Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
(2016)
When you open up the Old Testament to the Book of Genesis the first thing that strikes you is that God is totally in charge of the process of creation. Everything that God creates turns out to be good and in accord to the eternal plan. It is only when God decides to create the two human persons, Adam and Eve, that the plan runs into difficulty. The problem became evident because the two persons were endowed with freedom of choice. It was only then that bad choices seemingly began to twist God’s plan in a direction never planned.
And thus it has been so in the twisted history of humankind. The human community has consistently chosen to act contrary to its nature and God’s eternal plan. That has been the pattern that we humans have so often decided to follow throughout our millions of years of history.
One might well begin to think that God’s eternal plan of good order had incurred some basic fault at its inception and was due for annihilation. Not true, not true, my friends! Let me suggest that God already had a back-up plan in mind when the first plan began to go awry, not because of any fault of God’s of course. The back-up plan was to be labeled FORGIVENESS. It was only right and just, of course, that God should have such a plan in mind. God obviously seemed to know that if God should endow the human person with freedom of choice, there might well be the chance that they would make the wrong choice, a choice contrary to their human nature and, indeed, contrary to the very nature of the planet earth they would name home. So, FORGIVENESS was the obvious alternative plan.
It seems obvious, therefore, that God has been willing to be patient, MERCIFUL with us throughout all eternity, the divine hope being that we, each of us, would come to our senses and live according the eternal plan planted deep in our human consciousness. One can hardly imagine such a divine plan falling into total disarray at its very inception. In some sense, the back-up plan, not only saves us from eternal doom, but also saves face for God as well.
That is the picture that we find in the readings of the liturgy for the Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary time; it is called failure and recovery, sin and redemption.
The first story comes to us out of the desert travels of the Israelite people. Despite the fact that God had endowed this people with the instinctual sense of belief in the Divine and worship thereof, they decided to create gods of their own, artificial calves and bulls, gods not made in the image of the Eternal One, but rather of silver and gold…those precious metals of the age.
Fortunately, for the Israelite worshipers of artificial gods, Moses, their wise leader saw through this farce and reminded them that God had made a pact with them since the days of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This pact God would not abandon despite their years of disobedience. “So, the Lord relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict upon his people.”
Another second chance, backup-story comes to us from the life of Saint Paul. As we all remember from reading his life history, he grew up in the strict observance of the Jewish law and tradition. When the followers of Jesus began to grow in numbers, he was determined to put this religious outbreak to a stop. On his way to Damascus to curtail the Christian uprising, he encountered Christ in a vision that invited him to come to his senses and become a missionary to the gentiles. Paul then admitted that Christ had demonstrated great patience with him and had given him the eternal second-chance.
Finally, in the gospel of Luke we read three lost and found (second chance) stories: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. In each of these we learn that in the eyes of the Creator, the least, the last and the lost in this world are of eternal importance and significance. In the eyes of the Creator they are among the least, the last and the lost of this world. Thus, our God is named PATIENCE and FORBEARANCE.
No matter how far we, the creatures of earth may have wandered in our lifetime, the God whose name is patience and forbearance continues to wait patiently for us. This God of ours is ultimately named the God of second chances. For those of us who need second chances almost every day, that is really good news.
The scriptures
Exodus 32: 7-11, 13-14 1 Timothy 1: 12-17 Luke 15: 1-10