Scandalous Love

Scripture Reflection for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 15, 2013)

Scripture Readings:
Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14
Psalm 51
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-32 or 15:1-10

It doesn’t make sense.

I mean, sure, we get the “point” of the parables of the lost sheep, of the lost coin, of the prodigal son (included in the long form of this Sunday’s readings). God is merciful. Each one of us matters and is infinitely loved by God. God rejoices when we return from our erring, less-than-selfless ways. Yet, yet… if I can admit to myself, I don’t get it, in my core. Because God’s mercy is not like mine. (Thank God, literally).

I wouldn’t rejoice in the same way over one lost and returned sheep. I’d be glad I managed to not lose the other 99 sheep! And while I might be happy if I found a lost quarter or a stray $20 dollar bill in a pants pocket, I’d be more grateful that I had a savings account with more than a quarter in it, than at the fact that I just found a quarter to add to it. And while we’re being honest, I’ll admit that I can identify all too readily with the self-righteous older son, though I happen to be the youngest in my family. It’s seems unfair that the younger son, the recklessly wasteful one, is welcomed back so extravagantly. Even in the times in our life when we are the prodigal ones, the ones desperately seeking and hopefully accepting God’s mercy, it doesn’t feel “fair.” It is hard to accept God’s mercy. God’s generosity is scandalous.

Something else is scandalous. In the first reading from Exodus, why should the LORD have to be convinced to relent in punishing the Israelites? Convinced to relent? That’s something we would have to be convinced of, not God. What happened to the scandalously merciful God from the gospel? I’d rather be scandalized by the mercy of the merciful father in the Prodigal Son story. To be scandalized by an un-merciful God? No thank you. But this story reflects a time when the Israelites were trying to figure out who God is and what it means to be God’s chosen people. Their stories reflect their understanding of God at this point in their journey of relationship with God. Realizing how my own relationship with God is a continued journey, this starts to make a bit more sense. In all the stories surrounding this Golden Calf incident in Exodus, the LORD continually saves the Israelites from oppression, death, famine, etc., and they nonetheless continue to distrust that the LORD will care for them. No wonder they feel they have crossed a line this time, deliberately doing something they were told not to do in the covenant (think 10 Commandments): make an image of Yahweh. In their fear, their collective understanding was that they should be punished. However, the LORD is “convinced” to relent. The LORD is merciful. Scandalously merciful.

Thank God (literally, again) that we can be scandalized by the radical mercy of our loving God and not by the first glance understanding of the Exodus story, when God has to very humanly be convinced to have mercy. We can choose to trust the merciful character of our God, not settling for simplistic interpretation of stories that scandalize us into thinking God could be less merciful than some fellow humans we knows. God is never less loving, less compassionate, than the most loving, compassionate people we know.

Let us choose to be scandalized by God’s mercy and grace. Let us open our hearts to accepting that forgiveness. “A clean heart create for me,” our psalmist today proclaims. Let us be transformed by our own sense of being “mercifully treated” by God as the author of the 1^st letter to Timothy reminds us, choosing to be merciful with others because God is merciful with us.

Let us open our hearts to the scandalous love of our merciful God.

Image: Mountain Sheep by Beach 650. Shared on Flickr under the Crative Commons License.