A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 15, 2022
Acts 14:21-27, Rev 21:1-5a, Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35
Professional athletes have a lot of privileges and advantages that we regular people don’t, but maybe the biggest advantage they have over us is: They get to have a preseason.
Before they start their annual campaigns toward winning a league title or a world championship, athletes spend weeks or even months training to get better at their sport.
And then they get to scrimmage or play preseason games under real rules and typical conditions, with scores that are zeroed out when the real season starts.
Wouldn’t it be great if we all had preseasons anytime we started a new endeavor?
We could try new ways to sell, and we could learn from missteps or outright failures.
We could learn new ways to tell, without fear of leading people astray if somehow we convey the message wrong.
Yeah, we all need preseasons.
During the preseason, not only do we improve our own skills, but we especially improve how we play our part on the team. How we pass and receive. How we anticipate and react. How we play in a way that makes the whole team work like a single organism heading for a common goal.
Heading for victory.
And during the preseason, we work with coaches to learn their playbooks, practice their plays, embrace their philosophy and make ourselves part of the total team effort, to borrow the familiar cliché.
Once we’ve fully integrated ourselves into the team during preseason, it’s no big deal to make adjustments during the regular season because everything has become instinctive. Second nature.
Which is why the Apostles looped back to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch after their successful preaching trip to Derbe. They wanted to capitalize on what they had learned from their victories there as well as their defeat earlier in their trip.
They needed a fresh preseason before they dug in for a long slog, a season with no clear finale of proclaiming the Truth, of forging Western Judaeo-Christian society, of claiming souls for God.
You see, their message had not been particularly well-received on their stop in the city of Lystra; the stoning of Paul by some Jews from Iconium and Antioch and their dragging of Paul outside the city attests to that.
So the Apostles regrouped with the disciples in the Antioch region whom they had converted and adjusted their plans. The Apostles looked ahead to the continuing tasks at hand — to the many away games that were coming up, if you’ll forgive the metaphor.
They strengthened their team, with the help of God, and they continued their mission on Earth. They gained insights from their defeat, wiped the loss off the books, and treated the lesson the way coaches do in the preseason.
Which brings us to … us.
Some of us are in the regular-season phase of our lives.
Some of us are living the Gospel full-out, teaching the Law of Love through all our words and actions. People see people being Christ to each other, and they ask how they, too, can live in this light. We show and we tell, and God’s kingdom grows on Earth.
Some of us are in our preseasons.
We know some or most of what it will take to live the Gospel every day, but so far those words and actions are head knowledge, not fully heart knowledge. Those words and actions are not part of our essence; they’re not second nature.
Yet.
But that’s what our preseasons are for.
That’s why God gave us preseasons. That’s why God gave us each other. That’s why God put us all on the same team, even though there are days when we may forget that. When we just may not feel the spirit.
Teammates uplift each other. Teammates learn from each other. Teammates follow the natural leaders: the veterans, the captains, the coaches.
God gave us plenty of those.
God gave us the Apostles, whose experiences as chronicled in the Scriptures are lessons for us the way they were lessons for them.
God gives us Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who inspire us every moment of every day.
God gave each of us unique and wonderful talents that enable us to contribute to humankind and sustain and improve all of God’s beautiful Creation.
Each of us needs to make an assessment: What are my gifts, and how best can I use them? How can I leave the world better than I found it? What is my role to play based on my skills?
Each of us needs to make an assessment: Am I ready to take the field?
