Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

A woodland pond, rimed with ice

Lectionary: 306

In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit;
he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” 

Here we are again, after only five weeks of Christmas, hurled with Jesus into the world of adult challenges, hearing a woman's complaint and a demoniac's angry accusation. But we're in the Lord's company and, if it's not entirely safe, there's no better place to be. 

We missed the opening of Hannah's story yesterday, as we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord; but we understand the woman's unhappiness and her sad plea for a child. Like many young couples, she cannot believe that her marriage to Elkanah is complete until she has a child. Her disappointment is made unbearable by a rivalry with Elkanah's other wife, Peninnah. 

However, as in the story of Elizabeth, whom we met only two weeks ago, there is purpose in Hannah's barrenness. She finds her place in Salvation History as she bears her firstborn son and consecrates him to the Lord at Shiloh. Jewish midrash suggested that her rival Peninnah also played a part as her mocking remarks drove the unhappy woman to desperate prayer. Hannah might have been content to be the preferred wife without Peninnah's taunts. 

The demons also play out their assigned roles in today's gospel, as they drive an unfortunate man to accost the Lord. 

Because of our sin, there is a perversity in our hearts which challenges truth, goodness, and beauty at every turn. We can take no good for granted but must challenge it, turning it over and over like a suspicious coin, and wondering if it's really worth anything. 

Perversity suspects generosity; is it really altruism, or does it have some ulterior motive? Isn't admiration of another's intelligence, wit, and success really fawning? Is God's command to "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it" actually licence to pollute and destroy the world? Isn't our sexuality something nasty and ugly, and should never appear in public or be discussed in conversation?  

Don't perverse persons take delight in scandalizing our children with their alternative lifestyles? Why must we live with such people?

And so we turn like Hannah to the Lord, and the demoniac to Jesus. God's spirit is joyous, free, innocent, and glad despite perversity's challenges. We find in ourselves the courage and willingness to go our own way, and not that determined by the corrupt, corrupting society around us. We're just not interested in the nonsense of a misguided society. 

On this first day of Ordinary Time, we hear a reassuring whisper:

And your ears shall hear a word behind you:
“This is the way; walk in it,”
when you would turn to the right or the left.
You shall defile your silver-plated idols
and your gold-covered images;
You shall throw them away like filthy rags,
you shall say, “Get out!”
He will give rain for the seed
you sow in the ground,
And the bread that the soil produces
will be rich and abundant.
On that day your cattle will graze
in broad meadows;
The oxen and the donkeys that till the ground
will eat silage tossed to them
with shovel and pitchfork.
Upon every high mountain and lofty hill
there will be streams of running water. Isaiah 30: 21-25