I have loved you with an everlasting love.
I have called you and you are mine.
I have loved you with an everlasting love.
I have called you and you are mine.

Imagine for a moment
what it must have been like
that day described in our first reading.
The people of Israel had just returned from exile.
They were standing in the ruins of a once great city.
For years they lived in a foreign land,
far from the Temple
where they had once believed that God dwelled among them.
During their exile,
they believed that God had abandoned them,
had left them alone.
During their exile,
they had not heard the Word of God proclaimed.
They had not heard the stories of creation,
of how God had called their ancestors to be the chosen People,
of how God had saved them from slavery in Egypt,
of how God had traveled with them to the Promised Land.
They had not heard the promises of the Lord,
nor had they heard the promises their ancestors had made
as part of the covenant.
So, when Ezra began reading all these stories to them,
they were overcome with both joy and sadness.
They began to realize all that God had done for them,
as well as how unfaithful they had been to the covenant.
But now God had brought them back.
God had made them the Chosen People once again.

I have loved you with an everlasting love.
I have called you and you are mine.

Imagine for  moment
what it must have been like
that day in Nazareth
when Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph,
returned home from a trip
to hear John the Baptist preach.
The other citizens of Nazareth who had gone with him
had been back home for weeks.
Jesus seemed to have disappeared.,
but now he was back home,
and something was different about him.
He stood up to do the reading,
which was not his usual practice,
and he proclaimed a passage from Isaiah the prophet
in a way no one had ever heard it proclaimed before.
Rather than just recounting what Isaiah had written so long ago,
Jesus proclaimed it as if it applied to himself.
He made the Word of God alive,
and it was absolutely clear
that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him,
that God had anointed him,
that God had sent him to bring glad tidings to the poor.
… to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

And in that proclamation,
they knew that God was truly speaking to them
in a way they had never heard before,

I have loved you with an everlasting love.
I have called you and you are mine.

Today, as we hear the Word of God,
we, too, are reminded of the covenant God has made with us.
We, too, are challenged to believe
that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us,
because God has anointed us
and has sent us to bring glad tidings to the poor.
… to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

In the waters of Baptism,
we received the same call.
The same Spirit blessed us,
and though we may be tempted to say, “Not me,”
God continues to call us all,
to bless us all,
to love us all.

I have loved you with an everlasting love.
I have called you and you are mine.
I have loved you with an everlasting love.
I have called you and you are mine.