Readings: Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; Psalm 51; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32
Grace and peace to you my dear brothers and sisters in the Lord.
All the readings of today are communicating the same message, the love, patience and mercy of God.
The Gospel is a very long and familiar passage and so I won’t bother to go into details. I will just go straight to the message that the Lord has deposited in my heart.
Today, I want to bring out three points from the Gospel.
I. The danger of shame.
The prodigal son offended the father – he messed up, he failed, he made a terrible mistake. He had the choice of suffering and dying in misery or disregarding the voice of shame and returning to his father and acknowledging his failure. Whilst a sense of shame can be a good thing if it prevents us from making wrong choices, it is a terrible thing if it cripples us from doing the right thing.
There could be someone reading this message now and shame and pride may be preventing you from doing the right thing. Shame sometimes prevents people from apologising and repairing a good relationship that has been damaged. Shame prevents people from seeking help, from reaching out from the deep, from confessing their sins, limitations, struggles, their incompetence and ignorance, from making things right. The Lord is calling us through this parable, to not allow shame and pride to ruin our lives, to prevent us from making things right again and from finding peace again.
II. Beware of negative intrusive thoughts:
When the prodigal son decided things weren’t working and that it might be worth going back to his father, his greatest temptations would have been negative intrusive thoughts – thoughts like “How can you go back? He won’t take you, you are good for nothing. He will send his servants to throw you in prison. Nobody wants you, so end this miserable life.”
The prodigal son might have been bad but he was a good fighter – he fought the greatest battle, which is the battle that takes place in the mind.
The greatest battle of a person takes place in the mind.
He refused to agree that he was useless, hopeless, helpless and unloveable. He must have said to that destructive voice, “yes, I have messed up, but I will still go back and make things right.”
Dear friends, let us beware of negative thoughts and ideations that tend to invade our minds and pervert and twist our thoughts about our lives, about others, about God and about our situation. Like St. Paul, we must capture our thoughts and force them to obey the voice of God (2 Corinthians 10:5). Some of us need consider what we think about – our worst enemy can be our own thoughts. We must not helplessly listen to or permit negative voices in our minds but contradict those voices with the voice of faith and the Word of God.
III. The Father still needs you.
The prodigal son messed up but when he decided to come back, his father still wanted him, despite everything he had done wrong. His father didn’t even wait for him to change his clothes before hugging him. We may be dirty, filthy, and guilty but when we decide to come back, God still wants us and He receives us as we are.
In the First Reading, the people apostatized, they insulted God’s supremacy and yet He still wanted them.
In the Second Reading, St. Paul tells his story – he was a blasphemer and a persecutor of the faith, yet God still wanted him.
Dear friends, I don’t know who this message is for, but God is saying “I still want you.”
You may have messed up and done things that you are ashamed of, things you don’t want anyone to know about but God is saying, “If you will come back to me, I still want you; in fact, I still need you.”
Amen.
Sermons preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Baraka-Gukena Okami on September 11, 2022