When we ask someone “How old are you?” we are ready to play a game, trying to amuse the other by telling a white lie. But we are really asking them “What time are you?” because we are trying to slap a frame of reference on the person by bringing the past into play. When we find out how old they are, we know what memories they are likely to have. Depending on your age, you may know all about World War 2, the first moon walk, Beatles, dial phones, or DOS. In this information, we are not seeing people exactly as they are now. We’re judging by what we see as the sum of their past experience. This was the case as well when the Pharisees and scribes looked at the tax collectors and prostitutes.
As I had reflected on the gospel, the first question came up to me was how come tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before the righteous. The reason for this would be depending on our perception on those who are sinful and our human weakness not to see who we were yesterday does not absolutely define who we are now. I believe I don’t need to give you a brimstone homily pounding on your sinfulness. If we act out of selfishness or out of vainglory as St. Paul said, we are like the Pharisees who don’t need God because of their own perfection. Think about the second reading. It says Jesus, though he was in the form of God, emptied and humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. The Son of God, born without sin, took the form of a slave before God. What should be our disposition? Are you more righteous than Jesus, thinking not need to change your minds and believe God?
Secondly many of us wake up every morning and shower, washing off yesterday’s dirt, yet still carrying yesterday’s emotional stuff and judgmental heart. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can become new and begin anew, we can greet the day fresh and clean, we can love the people unlovable and selfish yesterday if we can focus our awareness on the present, if we can see life as it really is. Unfortunately, many have come to rely on their past or future. Some live in the regrettable past, some live in the future, dreaming or dreading it. All these approaches keep us out of the moment and miss an opportunity to see people as they are now.
But imagine when a doctor tells you that you have a terminal illness, your feelings about time and people will change. Suddenly you fear there is not enough of it and almost everyone could be your friends. You see your time as limited for the first time. Here I see how the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before the righteous because they are freed from illusions that bind many. The illusions are that we are not sinners like those public sinners and we have enough time, knowing who God is. However, the real sinners acknowledge today would be their last chance to change their minds and to believe God. Because of their sinfulness, not like the righteous, they humbly regard others as more important than themselves, knowing they need to empty themselves to be saved in Christ Jesus.
Therefore we are called to realize in the liturgy that we need to leave the ordinary time that is often deceptive, saying, “Don’t worry; tomorrow is yours again and God is on your side.” And then we need to enter God’s time that frees us as God’s beloved children to have courage to repent now and run into the Father’s big chest. The more we understand the artificial time changes always and God’s time only stays faithfully, the more we realize we are eternal and actually timeless in God, truly knowing that we still live in time and will die in time. And then we will have courage to accept change that is not scary but necessary to open another door because we can’t open it until one door closes. We don’t act anymore like those who often remain trapped in what we call normalcy, “the way things are.” Their life is all about problem-solving, fixing, explaining and taking sides with winners and losers. We are Christians who live in time, called to freely shape our times even as they shape us. It is important to remember and recover again and again those special moments and key events that have made us aware that God has given us an opportunity to change our minds and believe Him right now.
(Ending comment) Now it is time to return to your ordinary time after celebrating God’s timeless moment in the liturgy. I hope you do not want to leave because you acknowledge with thanks the goodness of what has happened in this community and God’s presence stir your heart to be with Him longer. It tells us that our time is not laid by some abstract yardstick of time alongside our lives, but by experiencing God’s time prepared for us that we live together with our God all the time of our lives.