The arrival and institution of the Church

Bishop Scott Bullock
The 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 26, 2025

Around the time my mother reached her 65th birthday, she began to experience some unexpected weight loss. While she would have said that she was okay losing a few pounds, in the course of her normal physical, her doctor was concerned and prescribed some tests. Living far away from Michigan at the time, I was not privy to all this seeming routine health care that was going on until, one late evening, I received a call from my father that Mom had received the word of a diagnosis of colon cancer. These are two words you don’t want to hear: colon cancer, particularly coupled with unexpected weight loss, which often means that the disease has progressed to a point where the prognosis for survival would be bleak. What followed were a couple days of shock and sadness as we all tried to come to terms with her diagnosis, what was ahead, and, above all, her imminent mortality.

The next week, Mom was scheduled to go to a follow-up appointment, to do some more thorough testing to consider the extent of the cancer, its spread, and any treatment options. What came next was indeed a surprise: her initial diagnosis was false. The word now was that she did not have colon cancer at all! The original scan was unclear and other tests showed it was not cancer.

So it was the tale of two messages, two sets of words: “colon cancer” followed by “false diagnosis.” The first, colon cancer, words of sadness, fear, and yes death. While the second, false diagnosis, were words of relief, hope and life. And while this was indeed a happy development, the whole experience reminded us of her, and our, mortality. Even the words false diagnosis, we knew in a new way, were not the final word. Nearly nine years ago, she did experience the death that had been prematurely predicted 16 years before, though from a different cause.

Words of doctors are clearly then not the final word. Good medical care is demanded by our dignity as children of God but, in the end, of course, we are all faced with our mortality. And in the face of our mortality, the final word belongs to our creator and, gratefully, our savior. And, as we hear today at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke and the first words of Jesus’ public ministry, we can see them for what they are: indeed, the final word.

There, Jesus himself quotes the eternal message of God’s word. In this case the prophet Isaiah, when he speaks the truth about who God is: one who has created us with no other need but to love us and also to restore us from our fallen life to the fullness of life that he desires for us. There, in that synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus speaks to us of a God who fulfills glad tidings to the poor, who will liberate the captive, who will bring recovery of the sight of the blind, and who will free the oppressed.  And how will he do it?  By his Word. 

First, when this life becomes heavy with those things that limit and obscure our life, when we are impoverished, captive by circumstances or even our own choices, or blinded and unable to see our goodness and the goodness of all others who all created in God’s image, or maybe broken by what life thrown to us, the Word of God, heard in the scriptures but spoken by the Word of God, Jesus himself, speaks the word of truth. The final word. That we have a sure and certain hope that all will be well because, above all, we are beloved children and in the hands of a most merciful God.

Secondly, though, even when trials do not seem to depart, when the way of life cannot be seen, the promise of eternal life breaks in with the truth of the final word, of God that is Jesus, who will be this for all of us: liberty, clear vision and freedom. As it turns out, Jesus’ words after these definitive words of his promise, uttered in the synagogue 2000 years ago, are words for us on this day because “today that word is fulfilled in our hearing.” Because each time we gather together, the Word is spoken to us in the proclamation of the scriptures and, even more, in the actions of Jesus, the Word of God, who comes to us and speaks this truth: You are beloved, delivered, and free. This same message uttered 2000 years ago is the final word for each of us, and it is the word of Life.