Get on the bus

Belatedly, here is my homily (more or less) from two days ago, the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A. 

Before I get to the text of the homily, a prefatory note: it seems the Holy Father recently has designated the 3rd Sunday in OT each liturgical year, this past Sunday and henceforward, a Sunday in which we particularly honor or celebrate the Word of God.  So a few weeks ago I had been duly advised to tailor my homily accordingly, but I completely forgot until our pastor mentioned it to me in the sacristy a few minutes before mass began.  So extempore, I interlaced a few sentences about that theme - which served, I am sure, to muddy (even farther) whatever message anyone could otherwise draw from what follows.  I'm not going to even try to recreate that part of the Sunday event; here is what I intended to present, and mostly did present, this past weekend:

You may have heard this anecdote from me before, because I share it from time to time.  It’s the story of how I became a deacon.  Not the whole story: just the story of how it all started.  And it’s a very simple story: my wife Therese and I and our young children were at home eating dinner one night when the telephone rang.  The caller was Fr. Hurley, who was, at that time, the pastor of St. Edna’s.  He said, “I have a question to ask you.  Are you sitting down?  How would you like to be a deacon?”

Fr. Hurley asking me that simple question, sometime at the end of 1999 or the beginning of 2000, started a journey for Therese and me that stretched over four years of formation, and now over 15+ years of ministry here at St. Edna.  That simple invitation changed our lives.  You might say that Fr. Hurley’s invitation to me was the pebble that started rolling down a hill, dislodging some other stones along the way, and becoming, in retrospect, an avalanche of a change in life for me.  Or the drop of rain that found a channel, merged with other drops, combined with other streams, and eventually turned into a river.

Invitations have the power to change lives.

That is how good things often have started for me: with a question – or better yet, with an invitation.  I’ve been married to Therese for over 31 years.  That relationship started with an invitation, too.  One day, we both were passengers in a mutual friend’s car. At the time, I knew Therese only slightly.  But that day, I asked her if I could have her telephone number to call her.  That question, which took a certain amount of courage on my part – not least because there were other passengers riding in the car, too, and I’m pretty sure they were all listening to us - changed two lives: for me, for the better; for her – well, you’ll need to ask her yourself.

As a postscript: After she gave me her phone number, I waited a few days before calling her.  I learned later that she had sat by the phone for nearly a week, waiting for me to call.  It seems she grew increasingly exasperated because it was taking me so long to get around to calling her.  So I nearly, not quite, but nearly, messed up the rest of my life by dithering.  Had I waited another day or two to call, she might have told me to go take a one-way walk into Lake Michigan.  To be sure, some 34 or 35 years later, I’m still nearly screwing things up, nearly every day.  But when I think about how screwed up my life probably would be if I hadn’t made that phone call – well, it hardly bears thinking about.  If it’s true that invitations change lives, the opposite also is true: the failure to extend an invitation can be a missed opportunity to do something good, for ourselves and for others.  

  

The two happiest days of my life have been September 10, 1988, my wedding day, and May 16, 2004, the date of my ordination to the diaconate.  But what I’ve just told you about are not those happy days themselves, but of incidents that were equally as momentous: the days when invitations were extended that started the journeys to get to those milestone days.  A love story leads up to a wedding, and that love story has a beginning.  A faith journey leads up to an ordination, and that journey has a beginning.  The beginnings of our beginnings are as significant as the milestones they lead up to. 

And that’s what we observe in today’s Gospel passage: the start of the beginning.  And it all started with some simple invitations.

Jesus invited Peter and Andrew to come and follow him.  And then he offered the same invitation to James and John.  Had they known Jesus already?  If not, then what circumstances and life histories of those four fishermen had left their hearts open, on that day and at that time, to accept Jesus’s simple invitation?  I’d love to know the answer to that question, but the biblical account doesn’t tell us.  But whatever the history and circumstances, those simple invitations from Jesus were the pebble that eventually grew to an avalanche, the few drops of water that eventually grew to a gushing torrent, the planting of a few seeds that eventually led to a beautiful garden.  Those simple invitations were the start of discipleship, which we’re still partaking in today, 2000 years later.

Simple invitations have the power to change our lives. 

I once worked for a guy, an executive, who called me into his office one day and told me he wanted to put me in a new role.  It was unexpected, so I hesitated in accepting it. He gave me a simple metaphor that day that has stuck with me.  He said, “When the bus stops and the door opens, you should get on.  Get on the bus.”  I still use that metaphor with my own employees today, some 30 years later. 

I happen to believe that God sends us invitations, every single day.   They may not come in the mail like a wedding invitation.  And God doesn’t need our phone numbers to reach us.  He mostly sends his invitations by messenger: by other people whom we encounter in our lives. His invitations are to love others, to draw closer to him, to help him in the work of inaugurating his kingdom.  It seems that, every day, we're standing at a bus stop, without even realizing it, and throughout the day, buses pull up and doors open right in front of us.  Every day, God invites us to get involved, to reach out, to respond, to say “Yes” to him.  To love, to serve, to forgive, to repent.

To repent.  Today’s Gospel passage records the very beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, in which he announces the inauguration of his kingdom.  Did you happen to catch the very first word of Jesus’s public preaching?  It was “Repent”.  He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Repent.  The word “repent” is an invitation.  To repent is to turn away from the things that are holding us back or weighing us down.  With that word, “repent”, Jesus is inviting us to press the restart button, to make a dramatic change, to walk away from the sins and dysfunctions that may describe our daily unhappiness.

Repent.  Walk away from your nets and your fishing boats, if those are holding you back.  Start afresh.  Set a new direction to your life.  Change your life for the better.  Jesus is inviting us.  All we have to do is say "Yes."  The bus has pulled up, and Jesus is driving it.  The door has opened.  Will we get on board?