RBWords

    When people challenged John the Baptist to give an accounting of himself, the gospels make it clear that he was a forerunner, a herald, and not the Messiah.  Today's gospel scripture recreates a dialogue with two major religious authorities: the priests and levites, who represented the temple, and the Pharisees, who were zealous Jewish laity.  John the Baptist's line, "[B]ut there is one among you whom you do not recognize...." could be taken as a kind of "leit-motif" for the entire Gospel According to John.  It echos the words from the Prologue to this gospel which say, "He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him."

     The fundamental question that arises with the birth of Jesus is, "Is Jesus the one whom God has sent?"  We have already seen how the evangelists nuanced their infancy narratives to show that opposition to the identity of Jesus as both God and human would be part of the story that would follow.  When all the celebration of this season ends (liturgically not for two more weeks!), we are left with the challenge of recognizing Jesus in our midst. The two Church fathers whose feast we celebrate today spent their lives fighting the Arian heresy which denied that a human could also be divine.  The everyday challenge of Christian faith is to recognize the presence of Jesus in our midst - not just in a church building in a tabernacle.  We have only to look at our neighbor!  AMEN