If someone asked you to describe God, how would you do it? In today's readings, we have five vivid images of the nature of God. God as portrayed in Exodus, the God of Moses, is scary. This description presents God full of wrath, ready to strike down the errant Children of Israel because of their sinfulness and depravity. It is only through the intervention of Moses that God spares the people. Jesus, in St. Luke’s Gospel, presents three distinctive images of God: God as a good shepherd seeking one lost sheep, God as a persistent woman searching for one lost coin and God as a loving father who rejoices at the return of his prodigal son. Finally, St. Paul gives us his personal witness about the loving mercy he experienced when he encountered God through Jesus Christ.
The message in all of today's readings is that God does forgive us. Not only does God forgive us, God looks for us, God waits for us, God wants all of us to share in the kingdom. And, God loves all of us unconditionally. Many of us find the overwhelming acceptance, patience and love of God difficult to accept. We tend to encumber God with our own human frailties and limitations. My friends, God is bigger than us. As God told Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
We all want mercy, love, forgiveness and acceptance. With the gifts of love, mercy, acceptance and forgiveness we receive from God there is an expectation that we will share these gifts with others. This is our challenge. We are called to love unconditionally, to forgive unendingly to show mercy constantly and to welcome everyone with “full acceptance.”
What do you look like, O God of compassion?
A shepherd who carries home the lost sheep:
a woman who sweeps the whole house to find a single coin:
a father who never gives up hope that the child who hurt him
will come home to be loved.
So in Jesus you have come searching for us.
May we never forget how much we are loved.
May we never refuse to love others as much.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
A shepherd who carries home the lost sheep:
a woman who sweeps the whole house to find a single coin:
a father who never gives up hope that the child who hurt him
will come home to be loved.
So in Jesus you have come searching for us.
May we never forget how much we are loved.
May we never refuse to love others as much.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
AMEN.
