time is this time of growing is a real relationship with the living Jesus Christ, of entrusting our life to him, making him the center of our lives.
How do we reach a point where we can do that? How do we get to the point where we know Jesus can be trusted and that we are not only begrudgingly doing what we asks us, but we find new life and joy and happiness by giving him everything?
This is what the Gospels are constantly trying to lay out for us, Luke’s Gospel in particular. Luke sets out to write this “orderly account” of what happened with Jesus. Why? So that we can have certainty about him. Luke gets it: we aren’t about to entrust our lives willy-nilly to some random guy. We need to know he can be trusted, that we can entrust our lives to him, and that by entrusting our lives to him the truest and deepest desires of our heart will be fulfilled.
And so after giving the story about Jesus birth and his baptism and his temptations in the wilderness, Luke picks up the story at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry: this famous scene where Jesus walks into the synagogue of his home town of Nazareth. He picks up the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and reads the prophecy about the anointed figure God would send, how this person is going to bring “good news.” And what’s the “good news”? That he brings rest. And not just any rest, but the ultimate rest that has evaded us for forever. Rest from our work, our work of constantly trying to give ourselves everything, provide for ourselves, make ourselves happy, fulfill ourselves. The good news is that this strange captivity we have found ourselves in, this captivity to constant work, is coming to an end—but will come to an end through our relationship with this Jesus, by entrusting our lives to him.
From time immemorial, from Adam and Eve themselves, we have fallen for the great lie, a great deception. The great strategy of the Devil isn’t to try to possess you (like you see in an exorcist movie). His great strategy is to deceive you, and to turn you against God. And the lie goes something like this: “God is not a father, or at least not a good father. And you can’t trust Him. And He’s holding out on you. And He does’t really love you. And if you would just be done with Him, you could finally find happiness.” That’s not just what he did with Adam and Eve, but that’s what he does with you and me, in every temptation: he casts God in suspicion, and tells us that God is not to be trusted. And he tells us instead to trust in ourselves, to work hard, to provide for ourselves—that we can give ourselves everything.
St. John Vianney famously spent hours each day hearing confessions. And once he was asked about what he learned from his many years of listening to confessions. And all he said was, “People are much sadder than they seem.” That’s all he said. Why? Because people are held bound and caught in this great deception—what we call the Condition of Sin. From time immemorial we have fallen for this great lie, and it continues to play out even to this day.
So when Jesus arrives on the scene, the first thing he does is read the great prophecy, announce that he brings Good News: God’s great promise to send someone to give us this rest, to heal us
and set us free from this ancient servitude—this Scripture passage is fulfilled. He is here. And the rest and healing and freedom we seek is found in our relationship with Him, by entrusting our lives to Him. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”