Homily from the Parish Priest for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings for Year B: I Samuel 3:3-10,19; I Corinthians 6:13-15, 17-20; John 1:35-42
When is this going to end? The exasperation of so many at the moment. Strange times, a strange world. How many times have you heard these sentiments recently? Lockdown 3.0 is a strange place to be. Perhaps the only consolations are that we’re all in it together and we know it will end. I hope and pray I will also learn from it. But right at the moment it’s a bit like being lost in a strange place.
Hearing this Gospel this weekend makes me question if there’s any resonance with our common experience. And I wonder if it’s something to do with being lost in a strange place, a strange time, with strange frustrating experiences, with searching and frustratingly not finding answers to questions about our very existence, about the point of it all. The disciples are trying to find the promised one, Jesus of Nazareth, and here they think they've found him, taking that obvious route, guided by their Jewish navigators and John the Baptist. “We've found the Messiah”, they say, and, if we read on further to see what happens in the light of day we would find this character Nathaniel navigating us to Jesus as the King of Israel. They think it’s all clear. They think they’ve found the solution. He is the one who is going to make sense of their lives. And they can now go back to life more or less as it was. But that is impossible. A return to even a new normal is not what this Jesus is all about.
He knows how hard they've been trying, he knows they're all confused. And it is here he sees them face to face. He finds them searching for answers but confused echoing the words of Samuel who three times failed to notice the call of the Lord until he was able to say 'Here…Here I am to do your will”. And at this point, at this recognition there is more to learn from this experience of life in all its twists and turns, at this crucial moment of hearing him challenge them they hear his invitation to "come and stay".
Like Peter and Andrew, like every human being, called, lost, found, we will not find Jesus, we will not find the fulfillment of our lives, unless we make space and time in the midst of the now, with all its anxiety, grief, frustration, to hear his gentle voice. If we stop, if we realise our frailty and our need of God, we are promised we will find a place of rest. Or perhaps we will allow that place to find us and embrace the God who is closer to us than we think. So close he never stops calling us to see him even in the worst of situations, even in the midst of this dreadful pandemic. Because he never stops finding us, because he wants us not to be lost in fear but at home in peace.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ