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

What is God’s attitude to sin? Well, he is against it, naturally, but God knows better than we do the frailty and ambiguity of our human condition; and next Sunday’s readings seem to be saying that our sinfulness is actually, mysteriously, an opening up to the divine love and mercy. The first reading is a slightly comical battle between Moses and God, which Moses wins. If the battle is comical, however, the subject of it is intensely serious. For Moses has been a long time up Mount Sinai with God, who has delivered his people from Egypt; and, bored with the delay, the people have built themselves a golden calf, and proclaimed that, after all, it was this Golden Calf that brought them out of Egypt. This is a self-evidently absurd proposition; but it is no more absurd than all the other stratagems that you and I employ to avoid listening to God’s invitation. The tussle that ensues between God and Moses is over whose people Israel actually is. God starts the debate by instructing Moses, “Go – go down to your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, with mighty power and a strong hand”. Moses employs two arguments: first, what will the Egyptians say? Second, “remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel your servants, to whom you swore on oath”. The surprising result? “And YHWH changed his mind”.

The psalm for next Sunday is part of the Miserere, often attributed (probably incorrectly, but appropriately nevertheless) to David, after his scandalous misbehaviour towards Bathsheba. And it is a frank admission of sinfulness, “Have mercy on me, O God, in your faithful love”. There is also here a powerful sense that only God can cope with our sinfulness: “Create a new heart for me, O God, and renew a firm spirit within me”, and a desperate plea: “Do not send me away from your face; do not take your holy spirit from me”. Everything must be God’s doing. Significantly, we notice, the singer has no sense that his own sinfulness might have led God to abandon him: “Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise”. All he has to offer is “a shattered spirit, a shattered and humbled heart”.

The second reading for next Sunday makes a brief foray into the first of the Pastoral Letters. Here, Paul, as always early in his letters, is giving thanks; here the thanks are offered to his beloved “Christ Jesus our Lord who empowered me”. Paul recognises his own sinful past “as one who was previously a blasphemer and a persecutor and a man of insolence. That is not, however, the whole story, “But I received mercy…the grace of our Lord overflowed in me…Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”. And it is precisely this predilection of Jesus for sinners that sets up the tension in next Sunday’s gospel reading. Jesus has these terrible friends: “all the tax-collectors and all the sinners were drawing near in order to hear him”. This ruffles the feathers of good religious people: “He gives hospitality to sinners! And eats with them!!” In response, Jesus tells three stories well-known to us; the point of each of them is a celebration after the recovery of something that has been lost. And what matters is not the lost-ness, but the party afterwards. First, there is a lost sheep, and the improbable tale of a shepherd who abandons the other ninety-nine to find the stray, “and when he finds it, he puts it on his shoulders rejoicing”. Then he throws a party. Next there is a lost coin; the woman who has mislaid this significant portion of her rather ungenerous house-keeping allowance “kindles a lamp and sweeps the house” (so as to hear the chink of a coin in a dark room - I have seen Zulu ladies do precisely the same) “until she finds it”. Then she throws a party. The third lost item is a son (possibly two sons, because of the ungenerous behaviour of the Elder Brother), and we learn of the almost embarrassing eagerness of the Father to recover him. Then the Father too throws a party; but this is a party with a difference, because not everyone wants to come. What about you? Will you celebrate God’s hospitality offered to sinners?