Responding to Jesus

 This is my homily for today, the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.  The readings for today are here.   

A brief explanatory note: the first paragraph of the homily text alludes to a couple of things we did to mark that today is the Sunday of the Word of God: during the Gospel Acclamation, the book of the Gospels was processed through the church, up and down the pew aisles.  As we don't have altar servers during the pandemic, I recruited an adult at each mass to accompany me with a lit torch (processional candle).  In addition, after the proclamation of the Gospel, we "enthroned" the Book of the Gospels on a special stand which faced the people, to try to make it more visible.

Here is the text of the homily:

Pope Francis has decreed that the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time every year should be observed as the Sunday of the Word of God.  That is why we processed the Book of the Gospels through the whole church during our Gospel Procession, and it’s why we’ve now enthroned the Book of the Gospels here.  Each year, during this time, we hear stories of Jesus calling his first disciples.   

When these first disciples heard Jesus calling them, they didn’t just file it away.  They didn’t just say, “Huh, that’s interesting,” and then turn back to their daily routine.  No, “they abandoned their nets and followed him.”  That’s a pretty dramatic life change - and on the spur of the moment, too.  What made them do that?  What induced Simon and Andrew literally to leave their nets and their boat behind, and follow Jesus?  If anything, the life change for James and John was even more dramatic: they left their dad literally sitting in the boat.  

What is it about Jesus’ words that cause people to do that – to make these dramatic life changes – to walk away from their current life, into something unknown?  In a conversion story like this, we might point to three elements.  The first is the person being called.  The second is the person who is calling them.  And the third is the words of calling – the call itself.

Let’s consider first the people who are being called.  This is when we first meet Simon and Andrew, and James and John.  Except for what we’re told in this Gospel passage, we know virtually nothing else of their personal histories.   Of course, the church recognizes them today as great saints.  But I think we’d be mistaken to think of them as significantly different than us.  In all the key human respects, they probably were a lot like us.  And we know what it is like to be a human being, living in human society.  Most of us know people who are living lives which are unfulfilling, frustrating – lives which are not working out for them.  It’s possible that described these four fishermen, and it might even describe us, too.  

When we find ourselves in a situation like that, we’re primed – we’re ready for a change.

The second element is the person who is offering us a change, a way out of the unfulfilling life in which we feel stuck or trapped.  Those of us who have been around the block know that we have to be cautious, because not everyone who invites us to a new way of life has our best interests at heart.  There are flim-flammers and false prophets in the world, and even evil spirits, and there are paths out of our current life which lead nowhere except to dead ends or into the bog.  People who are not happy with their current lives have been known to turn to the bottle, or to drugs.  They have been known to spend large amounts of money on gambling, even becoming addicted to the excitement, the thrill.  People have been known to become promiscuous, or to engage in extramarital affairs, as they seek something new and different and better and exciting than what they have now.  They have been known to try to pile up riches, as though being wealthier will stave off what fails to satisfy us.

It’s easy enough for us to say that these are the wrong paths to walk.  But in fact, these temptations and other temptations are laid before all of us in our daily lives.  We must be alert, and we must be discerning, as we seek a better way.  It does us no good to leave our current path if we end up on one just as bad, or worse.

And so, somehow, we must discern that this person Jesus of Nazareth is different than the false prophets and demons who would lead us astray.  Somehow, we must discern that Jesus is not false, not evil, and that to follow him is not to walk into a dead end, but to walk the path of life.  This is where the Christian community, our family and friends and fellow believers, can be of great help to us.  If we are not too proud to listen to their counsel and be guided by their wisdom, then our fellow disciples can steer us onto the right path.  The church has been in this business now for over 20 centuries.  There are a lot of saints, and a lot of accumulated wisdom, we can follow – if we’re willing to listen.  

Also, we might consult our own hearts – because if our hearts are shrewd and wise, they will recognize that Jesus is true and good and holy, that we can trust him and follow him.  Surely that is what happened with Simon and Andrew, and James and John, on this great day when they walked away from their former lives and followed him.  These four were the first disciples; there was no pre-existing, trusted Christian community to advise them.  These four consulted their own hearts, and took a clear look at their own lives, and their hearts told them, “Walk away from your current lives and follow this man Jesus – it’s the right thing to do.”

We’ve looked at two of the elements: we who are being called; and the man Jesus who is calling us.  Finally, there are the words Jesus spoke to them when he called to them.  He speaks those same words to us today.  What Jesus said was simple and direct and filled with urgency: “This is the time of fulfillment.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the gospel.”  The time is now, and the things to do are to repent and believe.  Here we encounter the raw, compelling power of the Word of God, calling us forth from our old life to new life.

“Repent and believe”.  It’s worth spending a moment or two thinking about repentance.  Jesus is telling us that the thing which makes our old lives so unsatisfactory and frustrating isn’t always something outside of ourselves – it can be what is inside ourselves – because all of us have sin embedded within us.  Our old ways, whatever they happen to be, are intertwined with sin.  We must be willing to repent – to open ourselves up to God, so he can root out the sin inside of us.  Jesus changes us by healing us.  

I’ve named some common false paths available to us: substance abuse, and gambling, and promiscuity, and greed.  There is another false path which has become prominent in our culture in recent years, and we need to be aware of it.  I’m referring to the path of ideology and partisan division.  Our culture is riven by it.  The traditional media and social media are filled with it.  Our lives are soaked in it.  Ideology and partisan division are directed to blaming others – the other side – for everything that ails us.  They lure us with the false promise that if only our side could prevail, and we could defeat the other side, our side would fix everything.  And then, during those temporary periods when our side has prevailed and the other side has been defeated for a time, and many things don’t seem to get appreciably better in our lives, we’re urged to continue to blame the nefarious other side: if only they would stop subverting and interfering with us, our side could fix everything.  And yet most people in the world remain poor and sunken in debt.  Racism continues to thrive.  Abortions happen by the hundreds, every single day.  Corruption and cronyism still is the rule as much as the exception among rulers.  The climate continues to change for the worse.  Ideology and partisan divide are false prophets.  

Please understand: I don’t urge us to disengage from public life; as citizens, we have a duty to choose good and wise rulers, and politics is how we do it.  And I don’t urge us to disengage from advocacy.  I practice advocacy myself in a very modest way – for example, working to make the Safe Haven Laws better-known.  What I urge us to do is to break out of the perennial, constant and increasingly bitter partisanship of dividing the world into Us vs Them, and blaming everything that is evil on the Them’s.  Because in truth, the entire world is beset by sin, and it doesn’t beset just one side or the other – it besets both Them and Us.  Neither side, by itself, is capable of defeating sin and evil.  Only God can do that – and in fact, Jesus already has done it.  

Given that pertinent fact, rather than doubling down on partisan rancor, it would seem to make more sense to cooperate in Jesus’ inaugurating of his new kingdom – the Kingdom of God.  It’s a kingdom where unity and peace truly reign.  It’s a place where, under the lordship of Jesus, the Us’s and the Them’s can be reunited, with divisions healed and family rifts repaired.   And Jesus is telling us that kingdom of unity and peace is at hand.  

Let us respond to the call of Jesus by following him.  Repent.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Let us leave our sinful old ways behind, and follow Jesus instead.  And the time to start is right now.