It is ironic that just before we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord, the Surgeon General released a letter called A Prescription for America. In it there is the challenge for each of us to build community. And to do so we must respond to God’s call to be sent. Readings for Today.
Build community and be sent
What is amazing to me is how quickly people can, with absolute certainty, conclude that life is just one big conspiracy. The latest example is the terrible wildfires burning in Los Angeles. It seems now that people have become experts in wildfires, for they know precisely who to blame for the terrible destruction. And it always seems it is the people with whom they disagree.
Why is it our first tendency can sometimes be to search for who to blame for a problem? Why do we claim expertise so quickly on things we may not understand? Why do we resort to blame when the truth is often we are mad that we cannot be in control? At least I know this is what I do at times.
Just recently, the Surgeon General wrote a letter called “My Prescription for America.” While I have not read it, in looking at it, or for it rather, at the recommendation of another Dominican friar, I was struck by the very start. Community. It is no secret we live in a society where community has become a struggle.
When I helped move my mother into a senior residential facility, one blessing I had was to be able to go around to my mother’s neighbors and thank them for looking out for my mother. But the town I grew up in has changed.
While I knew there was crime growing up, serious crime was extremely rare. Today, the scourge of drug addiction has made things so terribly worse. And I think I know what is at the root of it. It is the very same thing that the Surgeon General began with in his prescription for America. What is it? Community.
The sense of community is not the same. I often joke that when I was a kid growing up in rural Vermont, my parents didn’t know where I was half the time. But that did not mean I could get away with anything, because what my parents did not see and supervise, the community did.
Here is what the Surgeon General said in his letter. “My father once told me that he never felt a sense of emptiness, that painful, gnawing sense that something is missing, until he left his village in India. It was a remarkable statement from a man who grew up with no running water or electricity and whose family scarcely had enough money to put food on the table each night. Yet, what they lacked in wealth, they made up for in community. Families looked out for each other.” His father described that in India he was surrounded by community that looked out for each other. The Surgeon General writes later, “But without community, it was hard to feel whole.”
Today, we celebrate the baptism of the Lord. The picture we see in the Gospel is dramatic indeed. Jesus, the divine Son of God, also fully human, asking his cousin, John the Baptist, to baptize him.
The voice of God that I imagine as thunderous, speaking of how he is so well pleased with his son. What is so essentially important, however, is not that Jesus was baptized, even though he had no need of repentance. He did not sin. Repentance was the purpose of John’s baptism.
No, the essential part is that the one who was baptized made holy the waters of baptism. Like so many instances in the life and work of Jesus, things get turned upside down. The unclean do not make Jesus unclean. Rather, he makes the unclean clean. He heals on the Sabbath. He hangs out with those on the margins of society.
When we think of the baptism of the Lord, it is only natural to consider our own baptism. But considering the lack of community, it is perhaps more important than ever to recognize that we do not receive baptism in isolation. We are baptized into a community of faith.
Jesus understood that human beings were made by God for community. He called 12 apostles not because he could not do everything himself, but rather that we as human beings function best in a community.
So when we were baptized, we were baptized into the church, the community of faith. But it is not just that. It is also that with the gift of baptism comes the responsibility that God gives us.
Even though there are many options for the readings today, they all share a common theme. We are not just called into a community. We are also called to go forth into the world. We cannot keep the tremendous gift we have received to ourselves.
What if we recognize that the precious gift of faith only really grows when it is shared? It can be hard for us to do this. Consider again our society. When people share things from the heart, it can be the case that they get rejected or mocked or yelled at. When we describe what gives deep meaning to our lives, we run the risk that not only will it not be received, but worst yet, it will be the very way that some people will use to hurt us.
But more importantly, if we have found and experienced the love of Jesus in our hearts and soul, and from that we have a sense of purpose and meaning, why would we want to keep that to ourselves?
After St. Luke recounts the baptism of Jesus, two episodes follow. First, he writes about the genealogy of Jesus. And we learn that his family tree is not much different than our own. Some saints, some sinners, and mostly people trying to be saints.
Then, we read about the temptation of Jesus. Jesus is tempted to power, to take shortcuts, and to be only a magician, turning stones into bread. The baptism of Jesus, the family context from which Jesus came, and the temptations that would have meant not being the Messiah.
Jesus gets started with his own ministry. And so it is with us, too. We are baptized, are people set in a specific context, living in a specific place, doing specific things. We are tempted, but believe our sins can be forgiven by God. And we, too, are sent, called to go forth.
So will you? Will you ask God for the grace to share your faith with others? Can you be committed to even taking small steps, like inviting someone to join you for Mass? Or to come to an event here at St. Dominic Parish, either religious or social?
This year, Hope Francis has called a Holy Jubilee. It is a year for hope. And boy, do we need it. Faith certainly does not make our lives and our situations perfect. But it does provide us with hope. We have hope because God loves us unconditionally. Jesus, the divine Son of God, died for our sins so we could live forever. God speaks to us in his Word, the Bible, providing us the blueprint for living as people immersed in the Holy Spirit of God.
The fact that God created you in love means that you are given a unique relationship with God. With God, all things are possible, even being able to become disciples who are sent to share the good news that God is always with us and wants to live with us in heaven forever.
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