September 12, 2010

Sunday 24 Cycle C 

Exodus 32:7-11,13,-14: Psalm 51:3-4,12-13,17,19: 1 Timothy 1:12-17: Luke 15:1-32

 

“He eats with sinners”

Although the Pharisees and scribes saw him as going over to the other side, Jesus saw himself a bringing the two sides together.

He struggled to put things back together that other people were struggling to keep apart.

 

A shepherd leaves 99 sheep and goes after the one that is lost.

A woman loses one of her silver coins and frantically searches for  the one that is lost and then celebrates.

 

Both 100 and 10 are symbolic numbers.

They connote wholeness, completeness, fullness.

Each one of us has a drive for wholeness on every level.

We want physical, psychological, social and spiritual wholeness.

 

God desires this unity.

So the angels rejoice more when a whole is approached by the inclusion of what was formerly excluded than when an incompleteness,

even when it is a righteous incompleteness, remains one short.

 

In life, situations conspire to teach us the wilderness claims sheep foolish enough to stray and the coins lay forever unclaimed in the dark corners of houses.

We can become numb to the pain of missing what was once part of our total identity.

 

But Jesus doesn't settle for loss.

He also doesn't settle for sweet but private reunions.

If the finding of the one makes the 99 and the 9 whole, then it is not just good fortune for the shepherd and the women.

The whole community must gather.

When all the sheep and coins are together, then the neighbors and friends are brought in

Making whole translates into making merry with all the people.

The angels who are rejoicing in heaven are probably the same crowd who appeared to the shepherd a Jesus’ birth and announce “good news of great joy for all the people.

 

My father was never a “touchy-feely” kind of guy.

From pictures I know he was when I was small.

But, as I grew up, that all seemed to disappear.

He was a WWII veteran, shot down three times over Germany.

He spent two years in a concentration camp before being rescued at the end of the war.

During my teen years, when we would talk, it would often turn to arguments, mostly about politics and the war in Vietnam.

 

My mother was a wonderful woman, but that would change when she was drinking.

When she wasn’t drunk, my resentment would often burst into arguments with her.

 

So I left.

I lived with my grandparents for two years during high school, then got a job and rented out a room from an older couple and worked after school to pay for it and food.

I got a scholarship to college and worked my way through, rarely visiting home.

My parents and I drifted farther and farther apart during these years

Me thinking they couldn’t possibly love.

If they did, why did Mom drink; why didn’t Dad stop her from doing it?

They believing I didn’t love them; why would I stay away if I did?

 

Years later Dad was diagnosed with cancer, given two years to live.

I had begun reconsidering my view of them, so I started visiting them back home in Kentucky.

I was a priest in a parish with three priests, so I could get off to drive the 14 hours to see them.

During those visits, I found I could talk to Dad.

He never got comfortable with the with the whole “touchy-feely” thing, even at the end.

But he did get to the point where he expected me to hug him!

 

Years later Mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

I had been in Ethiopia, planning on staying there another four years.

But  I decided I couldn’t leave things like they were between Mom and me.

 

I asked Bishop Sullivan for a leave of absence and moved back to Kentucky.

I painted houses and lived with my cousin Stevie, visiting my Mom nearly every day.

She had stopped drinking.

We were able to talk about all those years I had been away.

About her addiction and her life that had led her to drink.

It was a wonderful year that ended when she died.

 

I remember going home once after college.

I had a good job and had bought my first new car.

A Toyota.

My Dad wouldn’t get in when I offered to take him for a drive.

“I’m not riding in any foreign car,” he said.

 

Years later, walking and talking to him right before he died, from out of the blued he turned to me and said, “That was a nice little car you had.”

 

And that's how I got my mother and father back, even though I never lost them.

And that is how I think life in time is.

 We walk with one another, but there is also an ongoing getting lost and returning, of not being there and suddenly being there again.

 Certainly, it is about physically being with one another.

But it is also about meeting spiritually.

When spiritual meeting happens, the angels get into the act.

They are a giddy group to begin with, but when they mix laughter and tears, merriment and sorrow, all creation goes along for the ride.