Liturgy of Forgiveness and Renewal "Without forgiveness there is no future." Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time September 15, 2013 Announcements Opening Song: Blowin in the Wind Opening prayer O God, your dream is: that all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness for goodness for forgiveness and for compassion, Amen Reading 1 EX 32:7-11, 13-14 The LORD said to Moses, Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt! 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. Then I will make of you a great nation. But Moses implored the LORD, his God, saying,
Why, O LORD, should your wrath blaze up against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with so strong a hand? Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and how you swore to them by your own self, saying, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky; and all this land that I promised, I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage. So the LORD relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people. Song We Shall Not Be Moved Reading 2 NYT Editorial Column by Fr. Kevin O Neil (12/27/12): If we believe, as we do, that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why doesn t He use this knowledge and power for good in the face of the evils that touch our lives? Implicit here is the question of how we look to God to act and to enter our lives. For whatever reason, certainly foreign to most of us, God has chosen to enter the world today through others, through us. We have stories of miraculous interventions, lightning-bolt moments, but far more often the God of unconditional love comes to us in human form, just as God did over 2,000 years ago. I don t look for the hand of God to stop evil. I don t expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the Why? questions, they are not so much Why, God? questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not. One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community. We need one another to be God s presence. When my younger brother, Brian, died suddenly at 44 years old, I experienced family and friends as unconditional love in the flesh. They couldn t explain why he
died. Even if they could, it wouldn t have brought him back. Yet the many ways that people reached out to me let me know that I was not alone. They really were the presence of God to me. Suffering isolates us. Loving presence brings us back, makes us belong. A contemporary theologian has described mercy as entering into the chaos of another. God entered the chaos of our world in the person of Jesus, mercy incarnate. An unconditionally loving presence soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds, and renews us in life. This is something we can all give, particularly to the suffering. When this gift is given, God s love is present. Reading 3 from God Has a Dream, by Desmond Tutu.we are bound together in what the Bible calls the bundle of life. Our humanity is caught up in that of all others. Inexorably, those who go against this bundle of life cannot escape the consequences of their contravention of the laws of the universe. Even our enemies are bound up in this and therefore, we must embrace them. How then do we embrace our enemies? How do we get rid of the hatchet forever instead of just burying it for a time and digging it up later? True enduring peacebetween countries, within a country, within a community, within a family-requires real reconciliation between former enemies and even between loved ones who have struggled with one another. How could anyone really think that true reconciliation could avoid a proper confrontation? When a husband and wife or two friends have quarreled, if they merely seek to gloss over their differences or metaphorically paper over the cracks, they must not be surprised that in next to no time they are at it again, hammer and tongs, perhaps more violently than before because they have tried to heal their ailment lightly. True reconciliation is based on forgiveness is based on true confession, and confession is based on penitence, on contrition, on sorrow for what you have done. We know that when a husband and wife have quarreled, one of them must be ready to say the most difficult words in any language, I m sorry, and the other must be ready to forgive for there to be a future for their relationship. This is true between parents and children, between siblings, between neighbors, and
between friends. Equally, confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the lives of nations are not just airy-fairy religious and spiritual things, nebulous and unrealistic. They are the stuff of practical politics. Gospel Acclamation God be with you. And also with you. Gospel LK 15:1-32 Glory to you, O God. 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. So to them he addressed this parable: What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep. I tell you, in just the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance. Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost. In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Hear the good news of salvation. Glory and praise to you, O Lord. Silent Reflection followed by Dialogue Breaking Bread Together Creator of all that has life, look upon us who have formed this circle of love. Our love is first an offering of ourselves and then an offering of all those others who have touched our experience and have formed us into who we are today. Accept this bread as a symbol of our fidelity to you as you offer yourself to each one of us. Keep reminding us that to break bread together is to share
in each other's blessings and is to say yes to each other's fate. We offer you our thanks in this bread. Thanks for your love, for the love of our families and our Emmaus community. Together, we recognize and accept our right and responsibility to bless this bread, which symbolizes all of humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. In turn, we accept the gift of yourself to us. For to break bread with one Another is to share each other's blessings and is to say yes to each other s fate. Through Jesus, who offers himself to us in total fidelity and love, with Jesus, in thanksgiving for our personhood, and in Jesus who has blessed us with all of creation. Source: Ellen Smith, R.S.M., 1999 Our Father. Song Let Us Break Bread Together Silent Reflection Closing Prayer -- FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP DESMOND TUTU God, we are not in the struggle because we re following a particular agenda. It s precisely because we believe you are the kind of God depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the life of Jesus. It is quite exhilarating to speak about You as the God who has an incredible bias, a notorious bias in favor of the downtrodden. When we look at Exodus and the Israelites escape from a bottomless pit, we see you are not evenhanded. You are biased up to your eyebrows. Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find your cause. Sometimes we wish we could keep quiet. It s the kind of thing we hear the prophet Jeremiah complain of where he says, You know God, I didn t want to be a prophet and you made me speak words of condemnation against a people I love deeply. Your word is like a fire burning in my breast. When we speak up for the rights of people discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or their ethnicity, we don t think, What do I want to do today?
I want to speak up on gay rights. No. It s you, God, catching us by the neck. We wish we could keep quiet about the plight of others. We can t! We can imagine being you and looking at Syria and saying: These are my children. Look at what they re doing to each other. We are so thankful that so many are saying no to military intervention in Syria. We ve got to find a solution that will in the end be one that makes Syria a better country, a better people. We know we can be human only together. We so desperately long for all of us to learn that we are meant for one another. We are meant for complementarity. The Syrians are members of our family. God of all Creation, We often do not want to speak out. We want to be reasonable persons and to be diplomatic, but give us the courage and passion of Jeremiah to speak out against injustice and violence. Keep us strong in the struggle for all the downtrodden. Amen AND>>>> May God Bless us and keep us. May God s face shine upon us. May God be gracious to us and grant to us, and to all our broken world, peace. May the blessing of Almighty God the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit come upon us and remain with us forever. Amen Closing Song We Shall Overcome Sign of Peace