Last week, in the weekday readings, we read the story of Jesus going home to Nazareth after he had made quite a name for himself in Judea. I am sure that he visited friends and family while he was there. There may have been unfinished business to take care of. And there may even have been some parties. But when the Sabbath day came, Jesus went to Synagogue. The Gospel reading says, “and entering the Synagogue on the Sabbath as was his custom”. Those last three words struck me – “as was his custom”. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the Word made flesh, the only begotten of the Father through whom all creation was made, the one who was conceived and lived his entire life without sin, still thought it important to go to church!

Today we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Jesus goes to the Jordan, seeks out John the Baptist, as so many others have done, and submits to John’s baptism. And what was that baptism? John told people that it was the symbol of their desire to be apart of the new kingdom of God that was dawning. And so Jesus submits to it, even though he is to be king in that kingdom.

I was told, when I was a child, that Jesus submitted to baptism to give us an example. And that is true. But I think there is something more to it than that. Was he just going through a ritual that he did not need, was his a kind of “pretend” baptism? I don’t think so. The Bible tells us that he was like us in all things except sin. And so if the Father had sent John to preach the dawning of the kingdom of God, and if the way to be enrolled in the new kingdom of God which John was announcing was the ritual of John’s baptism, then Jesus would go through it just like all other men, because he never considered himself to be separated from the human condition. He was a real man.

And the same goes for church on the Sabbath. Jesus celebrated the Sabbath on the 7th day – Saturday. In Italian, the word for Saturday is still Sabato. All Jews were commanded to keep holy the Sabbath, the final day of creation. When Jesus rose from the dead, his followers declared that day the 8th day – the day of the new creation, and began to celebrate that as the Holy Day of the new kingdom. But whether it is celebrated on Saturday or Sunday is not the real point. The point is that as pure, holy, wise, powerful, and good as Jesus was, he still thought it important to go to church – to synagogue – every Sabbath, and to keep the Sabbath holy!

Last week I met with priests from around the diocese as part of the synod that is going on and will continue until the summer of 2005. Every priest there bemoaned the fact that although some of their parishes commit 85% of their Sunday collection to the support of the parish school, 80% of the children in the school are not at Sunday Mass! And the statistic is, I am so sad to say, the same right here. I am told that in America only about half the declared Catholic population attends Sunday Mass with any regularity at all. That means that half the Catholic population is living habitually in a state of serious sin.

Let me repeat that so that no one will be mistaken as to what I have said. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that to absent yourself from Sunday Mass is a grave sin! And if you live in a state of grave sin without repenting, you are heading for hell.

The Church says that taking part in Sunday Mass is that important!

Jesus never intended to found a church of loners. It is never just “me and Jesus”. Search the bible and you will see all through it that God expects us to be active parts of a community – first it was Israel, now it is the Church. Jesus himself went to church every Sabbath. He obviously didn’t think that his special relationship with God the Father exempted him from his duties as a man and as Jew.

Why should we think that a soccer game, or sports practice, or the desire to sleep late, or an inconvenient job schedule, or the fact that we have been in church on a weekday, or the belief that I have some kind of special relationship with the Lord and so have a particular dispensation from the law, or that the other people who go to church are hypocrites or sinners and not worthy of my company, or that the service is not entertaining enough, or that I don’t like the music, or the temperature of the building, make me think that I do not need to do what Jesus Christ himself felt an obligation to do?

Jesus knew that if any faith is to survive, it needs both the personal and the community elements.

Story of the Welsh minister