For most people here in the United States, this is not the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time but, Super Bowl Sunday, a most extraordinary day. Two professional football teams will play for the championship of American football. The leaders of the teams will guide and execute their authority and try to dominate their opponent. Neither of the two teams has ever been in this super-game before and casual fans might be asking where did this team come from, they’re not the usual powerhouses. They also might wonder where this great runner or that talented passer or kicker come from; we’ve never heard of them before.
Well it is for the rest of the world, a Sunday in Ordinary Time and the liturgy for today highlights Jesus as the new Moses, the new prophet who has authority. We hear Moses telling his people that God has told him that their request will be answered. There will be no more appearing of God in fearful-fire nor terrifying thunder. The prophet who will speak God’s words will be one of them who will be given the power of God’s own word.
We hear in today’s gospel a story of how this “new Prophet” Jesus, speaks and acts with astonishing authority. He has power over His opponent, the Evil One who has possessed a part of God’s creation. Jesus dominates, that is rules, God’s possession, this human person. Those watching and listening are also wondering, “who is this, where did He come from”.
The Second Reading of today’s liturgy is an attractive, but puzzling few lines written by Paul to his struggling early community. It sounds like husbands and wives, by being anxious in pleasing each other, are less dedicated to the Lord and those of us who are not married are freed from any anxieties. One simple reflection; married and unmarried, we all take our anxieties as opportunities to trust God’s marriage to us.
Jesus is always offering His followers a new way of looking at the human condition. A possessed man, or a deaf person, or a leper were viewed as mistakes or cursed in the religious-culture of Jesus’ time. They were “out-casts” and in the presence of Jesus, cast out that which made the person the “out-cast”. Jesus is offering us a different view of ourselves; His view. He has come to cast upon the earth a sacred sense of itself. He enters the human condition to redeem its sanctity.
Jesus comes, not as fire or thunder, but as the gentle voice of the loving God Who desires to execute lordship over the possessed or wandering or injured of this world. It is a contest, a battle, a “Super-Bowl” of sorts which Jesus as the new Moses has come to win. He knows the ways of His opponent and drives them into defeat. As Christians we watch Jesus continue His victory in our lives by driving out our opponents of selfishness, violence and anxiety. It is a battle and to the patient and trusting, goes the victory.
The fame of the winning team today will spread a little ways beyond that city or state. The fame of Jesus which began spreading because of such redeeming-actions as we hear today, will continue to spread as each of us rises into the view of us that He has as the new prophet. As Moses raised his followers sense of themselves and led them out of slavery into freedom, so does Jesus raise and lead us out of the slavery of being possessed into the freedom of possessing ourselves in Him.
Rev. Larry Gillick, SJ
I entered the Society of Jesus in 1960, after graduating from Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and attending St. Norbert College for two years. I was ordained in 1972 after completing theological studies at the Toronto School of Theology, Regis College. I presently minister in the Deglman Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Creighton and give retreats.
I enjoy sharing thoughts on the Daily Reflections. It is a chance to share with a wide variety of people in the Christian community experiences of prayer and life which have been given to me. It is a bit like being in more places than just here. We actually get out there without having to pay airlines to do it. The word of God is alive and well.
