25C19.   Amos 8:4-7.      Amos bemoans the fact that the well-to-do could follow the Law on one hand but on the other behaved like the devil in the way they mistreated the poor and those who could not defend themselves.  However, the Lord promises just retribution when he says through Amos: “Never will I forget a thing they have done.”

Luke 16:1-13.  In this parable the rich man dismisses his wasteful, squandering steward.  In considering his options the steward shrewdly and ruthlessly develops a plan to provide for his future at the expense of his master.   The parable continues, saying, “And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.”  The word ‘prudently’ in this case means that he cunningly calculated what he needed to do to turn things around to his advantage. The parable continues by saying, “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”  What I think Jesus is saying is that the children of darkness are more diligent, industrious and sophisticated in promoting their dishonesty that the children of light in promoting their Lord and Master.  Jesus goes on to make it clear that we must first be worthy of his trust in us by doing well with the small things he gives us.  The ‘true wealth‘ that Jesus refers to, that we will be entrusted with, is his life in us, his dwelling within us, that will make us fruitful in bringing others to him.  Jesus continues by saying: “No one can serve two masters,” meaning that we must be wholly devoted to one or to the other.  He goes on: “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”  Life in this world challenges us day after day. To whom do we belong: the material, the flesh, self-centeredness or God, the spiritual, self- surrender.  Paul in 1 Timothy 6:9-10 wrote, “Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is the root of all evils.”  The center and love of our lives must be God, for he is the one and only God, and from our love for him must flow all our other loves.  Jesus said in Matthew 6: 20-21: “But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

1 Timothy 2:1-8.   In offering “supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings” we are implicitly saying that it is God upon whom we depend for any and all of goodness in this world.  Then Paul gives a short and concise creed to establish the hub or center around which everything turns: For there is one God.  There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all.”  This is the truth that Paul was commissioned to speak.  Paul continues, “It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.”  Paul is asserting that, if we want anything truly good in our lives, we must go to God in pray.

24C22.    Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14.    God said to Moses, “That my wrath may blaze up against them.”  God was enraged that his people made a molten calf idol to replace him.  “But Moses implored the Lord, his God,” so that “the Lord repented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.”  God rejoices that sinners return to him by the power of his salvific grace to help them to become saints, in his image and likeness.

Luke 15:1-32.   “Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”  The parable that follows explains that the Prodigal Son, the flagrant sinner, was received back by his father despite his sinfulness because of his deep repentance.  The elder son, much like the Pharisees and scribes who had always been faithful, complained grievously that he had always been faithful but his faithfulness had not been properly respected and rewarded by the father, who was extravagantly generous to the sinful son but not to him.  The father “said to him, ‘my son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.’”  We are all sinners whom the Lord, our Father, enables to return to him to live as his sons and daughters.  Let us rejoice that we are loved so dearly and so live in his love for us.

1 Timothy 1:12-17.   Paul, who had been a great persecutor of Christians and was “mercifully treated” as a sinner, says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”  God works daily to bring back those who are sinful, enabling them to become saints.  “Christ Jesus” displays “his patience as example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.  To the king of ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

24C19.   Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14.   God brought his people out of Egypt BUT they had something of Egypt in them that they brought with them, the worship of idols.  They had lived in Egypt for so long that they had taken on some of the Egyptian ways. Moses had gone up the mountain to listen to what the Lord had to say to him and so Moses had left Aaron in charge of the people in his absence.  However, Exodus 32:25b says, “Aaron had let the people run wild,” saying to Moses who had returned in Exodus 32:22c, “You know well enough how prone the people are to evil.”  Exodus 32:9-10b relates: “I see how stiff-necked this people is.” continued the Lord to Moses. “Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them.”  However, Moses then convinced the Lord to be merciful to them.  Exodus 32:14, states, “So the Lord relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.”  In Exodus 34:6, “Thus the Lord passed before Moses and cried out, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin.”

Luke 15:1-32.   First with two short parables and with the lengthy parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus relates how joyful God and all the heavens are at the repentance of even one sinner.  God has this great joy because of his love and mercy toward and for all his people.   In the parable of the Prodigal Son the older son represents the scribes and the Pharisees who fastidiously follow the Law.  For the older son there is no mercy or forgiveness.  The father represents God our Father.  In the prayer that Jesus taught us are the lines: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Jesus says in Luke 7:37c, “Forgive and you will be forgiven,” and also in Luke 7:38b: “For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you,”   Jesus demands that those who follow him love as he loved, even to the cross.

1 Timothy 1:12-17.  Paul wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  Of these I am the foremost.  But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those come to believe in him for everlasting life.”  Paul makes it clear that it was by God’s merciful, patient love and not by Paul’s works that he is saved.  Paul, who was very prominent in so many peoples’ lives, wants to stand out as a sinner who has been put well on the road to sanctity by the merciful, loving forgiveness of God.

23C22.    Wisdom 9:13-18b.     “Who can know God’s counsel?  God’s wisdom or capacity to see the entirety of truth, because God is infinite and we are finite, is beyond our capacity to grasp the whole of truth on our own.  It is presumptuous to think we can do better than God; and yet, human beings do it all the time.  Only when we think as God thinks and not as human beings do, do we truly get it right. (Matthew 16:23c) “And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight.”

Luke 14:25-33.  Jesus said to the crowds, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brother and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  Jesus also said in John 13:34: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  The measure of our loving as followers of Jesus is to love as Jesus loved and NOT to love out of our natural human desire and out of our human relations as families and spouses.  It is that we do as Jesus does and not as human beings do that we are Christ followers or Christians.  We are commanded to love God with every bit of our being.  (Matthew 22:37)  All other loves must flow from our love of God and not from our earthly relationships.  “Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  Our cross is to live as Jesus calls us to live and not as our human nature or intuition calls us to live.  “Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”  Everything belongs to God and nothing belongs to us that does not first belong to God.

Philemon 9-10, 12-17.  Paul, who is at this point imprisoned, appeals that the slave Onesimus, who had run away from his master, be graciously accepted back by his owner.  “So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me.”  Paul is calling him and us to act as our loving God acts.

 

23C19.    Wisdom 9:13-18b.  The Book of Wisdom says: “For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns.”  This earth offers many good things but we must always pay a price.  Often the goods of this earth cost more than the goodness they give us.  On the other hand, what our God gives us is worth more than anything this world can give.

Luke 14:25-33.   Jesus say in this gospel: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  And Jesus finishes with the words: “In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciples.” The word ‘hate’ should be understood as meaning renouncing anything or anyone as belonging to me, as my personal possession and not to God.  I believe what Jesus is in effect saying is that nothing and no one, not even our very selves, belong to us but only to God.  That is the cross and cost of being a follower of Jesus.  He is the Creator and the Maker.  Everything good, at its very root, comes from God and God alone.  He has not given us anyone or anything so that we can live in our world as the master and  sole owner.  What we have is on loan to use to make it all the better through the Holy Spirit working in us, ready to give it all back with the gain that we, with divine help, have achieved.  This world, our human nature and the devil demand that we see ourselves as being in charge and in possession, as it were, god of our own world.  To have God as truly God, it is all his.

Philemon 9:10, 12-17.  Tradition understands Onesimus, as someone who was of utmost usefulness to Paul, to be a runaway slave who fled his owner Philemon, without permission, to serve Paul.  Paul writes this epistle or letter to Philemon graciously requesting that Onesimus be welcomed back without punishment and be given his freedom to be received by Philemon as a brother Christian.  This reading carries through with the theme that all, at their very root, belongs to God and to no one else.  When we live on earth with this way of thinking then God will take us from this earth one day as his possession, as his child to be a part of his household in heaven..

22C22.    Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29.  “Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.”   The less we occupy the center of our lives, the more room there is for God to be at the center.  The less we are what our lives are all about, the more God is able to be what we are all about.

Luke 14:1, 7-14.   “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  The Latin root of the word humble is humus which means soil, dirt or earth.  On the one hand, humble can mean that we are as low as one can go; on the other hand, humble can mean we stand with our two feet on the ground or truth of reality.  That second meaning allows us to stand in our almighty God from whose love of us we can draw a strength that no one can take from us.  When we recognize the poverty of living on our own without God, we can instead choose to live in the riches that God has for us.  Secondly, when we try to achieve on our own what we seek to have for ourselves, we will have nothing that is worthwhile.  However, when we work in the power of God for what God wants us to achieve, we will have an overabundance of everything that is good.  Humility is not demeaning ourselves but rather living and working with God so that our personal worth is truly genuine and lasts forever beyond the grave.  Don’t spin your wheels in the mud of this world’s ways but gain the traction that only the solid earth of God’s life in us can give.

Psalm 68.    “God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor.”  “In your goodness, O God, you provided it for the needy.”

Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a.   The Old Testament image of God at a distance on the top of mountain in a dense cloud is in contrast to the Jesus who walked among his people healing their illnesses.  Our God is the God who dwells within us and in our midst close to us and intensely engaged in our lives throughout the day each day.

22C19.   Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29.  “Humble yourself the more, the greater you are; and you will find favor with God.” To be humble really only means that we live with our hearts and minds in planted in reality, in what genuinely is, as opposed to what we would like to fantasize. The word ‘humble’ comes from the Latin word ‘humus’ that means ground, earth, soil.  Therefore, to live and think humbly means to live with our two feet firmly planted on the ground, on what is real. This world, our dealings with human beings and our very own human nature that seeks pleasure and avoids pain can lead us to construct within our hearts and minds a very unreal world.  Being delusional and not genuinely realistic has always been more fun than any drug that has been and will ever be sold on the streets.  Avoiding reality and living in a fantasy that makes us feel good, pain free, is a choice that all too many make.  Demanding of ourselves that we respond to what really is, can be painful and upsetting.  However, in the end living the truth and not a lie will make us healthy, whole and holy. God is ready to help us do that.  As God, he alone can see the whole of reality, the fullness of the truth.  In seeking to avoid reality that we may find it painful to accept, we may naturally choose to delude ourselves by changing the world we choose to live in within our minds by constructing a pain-free fantasy filled world in our minds.  Pain is not enjoyable but life in this world demands that, with God’s help, we will not only live through the bad times but prosper because we endured, as Jesus did on the cross.

Luke 14:1, 7-14.   The social culture among those of high standing was to take pride in one’s elevated stature among the upper echelon and demand that their position was recognized by their peers.  Jesus was indirectly trying to get them to realize that what truly matters was what God thought of them and not their peers.  Those who live humbly before God will be exalted by the One whose opinion of us really counts for something.  The recognition they sought from their peers would disappear at one’s death but the rewards that God gives for one’s good works, especially for the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, will last forever.

Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a.   God does not come as “a blazing fire and a gloomy darkness and storm and a trumpet blast and a voice speaking words such that those who heard begged that no message be further addressed to them but, rather humbly yet at the same time majestically, as a magnificent vision of “the heavenly Jerusalem and countless angels” with God the Father, Jesus and the saints.

21C22.    Isaiah 66:18-21.   God will show his glory to all peoples so that they will worship him in Jerusalem with the Hebrews.

Psalm 117: “Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.”  “Praise the Lord, all you nations; glorify him, all you peoples!”

Luke 13:22-39.   Jesus says that many will attempt to be saved but will be too weak to be strictly adherent to Jesus.  They will think that it was enough to have had some passing acquaintance with him and that it was adequate to just be a Jew to be saved.  They will see the Hebrew prophets in heaven along with many non-Jews but they will be cast out.  Salvation is only achieved by being submissive and obedient to Jesus.

Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13.   We are exhorted to remember what God has taught us: to suffer through the trials and difficulties that God has sent us so to learn the lessons that God has given us.  “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Jesus, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect (holy), he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”  (Hebrews 5:8-9)  God will show his glory to all who live as his children.

21C19.   Isaiah 66:18-21.   “I come to gather the nations of every language; they shall come and see my glory.”  God now chooses all peoples as his people and not just the Hebrews.

Luke 13:22-30.   “Someone asked Jesus, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” He answered them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.”  The narrow gate is that one must do the will of God and nothing else.  Jesus said in John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”  We must strive, make every effort or do our utmost to obey the will of God.  In verse 27 b & c, Jesus said, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me all you evildoers!”  They were friends of Jesus socially but not friends of the will of God.  They let him walk into their lives as acquaintances on the street but not into their hearts as the source of their life.  They did not come to Jesus from or out of a life lived in God but from some other source that treated God as someone only tangentially relevant to their lives.  Their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah earned them the title, ‘evildoers’. For that they will go to a hell that is a “wailing and grinding of teeth,” while their ancestors will go to the ‘kingdom of God’.  While they were born into the people of God, they will not get the inheritance that was to be theirs because they did not choose to follow the will of God so as to enter through the narrow gate.  Others, who were not born into the people God but nonetheless did “strive to enter through the narrow gate,” “will recline at table in the kingdom of God.”

Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a.   “Endure your trials as ‘discipline’; God treats you as sons.”  “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit or righteousness to those who are trained by it.”  In Hebrews 5:8 we read, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”  God gives us life to be lived advancing day by day on the road to heaven.  Daily we follow Jesus who gives us the Holy Spirit so to enable us to grow spiritually in a material world that poses many great obstacles to our entering “through the narrow gate.”  In Matthew 19:25c-26, the disciples said, “’Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible’” Paul writes in Philippians 4:13, “I have strength for everything through him who empowers me.” The joy that problems and difficulties give us is that by necessity we are driven to be much closer to God than peaceful times can ever do.  We are forced to go back and back to God to train our mortal flesh to be spiritual.  When the day our judgement comes, let us make God proud of the work he has done in us and through us.

20C22.    Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10.  This is that classic battle between the forces of good and evil.  Jeremiah, as spokesperson or prophet for God, was speaking against those who were not following the will of God and so they tried to put Jeremiah to death.  Jeremiah was rescued as God intervened for him through a royal court official.

Luke 12: 49-53.  “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!  There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!  Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.’”  Jesus, “the Messiah, the Son of God” (John 20:31b) was sent into this world to conquer the world (John 16:33c) and to protect those who belong to God (John 17:12) from those who belonged to the world and who hated those who belonged to God. (John 15:19) The symbolism of baptism that Jesus speaks of is one in which the adult person who is being baptized submerges into the water as a sign of his dying to all that is not of God to rise out of the water to live a new life in all that is of the Lord.  So baptism here symbolizes the death and resurrection that Jesus would go through to condemn Satan and conquer the forces of this world. (John 16:11 & 33c)

Hebrews 12:1-4.  The image of ‘running the race’ is one pushing ourselves to the limit to put out our very best as the way of living our faith.  It is natural ‘to go with the flow’ and just live life as an everyday routine.   Instead Jesus is calling on us to be on fire with the love of the Lord, to be the salt that makes the flavor our faith come alive and to be the light that brings to light the glory of Lord who is life for us.  Life is a “struggle against sin” because the devil, the world and our own bodies make sin look delicious.  “For the sake of the joy” that lies before us in heaven and the joy of walking now in the Lord, let us endure the many crosses that this world can put in our path.

Psalm 40.   “Lord, come to my aid!”   “You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, hold not back!”