Kent Beausoleil, S.J.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – January 25, 2009

Readings: Jonah 3, 1-5:10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

This evening’s homily was conceived from a place of exasperation, exasperation that revolved around one single word. On this Wednesday, after reading the scripture for this Sunday, I threw up my hands and offered my best Jan Brady impression from The Brady Brunch, lamenting, not ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia’ but ‘repent, repent, repent’. It felt to me that all our readings from scripture these days chastise us with the fact that we need to repent. Well, after a couple days prayer and some time to allow the steam coming from under my collar to vent, I decided to do some background research on the word ‘repent’ and try to see this word in a more positive light.

I began though looking not at the word repent but at the word pent. Pent? Pent? What the heck is Pent? Well, according to etymology online, ‘pent’, is the past tense of the verb ‘to pen’, and as an adjective it means to confine, to be kept in, to imprison. For example, used in a sentence, ‘I had to relieve the pent up frustration I had, and kept in, over the word repent’. Yet, interestingly, finding a concise definition of what ‘repent’ truly means proved to be a little more elusive, a little more slippery. Quite often we associate the word with sincere regret for one’s actions, or further, the action of turning away from sin and turning to God, or even to change one’s mind and course of actions based on feeling remorse or sorrow over one’s behavior. Whatever, the sentiment, repent in its activities, ultimately leads to a sense of freedom, of being set free and setting others free from that which keeps us pent up, confined, and imprisoned.

After learning about the meaning of ‘pent’ and ‘repent’ my imagination went to youthful memories of catching lightening bugs, penning them up in large Ball mason jars so as to capture their light and keep them imprisoned so we could spend the night watching them. Or the memory of the cocoon on a branch that I found and kept in another jar to watch, after a few weeks, the butterfly inside emerge. Sadly, though, these experiences never ended well for the bugs we captured – the lightening bugs by the morning flickered their light no more, and the butterfly that emerged could not spread its colorful wings to fly away and soar enclosed in that jar.

Recalling these memories gave me pause – how often do we find our own selves imprisoned, kept from shining our light and soaring because of the dark prisons in our mind, or how often do we imprison others with hatred in our hearts. So, repentance brings us remorse, causes us to turn away from hatred and darkness, to let go of that which imprisons the best part of ourselves and the best of others. When we repent we recall our love and goodness, our soul finds rest, our hearts find joy, and our minds find peace.

And Jonah and those citizens of Nineveh what were their prisons? Jonah the prophet, was imprisoned with prejudice. At the time of this story the people of Israel have become the people of the Book, the people of God, unable to see beyond their righteousness, they lived with the accompanying sense that they alone were pure in ritual, pure in race, and as such separate, distinct, and dare we say it, better then the Pagan nations, like Nineveh, that surrounded them. Nineveh is imprisoned, is pent up, with a culture of violence, sin, and immorality. So ingrained is this reality that it becomes the only possible way for them to be community. They can see no other way out of the psychic damage that is their town.

Jonah wants nothing to do with these people, this community, seen as the sin city of its time, and not only does he not want anything to do with them but desires that God punish them for their wicked ways. Jonah is stuck, unable to see how his bringing the word of God to these people could help, and so he runs away from what God demands. Later, after he does finally enter the city bringing God to the people and the people do repent, we find him angry with God for God’s not punishing the repentant people of Nineveh.

And those disciples first called, what imprisons them? What nets of life ensnare them? We cannot fathom what was in the hearts of Simon and Andrew whether they enjoyed or hated the family occupation – the generation after generation after generation of being fishermen. Or James and John, who with their hired servants, revealing that they were perhaps of a higher economic class than Simon and Andrew, how did that reality enslave them? Did their status keep them from seeing Simon and Andrew worthy enough to be friends? Did it cause them to desire a higher position among the disciples, to sit at Christ’s right hand? Oh wait, yeah, yeah, it did! Yet, there most have been something there for each one of them, in Jesus’ passing and in his call, to turn toward Jesus and without question let go of their nets. They immediately turned away from whatever pent up reality that their life was, let go, and found the freedom to live a new reality in Christ.

And so Paul, this night, and always as our guide, filled with the voice of God and love of the Lord, calls us to realize that our vision of God and the Lord’s love is limited by our human experience. His letter urges us to see beyond what we experience and invites us to live in the world with an eye always on the fact that there is something more than this. We want to, in our humanity, to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. This realization gives us patience and hope. It gives us a way of dealing with life as it unfolds by not getting so weighed down in what’s going on or so stuck that we simply can’t see the great beyond.

And so the true message of this day, the something bigger we are called to, is the grace to see something new and exciting, the truth that repentance breaks us out of our darkness and reconnects us with love, reconnects us with goodness. God loves and does not punish. We glimpse through Jonah how good God is, how loving; how God’s compassion embraces every creature created. Each of us are the people of God’s caring. Jesus, God’s love made flesh, calls us to believe in this good news, to turn back to God and the truth of a world filled, a world steeped with love and goodness.

God’s love revealed by Christ frees all from the prisons of hatred, injustice, and evil. God’s love in Christ ushers forth a new reign, a reign that already is and will continue to be fulfilled in goodness by our love and our faith. Jesus comes to open our eyes to see, to believe, and to be that goodness and that love. He passes by us, sees us as we truly are, calls us to a new reality of healing, of freedom from our prisons, urges us to drop the nets of our defenses, and sends us on a mission to fulfill what is the best of our human spirit, to promote fully the communal love we share, and to open our eyes to a world filled with good things.

And so, us. What imprisons us? What do we need to let go of? What do we keep pent up inside? Some of us suffer through the prison of self-hatred, the prison of addictions, the prison of negativity, the prison of inequality, bigotry and racism, the prisons of social injustice. So many prisons to, with God’s grace, break free from. Yes, we are called to repent, repent from not believing in hope-filled possibility, repent from our fleeing from God’s love, repent from our narrow vision that cannot see our own or other’s God created goodness.

We celebrated this week the words of a new president who proclaimed, ‘on this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. We gather because we are human, we are flawed, but truly and really because of God we are ultimately good and ultimately loved. We recalled this week the words of that modern day prophet Martin Luther King Jr. who preached freedom from all that enslaves us and imprisons us, so that one day we may all shout ‘free at last, free at last, thank God, we are free at last!’