About 600 years before Jesus lived,
Jerusalem and the area around it
was sandwiched between two of the great powers of the time.
There was considerable political tension.
The result was that significant parts of the population
being taken into captivity in Babylon,
and the Temple being destroyed.
Things were very bleak, religiously and materially.
This was the context for the book of Isaiah.
The famous words that start our first reading
express the self-understanding of Isaiah and his disciples:
anointed with the Spirit of God;
bringing good news to the poor;
binding up broken hearts;
declaring that freedom will come;
confidently announcing that God does care.
Their mission was to bring hope to their compatriots
in their desperate situation.
The spirit of the Lord has been given to me,
for the Lord has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring good news to the poor
to bind up hearts that are broken;....
But these words were not only for their own time:
they took on a wider significance, once the exile was over.
They were understood as looking forward, in hope,
to the coming of the Lord’s anointed, of the Messiah.
As we listen to that first reading,
we are to think of the scene near the start of Luke’s gospel
at the synagogue in Nazareth.
There, at the start of His ministry,
Jesus used these words from Isaiah
to articulate His own mission.
He is the Lord’s anointed, the Messiah, the Christ.
He is the fulfilment of the hopes expressed in Isaiah,
and we, as His followers,
are to play our part in that fulfilment.
He has sent me to bring good news to the poor
to bind up hearts that are broken;....
Following Jesus, sharing in His mission,
being anointed with the Holy Spirit,
being Christ in the world,
involves engagement with the poor.
As individuals,
we can show our solidarity with the poor in all sorts of ways.
We also have a responsibility as a community,
as St William’s collectively.
Since the year 2000, at the instigation of Bishop John,
the parish has had a Covenant with the Poor.
This is reviewed and tweaked each year.
In this covenant we acknowledge
what we are seeking to do together, as a parish,
and commit ourselves to these activities.
Today, as a new year’s resolution,
for the start of the Liturgical year,
we renew St William’s commitment.
We will sign the covenant in Mass,
and there will be copies in the Narthex
which you are invited to sign
to associate yourself with this commitment.
Please do read the covenant
and actively consider supporting one of the areas mentioned.
You will see in it that one of our commitments
is to respond to crisis appeals,
and we do that today
with a second collection for the CAFOD Ebola appeal.
The gospel today had John the Baptist’s striking words about Jesus:
there stands among you – unknown to you –
the one who is coming after me
We wouldn’t be here in church if Jesus were unknown to us.
So who are we, as we hear this gospel?
I suggest that
we are the people who are ‘getting to know’ Jesus better.
How does that work?
Well it works in lots of ways,
but following my theme for today,
I want to say that one way we get to know Jesus better is by
by heartfelt response
to the trapped,
to the broken hearted,
to the poor.