Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Epiphany 3 B – Sunday, January 22, 2012
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
1 Corinthians 7: 29-31
Mark 1:14-20
Sisters and Brothers, the time is now. The kingdom of God is breaking into our lives.
Now is the time to turn back from wayward pursuits.
Now is the time to see all the good that is at hand, if only you turn to God.
Let nothing come before the love of God.
Don’t let relationships fall apart because of God; but don’t let any of them claim the order of your life.
Don’t forget your abiding concerns for the sake of God; but don’t let any of those concerns sing out of tune with your love for God.
Today’s three passage of scripture talk about conversion and alignment with God.
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First, our reluctant and crotchety prophet Jonah has finally made it to Nineveh. He has walked through a third of the megalopolis of Nineveh. He walks with a proclamation of doom. It’s not his style to use mellifluous rhetoric to appeal to conversion. And yet, already king, people and animals are turning to the God that Jonah didn’t even say a word about.
The story of this mass conversion tells us more about God than about the inhabitants of Nineveh or about Jonah.
To God, there are no outsiders. And God is responsive to all. The undeservedly self-righteous Jonah disapproves of God’s mercy. Why forgive these loathed Ninevites, thinks Jonah.
The Ninevites are overlords of the Israelites. Their people have subordinated the Israelites into an exile of servitude. No matter; God pays attention to their turning away from their sins. God forgives them and repeals the punishment that Jonah proclaimed with obvious schadenfreude.
God’s forgiveness of the Ninevites is a blow to the Israelites. They, the chosen people, have been found undeserving, and now they live to see how gentiles receive God’s recognition. As Jesus will say, God is able of … stones to raise up children to Abraham (Luke 3:8).
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In your life, today, who are your Ninevites? Is there any group of people you’d rather not find under God’s pinions? Is it possible, that whatever their faults, they have already found God’s forgiveness -- and deserve yours?
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Secondly, the apostle Paul suggests in several places of First Corinthians that the imminence of the end of time is his own opinion, not God’s teaching. However, as is often the case, in preaching one meaning, the preacher opens the way for the Spirit to say what she must.
Paul asks us to live as though the end of evil, the appointed time, is imminent. Paul asks us to be undividedly about this in-breaking of God’s time.
He is not requesting to dump all our commitments but he is demanding that we put them in right perspective to the love of God. No concern or relationship of ours, whether good or bad, is to bear over our commitment to God. That injunction is valid for any moment in the course of time as created by God.
Because, at any moment, God is close at hand. At any moment, the fulfilment of God’s purpose is ongoing.
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In your life, today, what overbearing concerns abide in you? Are they blinding you to God’s purpose in your life? How do you put God first and foremost while being faithful to other important relationships? This latter question is one that monks in formation often ask themselves.
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And finally, Jesus confirms it; the time is fulfilled; the time is now. If He calls you -- and He IS calling you -- leave aside whatever seemed so very important and yet stands in the way, in His Way.
Jesus is not calling us to new tasks (although there will be those too), but Jesus is calling us to a new identity. And it is a costly identity. This identity of disciple requires an unswerving loyalty. This identity demands a trust that, what will be broken in acquiring it, was not worth keeping whole.
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When I first heard my call to become a monk -- and I had tried to have tin ears for a while -- my first reaction was: “Wow, that’s great, Lord! How about I make myself available to this nifty vocation in 2 years, 3 at the most?”
I had recently reinvented myself in a new career that I loved. I had started my own business. I was thriving. And, as any good entrepreneur, I had a business plan.
It needed a couple more years to come to fruition. What’s 2 years, in God’s time?
Well, imagine John and James telling Jesus that they’ll follow Him when they have met the fishing quota they have promised their father...
God’s time flows in strange curves; not like our sequential, rectilinear, measured projection of time. God’s desire for you can make two years seem like an eternity to... God. God knows when the time is fulfilled. And when God knows it; the time is now!
Eventually, having cleaned my ears, I heard it: “Get thyself to this monastery, now.” OK, OK. Off I went; but not before starting to tear apart this very identity I had invested so much into. And my attachment to my glorious business plan was only a symptom of that mistaken identity.
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Today, I ask you: What is God’s desire for you? How are you resisting that desire? Can you ask God to tip you over into His desire? Can you pray that? When He calls, can you answer “I’ll be out in a minute!” -- rather than in 2 years, in 5 years, when my dog will die, when my roommate will move out.
Discipleship doesn’t come cheap. But rejecting our true identity as disciple of Jesus is the costliest loss of all.
Pray that you will not mistake the sirens’ song for the voice of your destiny. Listen for God. Seek a loving balance amongst the concerns and relationships of your life. And, when he calls you, hear yourself saying like Eli: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)
May you lean into the embrace of the living, loving God.
Amen.
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