A homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 19, 2025
Isaiah 62:1-5, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, John 2:1-11
There’s a little door in our hallway that opens to something called a linen closet.
The closet hasn’t held linens in about 30 years.
In it are various cleaning supplies, paper goods, soaps and shampoos, dental-care items, COVID-19 tests, and prescription and over-the-counter medicines.
Definitely no sheets or towels.
And every year around this time, in the cold of mid-January, I’ll haul out the closet’s contents and keep what we’ll actually use in the coming 12 months and toss or find a home for the unneeded or expired stuff. (Expired! Expired! Expired!)
Inventorying and dealing with what’s expired usually inspires me to make time in winter’s quiet to inventory and deal with anything in my emotional and spiritual life that likewise may have become unneeded or expired. And to better organize and appreciate — and make better use of — God’s gifts.
This goes way beyond any New Year’s resolution to keep the weight off or read more and watch insurance commercials less.
St. Paul lays it out clearly for the people of Corinth, and for us:
There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God
who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.
Paul’s letter, proclaimed as our second reading for this weekend, then proceeds to rattle off an inventory of potential gifts. Some of us can identify one of them in our lives; some of us, a couple; the truly blessed among us, all or nearly all. And, of course, most of us received other gifts from God’s abundant love.
For which we say thank you.
But our thanks and appreciation must not, and cannot, be in words alone. Paul makes that clear in his intro when he states that gifts are given for some benefit.
The way his letter is written could be misinterpreted to state that the recipients of those gifts are the people who benefit. And only those people.
Not quite.
Yes, anyone who has the gifts of healing, or of superpowers, or of prophecy, or of language or philosophical skills is truly blessed. But (to quote any number of comic books and graphic novels) with great power comes great responsibility. A responsibility to do good for all humankind.
Not to tuck those gifts into their back pocket and smile a smug smile. Pride and arrogance have no place in this equation.
Spider-Man uses his gifts for the betterment of his fellow citizens because it’s the right thing to do (and, well, yeah, because it sells movie tickets).
We Christians are called to use our gifts because Jesus left us with the great responsibility to be Christ to one another.
This time of year, with a cold snap giving us good reason to hunker down in our homes, and with the verdant quiet of Ordinary Time upon us until Ash Wednesday in early March, maybe we can consider a personal inventory of our divine gifts and how we’re using them.
In the next few weeks, even as we work to care for everyone affected by the deep winter chill and pray for a lasting peace in the Middle East and Ukraine, among other war-torn lands, perhaps we can pause to think about the ways we’ll aim for a deeper faith and a closer relationship with our Triune God through the observance of Lent once it arrives.
Yes, sometime soon, I will sort through the bags upon bags of cough drops and bottles of Advil, and ensure the closet has what we need, no more no less.
Yes, sometime soon, I will inventory — humbly, I pray — my gifts and gratefully ensure I’m using them to glorify God while caring for my sisters and brothers according to my skills and talents.
May this be said of all of us.
