My name is Don and I’ve been a Catholic priest now for over 50 years. And during that time I keep going back to the same readings over and over again, only to discover that they contain something I never understood was there before. It gives me new enthusiasm and excitement for the message that keeps revealing itself, and I pray that the message that I’m sending you will be valuable. And if you find it so, please share these podcasts with your friends. Thank you. Good morning.

Today we celebrate the 24th Sunday in Ordinary time. The opening prayer. Look upon us, oh God, creator and ruler of all things, that we may feel the working of your mercy. Grant that we may serve you with all our heart through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen. A reading from the Old Testament from the book of Exodus 32, 7th, 11th verse and 13th and 14th verse.

The Lord said to Moses, go down at once to your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved, they have turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, this is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. I see how stiff necked this people is, continued the Lord to Moses. Let me alone then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them, and I will make of you a great nation. But Moses implored the Lord his God, saying, why, O Lord, should your wrath blaze up against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power, with such a strong hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, Israel, how you swore to them by your own self, saying, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky. And all this land that I promised, I will give you and your descendants as a perpetual heritage.

So the Lord God relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people. The word of the Lord, I will rise and go to my Father. Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness, in your greatness, of your compassion. Wipe out my offense thoroughly. Wash me from my guilt and of my sin. Cleanse me, will rise and go to my father.

A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit within me. Cast me not out from your presence and your holy Spirit. Take not from me. I will rise up and go to my Father, O Lord, open my lips, my mouth shall proclaim your praise. My sacrifice, O God is a contrite spirit, contrite and humbled. O God, you will not spurn.

I will rise and go to my Father. A Reading from the New Testament from St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy, first chapter 12 through the 17th verse Beloved, I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord. He considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and arrogant. I’ve been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief.

Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated so that in me as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example to those who had come to believe in him for everlasting life to the King of ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honorable glory forever and ever. Amen.

The word of the Lord God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. Luke, 15th chapter, first through the 32nd verse. The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus. But the Pharisees and the scribes began to complain, saying, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. So to them he addressed this parable, what man among you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, would not leave the 99 in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?

When he does find it, he sets it on his shoulder with great joy. And upon his arrival home, he calls together all his friends, neighbors, and says to them, rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep. I tell you in just the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance. Or what woman having 10 coins and losing one would not alight a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it. And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, rejoice with me, because I found the coin I lost. In just the same way I tell you, I’ll be rejoicing among the angels of God over one repentant sinner.

Then he said, a man had two sons, the younger Said to his father, father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me. So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger man collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything. A severe famine broke out in that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to be one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.

He longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him anything. Coming to his senses, he thought, how many of my father’s hired people have more than enough food to eat? But here I am, dying of hunger. I shall go up and go to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven, against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.

So he got up and went back to his father. I was still a long way off. His father caught sight of him and was still filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.

But his father ordered his servants, quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his fingers, sandals on his feet. Take the fatted calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with the feast. Because this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found.

Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field. On his way back, he heard the dancing and the sound of singing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fatted calf. Because he has him back safe and sound.

He became angry and he refused to enter the house. His father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, look, all these years I’ve served you, and not once did I disobey your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with prostitutes for him, you slaughter the fatted calf. He said to him, my son, you are here with me always.

Everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice because your brother was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found. The Gospel of The Lord, Satan. Sam, this is such a rich source of wisdom, these readings. I don’t even hardly where.

I don’t even know where to start, except I want to obviously start with Exodus. And one of the things that I’ve found about the Old Testament and the Bible is a weird book in a sense because you can almost go, and if you’re going to use one liners, you can make God into anything. A tyrant, an angry, punishing God, a sweet, loving God who adapts to the needs of his people. But nothing seems more important than to realize the ending of the Old Testament story. The full revelation of who God is in Jesus and the Jesus who appears as the incarnate God is absolutely, completely rejected and misunderstood by almost everything that the Old Testament taught. So you get a feeling that we went through a long period of time as human beings were evolving and becoming more conscious of who they were.

They were learning about a God almost in stages from the God that was like all the other gods, tough, angry, intolerant of sin, demanding sacrifices to a God of mercy. And the one place that the Old Testament could take people during that time was from a place of no laws, no rules, to a place of the law. And it was the Ten Commandments. So that was the major, major moment in this story of God the Father working with the Israelite people on the theme, which is throughout the scriptures. How do you move from slavery to freedom? Slavery to what?

Slavery to rules and laws. How do you get past that and learn through a process of mistakes, sins, problems, who you are, who God is and what you really want, what you really want in your life. So this first story is so beautiful to me because it shows that there is, in these early days of Exodus, there is a God who is very much like the other gods God Yahweh, the one who says, I’m the only God, says, you know, I just been so worn out by these people, they’re just driving me nuts. They don’t stick with me, they complain all the time. I don’t know what to do with them. In fact, I love some of these stories because they make us feel that God is just so like us.

But anyway, he’s ready to kill them all. He’s ready to kill them all. And every time you see God changing his mind in the Old Testament, it’s always a change from one thing to another. It’s a change from punishment to mercy, punishment to mercy. And the genius of Moses in the story is that he reminds God of a promise that he made. And so In a way you could say in the anger that God felt about the way the Israelites went back to their old ways, what they were really expressing, what God was expressing is his frustration with them.

And he really didn’t want to do the destruction. It was just a reaction of anger. And when he’s reminded, hey, Moses says, you promised these people, you can’t break a promise. How could you bring your people out here and break a promise? What would that look like? A beautiful story about the evolution of the Old Testament God into the New Testament God.

Now, one of the things that the Old Testament is filled with as New Testament is two is the issue of sin. And so when in this story, you can see that when sin was committed, it separated God from the people. And remember, in the first book of Genesis, third chapter of Genesis, when we see sin entering the world through the sin of Adam and Eve, the first reaction in human beings was to feel shame. Shame. And what is shame other than a feeling that you are separate from your true self, separate from God? There’s something wrong, something out of balance.

It’s a beautiful image of the work that Jesus Mercy had to accomplish in order for you and for me to continue to grow and change. I grew up in a church where sin was the worst thing you could possibly do. Every time I listened to a lesson about anything with morality, it was, don’t sin. Don’t sin, because when you sin, you separate yourself from God. And if you separate yourself from God, then there’s nothing and you’re alone and it’s dark. The thing we prize the most without even realizing it, the thing that we hold on to the most is our relationship with God.

And we know now in the New Testament, God is a lover, a forgiver. He has no reason to ever hold back his love for you or for me in terms of who we are because of what we do, he can make that separation so easily. The thing you do when it’s a sin is not really you. So you’re caught in some illusion, some half truth. You’re seduced into it by someone else, as Adam and Eve was. But the point is, the frightening thing is you are separated from him by your sin.

And if that’s really pushed and pushed and pushed inside of you, then the gospel is just what you need. Because first of all, the first two images are beautiful images about value. When you value something and you lose it, you’re consumed with trying to find it. And there’s such joy and enthusiasm when you find it. I mean, where’s my Cell phone. Where’s my keys?

Where’s this? Where’s that? I have to have it. I have to have it, and you just go crazy. And yet there’s such a joy in finding it. So he uses with the scribes and Pharisees a real attack on moralism.

They think if they do just what God asked them to do, they have to do nothing more. Follow the letter of the law. And where their heart is, it doesn’t matter. That’s their greatest sin. But even that didn’t separate God from the Pharisees. So you’ll notice it’s whether it’s the sheep that is lost or the coin that is lost.

There’s something drives people that care for something to keep it, to keep connected, to keep it. One with us. And then my favorite story, the next one, the younger son, the older son. The one thing about this story that I love so much is that the older son is so representing of the Pharisees. He’s done everything that he was told to do. You can kind of feel when his brother went off and had a really good time, he resented it.

He was angry that he was being celebrated, even though he didn’t pay much attention to the fact that he had a conversion because of his sin. But it was all of a sudden, you know, this older son was entitled. And when people follow the letter of the law, they can actually fall into that trap of saying, listen, I do everything I have to do in order to please God the rest of my life, which isn’t under the guidance of rules and regulations of the Church, is mine to use any way I want. It almost comes to that. But the worst thing that comes with that is when we do something wrong, when we do sin, something happens to our way of seeing the thing that we sinned in or the problem we had. And, you know, it’s like the young son who squandered everything.

What he realized is every sin is a lie. It is a promise that promises something that can’t be kept or can’t be received. And so what he finally realizes is the way, the life he chose. Even though he felt it was his right to do it and he wanted to do it, it felt good to do it. He realized it was empty, empty, empty. And that’s the most beautiful image of why sin exists in the world.

If you have in your mind the desire to stop sinning in all situations, you can never grow and mature as a evolving Christian. Sin is essential. Sin is important. And the thing that’s the most deadly about it the sting of sin is death. And the death is not just necessarily going to hell. No, the death of sin is that gnawing, shameful feeling that you’re not in touch with God any longer.

And that is more than we can handle. Because I say to you over and over again, the God that lives in you is such an essential part of you for your well being that if there’s anything that keeps you from him that’s dangerous, it leads to darkness and depression. So we have to believe in this thing that so often I don’t think people believe it, that every sin they ever commit is already forgiven. Already forgiven. And the other way to say that in maybe a way that makes more sense, is that nothing that you do keeps you from being who you ultimately really are. And that’s the part that loves you, God.

That’s the part that God loves. So the challenge of these readings is a wonderful challenge to rethink who is real valuable in the world. Paul is a perfect example. Paul has chosen to be the witness to the mercy of God, the mercy revealed in Jesus of this God who loves sinners, loves them, wants to work with them. Sinners are the only people he can work with because they have a longing for something and only God can give. And the longing for it is union with God in spite of my sins, called forgiveness.

What a gift. So Paul is chosen. He’s a sinner, the worst. He persecuted Christians, he disbelieved in Jesus. He was a Pharisee of the highest rank in the sense of he believed all that. And to take somebody like that who had gone through a life of following the regulations, rules and things like that, and saw Jesus as a law breaker and as a disruptor of the power of the institution over people.

It’s so easy to see why he is the perfect minister, because he knows what it’s like to be with God, to know his love. He knows the arrogance of thinking, I don’t need his love, I’ve earned it, I do everything right, I am perfect in his sight. But the satisfaction that the older son couldn’t have in the return of his Father is such a beautiful image of the self righteous ones who do not believe they have to do anything more than the regulations require, that’s a real division from God. Amen. SA the closing prayer. Father, give us wisdom, a wisdom that is so essential, the wisdom of knowing how you deal with us in our weaknesses, in our brokenness, in our stupidity, even.

It never diminishes your care and your love. Help us not only to feel that from you, but to also offer that to our brothers and sisters as we seek to live the life of forgiveness that brings life and end separation. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. The music in this program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner. I’m excited for the opportunity to awaken your spiritual journey. If you enjoy this program, please subscribe and share it with a friend.

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