Today’s homily will have two parts. I will give a short homily and then we will listen to a short message from Bishop Kettler about the annual appeal.
When God created Adam and Eve, God said, “I will give you several commandments and I expect you to follow them. If you follow my commandments, I will love you. If you don’t follow them I will find a way to punish you.” A short time later, Adam and Eve disobeyed those commandments. And so did their children. And so did their grandchildren.
All this disobedience made God very angry and God decided to punish them by sending a flood which would cover the whole earth. And the flood killed almost all of God’s people. Only a few survived.
Then God said, “It’s time for me to change. Yes, it’s time for me to have a change of heart. I will never again be so cruel to my people. From now on I will love them unconditionally. If they follow my commandments, I will love them. If they don’t follow my commandments, I will still love them. And every time they see a rainbow in the sky that will be a special sign for them, a sign that I love my people unconditionally.
From that episode we learn that our loving God is not a static God. Our God is able to make changes and have a change of heart. That message is echoed in the words of Psalm 77 when the author says, “The way of the Most High has changed.”
Getting back to the flood story, God said to Noah and his family: “Since you are made in my image I expect you to do what I do. If certain people are good to you, you should love them. And if other people are hurting you, you should love them as well.
Now all that serves as a background for today’s first reading from the First Book of Samuel. In those days, King Saul was very angry with his servant David. Why? Because of what people were saying in the streets. When they came back from a big battle, the people said, “King Saul killed one thousand enemy soldiers and his servant David killed ten thousand enemy soldiers. So David is much more valiant in battle.”
King Saul became very angry when he heard that and he pursued David through the desert and tried to kill him. Then David said to his soldiers, “Just watch. I will kill Saul before he gets a chance to kill me.”
David had his chance when he found King Saul sleeping in the desert. David could have stabbed him with his spear; but he had a change of heart. He remembered what God had said to Noah and his family about loving your enemies. So David walked away without hurting Saul. And that story serves as the background for today’s Gospel.
When Jesus was preaching one day, he said, “It’ time for a change of heart. It’s time to set aside the normal human inclination to retaliate against your enemies. It’s time to love your enemies and do good to those who hurt you.” In other words, Jesus calls us to do what David did. Jesus calls us to love those who are trying to hurt us.
These scripture passages serve as background for us as we prepare for the Season of Lent. We will celebrate the Liturgy of Ash Wednesday just ten days from now.
Now is the time for us to decide what we will do for Lent this year. The first thing to remember is that Lent is the time for a change of heart. We know that God had a change of heart after the flood and David had a change of heart while standing over King Saul and Jesus called his disciples to have a change of heart during his public ministry.
Now it’s our turn to prepare ourselves to have a change of heart.