January 23, 2004

Shine, Baby, shine!

Just so we can hear what this Sunday’s press release is all about, Paul and Jesus have stopped preaching and gone to meddling.

Paul’s lesson in gross anatomy never fails to make abundantly clear how connected we are to one another. If that fails, there’s always the Eucharist to remind and re-member us driving home again and again that we are the body and all its parts, homely and beautiful, functional and freeloading. Even with all our selfish preoccupation about whether we’ve got it right (aka “orthodox”), that’s the way God does it.

So it is with Jesus’ reading of Isaiah. Justice is all wrapped up in good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to all. But that’s not enough. Whatever one’s take on the Bible — infallible book or dust-collecting bookend — as glorious as may be its words, it’s all pointless until it’s fulfilled.

“Today this scripture [Isaiah’s wild and crazy ideas about peace and justice] has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus wasn’t talking about still another Morocco-bound red-letter version or a new commentary. He was talking about himself. He was the fulfillment. He was the word become flesh. If you’ve got ears, listen.

And, like Paul, he was also talking about us. We are the body. All this Bible talk, all these resolutions, all this voting and consenting and whatever, we are IT. Is IT fulfilled or not? That’s what our Baptismal Covenant is about, to fulfill, to re-member, to embody good news and vision and release and freedom. To be what God calls us to be.

Don’t let the quaint language of last Sunday’s collect go in one ear and out the other. God grant that “your people, illumined by your word and sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory… ” [BCP p 215]. Shine, Baby, shine.

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