Homily for 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C 2019
Exodus 32:7-11,13-14; 1Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32
Introduction
Six months ago, on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, we read the same gospel with the three parables about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.
This same passage is proposed for us again today perhaps because during Lent its purpose was to encourage us on our personal journey of repentance, assuring us that our Lenten penance and conversion would be rewarded with God’s forgiveness and pardon. But today we can turn our focus simply to the fact of God’s mercy and how we share that mercy with others.
Scripture and Theology
But first, why did Jesus tell these parables? He was responding to a complaint from the Pharisees and scribes, who when they saw tax-collectors and sinners drawing near to Jesus, said: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
You see tax-collectors were not only colluding with the Romans by collecting taxes, they were also usually corrupt in the way they did so, by taking bribes or extorting more than was prescribed. And as for the term “sinners”, this referred to anybody who was a public sinner, such as prostitutes and adulterers.
Imagine today if your pastor or bishop were seen hanging out on Bourbon Street, or meeting a known Mafia kingpin or a known big-time drug-dealer. Perhaps you would post on Facebook: “Our priest welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
To you, as to the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus tells these three parables, pointing out that God’s ways of dealing with sinners are different from ours.
There are two ways in which God's way of dealing with sinners differs from ours.
- The inordinate effort expended in searching for what is lost.
- The inordinate response to the finding of what was lost.
Consider for a moment the absurdity of what Jesus is asking in the first parable is. “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?” The men among his listeners who were familiar with the work of shepherds probably responded to Jesus by saying: “Are you kidding? No way Jesus! None of us would leave 99 sheep unprotected, liable to slipping and sliding down the rocks, liable to being attacked by wild animals and hustlers, to look for one miserly sheep? Heck No!” But Jesus would say to them, maybe you wouldn’t. But God does go out looking for him or her, when a sinner is lost.
In the second parable, the effort expended to search for the lost coin is not exactly out of proportion. Here we have a woman, probably a housewife, who has misplaced a coin, a coin which was equivalent to a day’s wages. So, imagine today, that you misplaced your pay-check that amounted to a day’s wages. That is not exactly a lot of money, but again it is not money to throw away, especially if you needed it to provide supper for your family. That is why the woman tore the house apart in a frantic search for the money. If the first parable spoke to men, this one would speak to women, who would see in this woman who goes to great lengths to find a lost coin, that God has tremendous love for sinners and similarly goes to great lengths to reclaim them.
The third parable, commonly called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but would more accurately be called the parable of the lost sons, perhaps speaks best to children. Again here we see a father who behaves in ways earthly fathers would probably not behave. We heard that "While he [the younger son] was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him." Unlike in the first two parables with the animal and coin that do not have free will and so must be actively searched for, in this parable, the parent respects the free will of the son, but still anxiously waits for his return, and is ready to have him back. The father in the parable is like the parent today who waits up at night for the wayward teenager to return home. This is God our Father anxiously waiting for the sinner to return to him.
And so, the first element of God’s mercy in all three stories is the enormous effort spent seeking and finding of what was lost. Similarly, the second element is the equally extravagant response to the finding of what was lost.
In the first parable of the lost sheep, we heard that after the shepherd finds this one sheep, “he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’” And in the second parable of the lost coin, after she found it, we heard that the woman “calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’” In both cases, the men and the women would probably have told Jesus, “Really? Is that not overkill? Organising a party for finding the lost sheep and for finding the lost coin? Isn’t the party going to cost more than the lost coin that has been found? And what are we going to eat at the party, probably that lost and now found sheep?" Even the father who throws a big party for a son who abandoned him and went to live a life of debauchery is not acting normally; most of us would probably instead receive him by saying, “I told you so.”
But again Jesus is giving examples of these implausible reactions to finding something lost, because he wants to teach that God’s reaction to the return of a sinner operates, not on the human calculations of cost and benefit analysis. That is why Jesus says: “I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” And the father in the third parable similarly says to the grumpy older son: "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."
Christian Life
Pope Francis was once asked who he was, and he responded: "I am a sinner." Being the sinner that I am, I am comforted in knowing that I have a loving father, who when I repent of my sins, will receive me back. This assurance is not meant to lead me to complacency, so that I fall into sin over and over again, because I know I will be forgiven. This assurance comes with a condition, the condition of repentance. Notice that in all three parables the rejoicing, the partying happens only after what was lost is found, and in the last parable, only after the son repented of his ways. Jesus did not simply hang out with tax-collectors and sinners to have a good time; he did so, so that they might help them to leave their evil ways and turn to him. Here in New Orleans, our Archbishop has put emphasis on the availability of confession, with last Wednesday being one of the days when all parishes and priests were asked to be available for confession.
But as Pope Francis has taught time and again, we cannot keep this mercy for ourselves but must like Jesus be willing to share it with others. We must not, like the elder son, like the scribes and Pharisees, be mad and angry that the Church is welcoming sinners and eating with them. God's mercy is not a limited commodity so that when he gives it out to some, nothing remains for me.
Like Jesus, Pope Francis and the bishops have been wrongly accused of carousing too much with the tax collectors and sinners of our day, such as when the Pope celebrates Holy Thursday Mass in prisons and washes the feet of women prisoners, some of whom are not even Catholic. He has been seen as too cosy with Protestants, Jews and Muslims, and too supportive of illegal migrants and refugees. Even though he is very tough on abortion, he has expressed compassion for women who had committed this sin. And when it comes to marriage and sexuality the evidence proffered seems overwhelming: his pastoral concern for the divorced and remarried, his marrying at least one couple on a plane, his baptizing the child of an unmarried mother, his expressions of compassion for people who struggle with same-sex attraction are cited as evidence of welcoming sinners and eating with them.
But I propose that Pope Francis is asking the Church to follow the example of Jesus, who when he walked the earth taught us not just by word but also by example, about the wideness of God's mercy. He also taught us to be the agents of that mercy, bringing the gospel to all people, including the lost sheep. And often such outreach necessitates actually interacting with them and yes, sometimes welcoming them and eating with them. It is only in the context of such welcome and conviviality that we can, like the Lord did to Zacchaeus, to the woman at the well, to Matthew and to many other sinners in the gospels, bring them to conversion.
Conclusion
Who is that sinner, whose return will be the cause of rejoicing among the angels and saints in heaven? Often we think of some other person, some unknown person, even perhaps someone we don't like. But perhaps we must first think that you and me are also the beneficiaries of God's mercy. And if others don't welcome and eat with us who are lost, how shall we be sought and found? How shall we be and returned to the Father's house?
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