Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B: January 21, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br.  Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Third Sunday after the Epiphany Year B- Sunday, January 21, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

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 we turn to God.

Let nothing come before the love of God. Don’t let every relationship 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 passages of scripture talking about conversion and alignment with God.

First, our reluctant and crotchety prophet Jonah has finally made it to Nineveh, an Assyrian city. 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).

In our life, today, who are our Ninevites? Is there any group of people we’d rather not find under God’s pinions? Is it possible, that whatever their faults, they have already found God’s forgiveness -- and deserve ours?

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 fulfillment of God’s purpose is ongoing.

In our life, today, what overbearing concerns abide in us? Are they blinding us to God’s purpose in our life? How do we put God first and foremost while being faithful to other important relationships? This latter question is one that monks in formation often ask themselves.

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.

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.

Today, I ask ourselves: What is God’s desire for us? How are we resisting that desire? Can we ask God to tip us over into His desire? Can we pray that? When He calls, can we answer “I’ll be out in a minute!” -- rather than in 2 years, in 5 years, whenever my conditions have been met.

Discipleship doesn’t come cheap. But rejecting our true identity as disciple of Jesus is the costliest loss of all.

May we pray that we will not mistake the sirens’ song for the voice of our destiny. May we listen for God. May we seek a loving balance amongst the concerns and relationships of our life. And, when he calls us, let’s hear ourselves saying like Eli: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)

May we lean into the embrace of the living, loving God.

Amen.