Sunday of this week we had a family cook out. Present were my wife, Anna, our daughter, and her boyfriend and our granddaughter. It was unseasonably cool for Tulsa, OK in the summertime. It was a nice break from the usual supper hot days. We had hot dogs, bratwurst and all the fixings.
The thing that I like most about these meals is the conversation that goes along with the great food. Somehow, the conversation evolved around whether we had ever stolen anything in our lives. I had to admit that when I was six years old, I took some fountain pens from one of my friend’s home. I took it back and apologized. That was the last time that I took something that wasn’t mine. It never happened again. If a cashier gives me too much change, I insist on giving it back. A just wage or a just tip is only fair.
The boyfriend admitted that he had taken many things when he was a teenager and had gotten into trouble over it. The result of the conversation was that there comes a point in our lives that we realize that we have done something wrong and own up to it.
Our first reading today from the Book of Amos can be summed up in these quotes …Listen to this, you who trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the country….. See what days are coming – it is the Lord who speaks –days when I will bring famine on the country, a famine not of bread, a drought not of water,but of hearing the word of the Lord.
Where is our moral compasss as a people of God ?
Amos was speaking out against sin and the powerful abusing the weak in our first reading. If Amos were speaking today, the answer could be premarital sex, fornication, adultery, rape, incest, lies, pornogrophy or taxing the poor more than the rich. Amos was speaking out against sin and the powerful abusing the weak. Easily this condemnation could discribe the sins of today .
One sin sometimes leads to another. Two wrongs do not make a right. We cannot live a lie. It is impossible not to acknowledge that we are sinners. The idea of doing more wrong things will only lead a person to more wrong things and in the end no good will come of it. Unless the cycle is broken, it will continue. To a person in this state they will continue with no hope, but there is hope thanks to our Savior. He came to break that cycle.
Jesus says in today’s Gospel, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ When he heard this he replied, ‘It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners.
The mercy that Jesus gives to us and we in turn give to others is our sacrifice…. forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We cannot truely repent without forgiving others. This is what Jesus wants from us.
If hearing the word of the Lord is alive in our hearts we cannot take any other path but to forgive and repent. If the word of the Lord is not in our hearts, we are doomed. One small act of forgiveness and repentance by a sinner can change the world. Hearing the word of God and keeping it in our hearts can change lives.
God Love You Always
Bob Burford
PS: Pray for all those with Cancer and their caregivers. Pray for peace in the Ukraine.
