24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (15.09.13)
Cutting or Not Cutting Your Losses
What does the phrase ‘to cut your losses’ mean? A generally accepted definition is – to walk away from an investment of self, time, effort or money with nothing to show except the prospect of even more loss. As a preparation for listening to God’s Word the 24th. Sunday of the Year (15 September 2013) you might like to ask yourself the question, ‘Have I ever cut my losses?’ If the answer is ‘yes’, then the follow up is ‘Over what?’ and ‘How often?’ If the answer is ‘I cannot remember’ then maybe now is the time for reflexion!
Many Baptised people have insufficient insight about God’s Word. Consequently the Sunday readings mostly glance off the surface of their busy lives. Worshippers, sitting or standing while God’s Word is read, may be physically in church but their attention can be anywhere except on God’s Word! This isn’t always a matter of disrespect but of a lack of knowledge. Jesus’ parable, about the seed (Word) at the edge of the path which is stolen by the birds, is applicable. If the homily then fails to connect with the congregation, the moment of evangelisation is lost, for another week.
The miracle is that, despite the multiple genuine opportunities with which we provide Him daily, God does not cut his losses as far as we are concerned! It would be impossible to calculate the number of graced moments from God that each human has let by, and continues to let by, without a response. Yet, God continues his outreach of love to us … unconditionally. It’s a breath-taking truth so far removed from our behaviour that we find it hard to grasp.
In this Sunday’s Exodus Reading, Moses is cast in the role, as mediator, of Christ’s precursor. Moses weighs in on behalf of humanity when God’s just anger is fit to burst. As leverage Moses cites the faith of Abraham, Isaac and generations when the chosen people were faithful. This speaks to us of the power of intercessionary prayer and lifestyle of dedicated lay Christians, especially parents, as well as that of Cistercians and Carmelites and the like. Do we remember and give thanks, sufficiently, for those who have, and are now, by their lives interceding for us? Do we choose to copy them?
Paul writing to Timothy (2nd Reading) is utterly certain that he owes his own conversion and faith to the abundant love shown to him by Jesus Christ whom, previously as Saul, he had persecuted. Can you recall ‘Damascus Road’ happenings in your life – probably very personal and small scale i.e. no resulting temporary blindness? That’s not to say there wasn’t deliberate ‘blindness‘ prior to the happening! Are such graced moments of love recalled as frequently and clearly as those which injure our pride?
Jesus in Luke’s Gospel this Sunday, emphasises personal responsibility when describing the loss of an animal and a coin. Losing either would affect not only their owner but also affect the community because everyone would have been connected. Hence the communal celebration when the ‘lost’ are found.
Jesus’ teaching ratchets up another level when the care of another person is at stake. The parable of the ‘prodigal’, the lost younger son, is well known but not necessarily properly understood.
As is the case with all Scripture, understanding depends upon our willingness to acquire background knowledge of times and customs the better to appreciate the significance of the parables. There’s also the question of our willingness to invoke the help of the Holy Spirit. We need God’s grace to bring home to us, personally, the implications of God’s teaching for our own life. Otherwise we are but dysfunctional, distracted spectators at the feast of God’s healing Word.
The parable of the Prodigal Son has many levels of teaching. One less frequently appreciated, perhaps, concerns the elder son. Adding insult to injury, in the eyes of that elder son, is that as the owner of all his father possesses (the younger son having taken and squandered his share of the family property) he is seeing his property and funds being used to welcome home his ‘wastrel’ brother. The best robe, ring, sandals, fattened calf, other food and all the rest was the elder son’s property and nobody had asked his permission! On one level, it’s possible to understand the elder son’s anger. On another, it says that not only does God not cut his losses in his loving outreach to each of us, but he also calls upon us to open our hearts and pockets to all ‘prodigals’. Jesus is convinced that our God constantly steps outside of human logic and expects his followers to do the same.
Why would anyone risk 99 sheep for one that wandered away, or spend precious time and effort searching for just a single misplaced coin? Jesus tells us that we follow a God who is as spontaneous and illogical in searching for humans who are lost as we are in searching for the things (of less value) that we lose.
Perhaps the most enduring image of God’s uniqueness is found in Jesus’ teaching about the prodigal father. But we can only appreciate the father’s off-the-chart behaviour when we compare it with the logical reaction of his older son.
How do we deal with a God whose only goal is to bring life to others, especially when God’s passion for another’s life encroaches upon our personal domain? Listen carefully to how the father in the parable responds to his older son’s objections: “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.”
Jesus is telling his followers that as long as they’re on their own paths to life, they shouldn’t resent or object to the different ways in which others discover and walk their paths. Jesus demands love from his imitators, not strict justice. You can hear Jesus’ teaching echoed in much of what Pope Francis is saying now.
At least 25 years before Luke wrote his Gospel, St. Paul had reminded his Corinthian community that as followers of a loving Jesus, they had committed themselves to cultivate the same attribute. “Love,” the Apostle wrote, “is patient. Love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:4-7).
Those who worship a strict “justice, hellfire and brimstone” unreal divinity are in deep trouble.
The first Act of Penance at Mass has deeply meaningful words for us to share if we care to go deeper than rote recitation – “I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…….” Some may contend the words of this Act of Penance do not allow that not all break the Ten Commandments all the time. While this is an individually defensible position, in an assembly of the repentant, the ‘I’ embraces not only those with me but the antecedents.
Cutting loose a casualness over a shallowness of faith is not a loss but a gain.