The prophet’s promise is for the people, called again to listen that makes them live. They are the people of the alliance, but they have not always – indeed, almost never – honored their commitment to their liberator and savior God. The reminder is therefore necessary and reaches us too: who do we listen to? To the God who calls to commitment and offers for free, or to others who ask for money in exchange for easy earnings? The decisive question becomes: where do we find true nourishment for our existence? The call is for a task, he has chosen us to be witnesses among the people of the God who calls everyone: strangers, foreigners, poor, marginal… We will do this, however, if we have known who He is who calls and always offers anyone another possibility. It is difficult to understand, accept and live this truth of God, that is, his mercy, his having a “heart” for the “misery” of his creatures wherever they are, whoever they are. To accept that God is like this, we must have received mercy first. If we don’t have it
experienced, we simply have not yet met the true God.
Ephesians illustrates to us the work of Jesus, which also requires a reality check. If we truly belong to Christ, we experience his peace: we are no longer distant, there is no longer separation, enmity. We have been reconciled with the Father and with each other, finally being able to live as sisters and brothers. Of course, we are still on the way, but the path towards the “new human” has been traced: walls are falling, we find ourselves “relatives”, “family members of God”, interested in each other’s fate. No one is a foreigner or guest anymore, everyone is at home. In the single human race we recognize ourselves as much more similar than diversified in ethnic groups with their own languages, cultures, places, religions. These differences are no longer insurmountable. The man Jesus, the new Adam, is universal. And it makes its way with love which is forgiveness, mutual acceptance, reconciliation, friendship. All of this is what the Bible calls “peace.” Are we closer to this new humanity, or to the old Adam who – sometimes in the name of God – foments violence and wars?
Therefore Jesus came to bring peace. He did it immediately, avoiding taking revenge on those who wanted him dead even though he was just born. And he does it with this gesture today: go to John, stand in line with the sinners and receive baptism himself. He didn’t need it and the Baptizer points it out to him, giving voice to an embarrassment of the nascent Church: but how? You, the One I have announced as the greatest, who comes to bring the irresistible reckoning, do you actually come to be baptized like these sinners? Jesus replies that this is “justice”, since it is precisely those who are wounded, missing, excluded from the supposedly “holy” community, who need to be told that their existence is not random, least of all senseless or wrong. The voice of the Father confirms that the Son is loved because he loves. In fact, he is where he must be and where God has always lived: among the least, so that no one can think that his life is “unjustified”.
