John 1:29-33
The decorations have been taken down and the poinsettias adopted by parishioners. Christmas trees lacking ornaments lie on their sides by the street, waiting to be transported to a place where they can decompose. Children are back in school. We are back in Ordinary Time.
Ordinary time is potentially a blessing or a curse, depending on a lot of things. For little kids who have experienced another Christmas, it’s a letdown, and that’s true for some adults as well. On the other hand, some of us are glad to get back to the routine -- eating normally, doing our jobs. Glad that company will not drop in for a while. But our reaction to Ordinary Time really is related to our feelings about Christmas, not the actual joys of ordinary time.
The gospel today tells us that John, who has been baptizing crowds, realizes that he did not know Jesus. That’s hard to believe in the literal sense, because John and Jesus were cousins, probably about six months apart in age. It’s true that they lived a couple of days journeying on foot, apart from each other. John’s dad was a priest and had to be in the temple; he probably grew up in Bethany or another little town not far from Jerusalem. When Mary visited Elizabeth Luke tells us that she went to the hill country. But certainly John and Jesus must have met at those times when Jewish people gathered in Jerusalem for time like the Passover celebration. John knew Jesus, just didn’t know who Jesus really was.
I’m one of those people who has a hard time appreciating Ordinary Time -- I don’t know it, I only know it in relation to Christmas and Easter and Lent and Pentecost - all the non-ordinary times. Ordinary time is just counting the days until the next big feast. When we are baptized we are invited to enter the world of little children -- Because Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. I’ve often pondered those words. What is it about little children that Jesus admires? Being the father of six and the grandfather of 20, and now the great grandfather of one, I’ve been around little children for most of my adult life. Just when I think the last one is leaving childhood, another little child comes into my life. I wonder if Jesus really knew little children - they cry, they keep you up at night, they are stubborn as mules, they need frequent cleaning -- maybe he didn’t mean these traits, maybe he admired them because they do one thing very well that adults don’t do -- they live in the present.
If one gets in a fight with another, a few minutes later they are friends again. If they are playing in the yard and a grasshopper goes by, they might put down their toys and follow it. Little children don’t worry about the future -- that’s something they can’t control. They don’t worry about the past for the same reason. Adults often worry about the past and future, but can’t control them either.
Maybe that’s something we need to think about in ordinary time. Christmas celebrates a small part of Jesus’ life. So does Holy Week and Easter. But Jesus spent three years teaching and healing and driving out demons and forming his apostles to lead his church. That’s what we should concentrate on in ordinary time.
John the Baptist says in today’s gospel, “I did not know him”. He says it twice. If we really want to know Jesus we need to walk along with him through Galilee. We need to meet the people he met, and listen to the lessons he taught in his stories. And we can do that by paying attention to ordinary time. So make a resolution that during this year you will listen carefully to the readings, especially the gospels, of ordinary time so that you can know Jesus better. Maybe even make it a family affair if you are a parent, or maybe join a group to consider the readings for each Sunday. And you might find that ordinary time is extraordinary.
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