’Look at Jesus…’

As happens each year, the lectionary remains with Christmas themes (and with St John’s gospel) for one more week. It is as if the church is still enjoying Christmas and is reluctant to move on to Ordinary Time and St Matthew.

The passage has a double focus: Jesus and John the Baptist.  John invites us to “look” at Jesus; and reflects on his mission to proclaim Jesus to the world.

We are free to identify and – to celebrate times when some ‘John the Baptist’ (a person, a word or an event) invites us to take a fresh look at Jesus “coming towards us”;  to celebrate our mission as parents, teachers, friends, community leaders or spiritual guides to “proclaim” to the world, and often to ourselves, that those in our care are sacred.

We celebrate the times when some John the Baptist (a person, an event, a scripture passage) challenged us to “look again” at Jesus “taking away” the sin of the world.  By using the singular – “the sin of the world” – the text invites us to identify one particular “sin” which marks our community or culture, e.g. individualism, racism, elitism – maybe our own selfishness. Once we have given it a name, we can celebrate the “lamb of God” who “takes it away”.

Lord, we pray that your church will be truly John the Baptist saying to the world, “Look, there is the Lamb of God who transforms the world by taking away its sins.”

Michel de Verteuil