Second Sunday in Ordinary Time January 20, 2008

Reading 1, Isaiah 49:3,5-6  This is the second of Isaiah’s four “Servant-of-the-Lord” oracles mentioned last week. Whereas the first prophecy focused on the ministry of the servant, this one focuses on the glory of God revealed through him. Similar to the first prophecy, the mission goes beyond the people of Israel to the ends of the earth.

Reading II, 1 Corinthians 1:1-3  Corinth, located on the four-mile wide isthmus connecting Peloponnesian peninsula with the continent, was one of the chief commercial centers of the ancient world. A canal permitting ship passage was completed in 1893 was the largest cut of any canal in the world. Although only 3.94 miles long, the average depth of the cut in the middle 2.6 miles was over 1,000 feet deep. In ancient times, goods arrived by ship at Corinth’s east port of Cenchrae on the Aegean and were hauled by wagon to the western port of Lechaeon. Corinth was a very cosmopolitan city with a great diversity of ethnic and social groups. It was infamous for loose living…the Las Vegas of its day. All this was reflected in the Corinthian community where Paul labored for over a year and a half and to which he later wrote his most challenging letters.

John 1:29-34  John the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus is more direct and emphatic in the Gospel of John than in the Synoptic gospels. Why? It seems likely that there was a significant population in the Jewish world that identified with John the Baptist who had not yet come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah (such as Apollos in Acts 18:24-28 who went on to be a major evangelist in the early Church). How to bring them to faith in Jesus? The gospel writers chose to express the importance of John the Baptist in God’s plan while indicating that John was pointing the way to Jesus. Honor his ministry, but go where he pointed…to Jesus.