Journey's Weekly Homilies
2nd Sunday, Ordinary Time B
January 19, 2003
Homily: Nancy
I Sam 3:3-10,19
I Cor 6:13-15,17-20
John 1:35-42
Here's what I believe (and I know it's going to sound strange).
"The answers are all in the questions."
To this day…in the 40 years of life as a Catholic, in my life as
a conscious believer, I have only found clarity, I have only
found direction, I have only found peace that passes
understanding…when I have had the right questions.
Today our scriptures bring us the richness of the questions that
arose from believers from long, long ago…our ancestors in faith.
We hear today some evidence that questioning has been a way of
life for faithful people for as long as there has been a community
of struggling believers in the world. There are three
readings, and more than three questions.
For Samuel the question is, "Who is calling?" As
we all do, day after day, Samuel missed the call. Samuel
named the voice of God in the most logical and easy way he knew.
If Samuel was hearing a call, then surely it MUST be from his
master in the next room.
Like Samuel, we can live whole lives missing our call from God
because we name it by some other name. "This can't be a
vocation, a call for me," we say, "because it's too
hard, or it requires too much change in my life, or it's too
expensive, or it's too upsetting to these other people, or it's
too challenging to people who run our world." A call
can remain hidden, because we have pushed it under the carpet that
keeps the foundational floor of our lives soft. We can hide
our call, and walk on that soft floor for a long time.
Like Samuel, we sometimes need someone outside ourselves to bring
us to consciousness. Eli finally said to Samuel, "Go,
lie down; and if the Lord calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord,
for your servant hears.'" Like Samuel, part of the
grace and the gift that comes with our calling is often the
support needed to finally hear the call. We have chosen to
bring our deafness into community. We are here, together,
and therefore have brought ourselves more dangerously close to
being unable to hide our call any longer. In the believing
community, in this very circle, there are a lot of Eli's.
There are sisters and brothers in our circle who will speak the
truth as they see it. There are sisters and brothers who
will proclaim the Word of our God to us in ways we cannot ignore.
There are sisters and brothers who will invite us to join in the
song, and we will find their invitation irresistible. We
will hear ourselves singing and praying, out loud, with one
another, "Speak to me, speak to me, in words that release
me." Like Samuel, we will finally say, "Speak,
Lord, for your servant hears." We will at that very moment
begin to know our call. And the prophet tells us that
"the Lord was with him, and let none of his words fall to the
ground."
Our brother Paul, who had to be knocked off his horse in order to
finally hear his call, took on the daunting task of keeping in
touch with young Christian communities. One of the most vibrant of
those communities, to whom he wrote TWO long pastoral letters,
were the people in Corinth. He wrote to them about their
call. He gave them THE QUESTIONS.
We'll be hearing a lot from this First Letter to the Corinthians
in the next few weeks.
But today, we have a small reading that brings again the strong
question raised by Jim in his homily last week. Do we accept
God's name for us as sons and daughters of the divine? Do
you accept the God within you? It is a most basic question.
Are we able to begin to accept God's unconditional love? It
is our body that becomes the temple of the Spirit, alive and
working in us. We are called to respect, honor, and love
that temple, that body that holds our struggling souls and
spirits. We are the body of Christ…all of us
together…and each of us standing alone. We offer each
other the Body of Christ in the power of the Feast at this table,
every time we gather. We continue to become the Body of
Christ each time we ask the right question of ourselves, and open
our hearts to the answer that is waiting to be heard.
In our gospel story today, John is giving us his version of Jesus'
first calling of the disciples. John is a great leader.
He announces to two of his own disciples…he tells them,
"Look, there is the lamb of God." And when they
heard this, from the mouth of their own leader, they turned and
followed this man…this one that John has announced.
As soon as the two new disciples began to follow Jesus, Jesus
turned to them and asked them the deepest of questions: "What
do you seek." I believe that the moment that THIS
question was given to these two men, and perhaps to anyone else
within earshot, nothing could ever be the same again. I know
that as a young person, in my naïve searching, it was THIS
question (this "What do you seek?" question) that would
not go away. It was THIS question that I could not put under
the carpet. I tried. It was soft walking on that floor
padded with my own shallow decisions about my trust in God.
But THIS question cannot be answered lightly. "What do
you seek?"
Last weekend those of us who spent the hours in Retreat together
were given some questions and invited to sit down together in
safety and face those questions. Many of us spoke about how
the questions themselves, the words on the paper, were not the
point. Those written words were almost in the way. It
was the amazing truth that this many of us, sisters and brothers,
had taken time from our full and sometimes avoidance-driven lives,
and were willingly sitting down together to answer the question
that Jesus asks ALL the disciples. "What do you
seek?"
I would be blessed if I could know YOUR answer to this question.
Every one of you has an answer to it. And here, in community
life, it's the final sign we can make to one another in support
and encouragement…to hear and remember each other's answers to
this question. "What do you seek?" And then,
as all communities are called to do…to call each other to
accountability about our honoring and following our own answers to
the question.
These disciples in the story, in my imagination, looked panicked
at the question. They knew it was not a light question.
Deep inside they knew. But quickly they found a way to dance
around it. As we all can be, they were adept at hiding
their own understandings. And in their fumbling to avoid
commitment of a final answer, there came from their mouths, in
words of pure grace, another great question. They asked him,
"Where do you live?"
Sisters and Brothers, I believe that the beginning of naming the
call, for ALL of us, is the speaking of this question to our
brother, Jesus. On the day that we can look him in the
eye… (Remember, we are all the body of Christ, so it does not
matter WHOSE eyes you are seeing before you when you are finally
ready to ask!)…On that day, no matter whose face surrounds those
eyes…when we can look him in the eye and deeply, openly seek our
God in this most probing of questions, nothing will ever be the
same again. "Where do you live?" we may finally
have the courage to ask. Christ's answer to that question is
our hope. He said, "Come and see."
Here's what I believe: The answers are all in the questions!
Who is calling? Jesus says, "Come and see."
Do you accept God's name for you? Jesus says, "Come and
see."
What do you seek? Jesus says, "Come and see."
Where do you live? Jesus says, "Come and see."