Brief synopsis of the readings: We begin this week’s readings with Exodus. Shortly after their escape from Egypt the Israelites were in the desert, and Moses was on Mt. Sinai. God had already given Moses the 10 Commandments. Here God instructed Moses to leave Mt. Sinai and return to his people because they have begun to worship a golden calf. God tells Moses: “I can see how headstrong these people are! Leave me, now, my wrath shall blaze out against them and devour them; of you, however, I will make a great nation.” But Moses plead on behalf of the people: “Lord, why should your wrath blaze out against this people of yours whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with arm outstretched and mighty hand? Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your servants to whom by your own self you swore and made this promise: I will make your offspring as many as the stars of heaven, and all this land which I promised I will give to your descendants, and it shall be their heritage for ever.” God listened to Moses and did not destroy his people. In Luke’s Gospel we find Jesus the center of attention from tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees and scribes criticized him for associating with these people. Jesus responds by telling a parable about a shepherd with 100 sheep. If one wanders off, he said, the shepherd would leave the 99 to seek out and return the one. He then tells them that “there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over 99 virtuous men [and women] who have no need of repentance.” Finally, he tells the famous parable of the prodigal son. A man had two sons. The younger asked his father for his inheritance in advance, and the father gave the son half his land. The son then sold the land, took the money and ran. He then let the good times roll until the money ran out. Broke, he then took a job feeding pigs (who are considered unclean by Jews). But he was still hungry and recognized that he would live better as one of his father’s servants. But when he came home, hoping his father would hire him, his father expressed joy that “this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.” He called for a feast. But the father’s older son grew angry at this because the prodigal was being rewarded while he was taken for granted. The father replied that “you are with me always and all I have is yours. But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.”

I have to confess something here: there are times when I’ll look at the readings and search to find something to preach about. It’s sometimes called “writer’s block” but I like to call it “writer’s panic.” That’s not the case here. Both readings provide enough material for at least a half a dozen homilies, and I found my greatest challenge in paring down the readings to one, cogent message.

Our first reading from Exodus requires some context. I think most of us know the highlights of the timeline: the slaves in Egypt are freed when God kills the firstborn of the Egyptians (including Pharaoh’s son). But Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his troops to recapture them; God then parts the sea to allow the slaves to escape and drowns their pursuers. Not long after that, Moses climbed Mt. Sinai and received the 10 Commandments.

And with apologies to Charleston Heston and Hollywood, it was much more complex than that. The dialogue between God and Moses was much longer than giving him the 10 Commandments, and it ended when God noticed that these newly freed slaves (who will found the people we now know as the Jews) had already violated the Commandment that they worship God and God alone. In his anger, God essentially told Moses that he will keep Moses and kill everyone else. To me this sounds a great deal like God’s plan to save Noah and his family and kill everyone else: another chance to “start over” with one faithful person.

But then it moved in another direction and I have to give props to Moses. His relationship with his fellow Jews caused him no end of frustration, and the news that they had already already abandoned all he had worked for should have made him livid. After all, God told him he would found a great nation. And let’s face it: it didn’t take long after the parting of the sea for them to complain to Moses that he kidnapped them from a good life only to die in the desert. It’s good that I wasn’t Moses because I would have quickly returned them to slavery while waiting for God to provide me with another “chosen people” who would give me that great nation.

We revere Moses for many reasons, but I think this is Moses’ best moment. Instead of listening to God and coming out ahead, he instead challenged God. Moses reminded God of his previous promises and held God accountable to them. I can’t imagine Moses’ courage: it occurred to me that God could have grown angry enough to include Moses with the rest of them and start entirely over. Moses reminded God of the promise to make Abraham the father “of a great nation.” And he reminded God that his promise came without conditions.

Given how poorly these newly freed people acted, I’m not certain investing in them made a whole lot of sense. If it only took this time to worship other gods, what will it be like when they are finally in the Promised Land? If these people forgot what God did for them in the desert, what will they do when they are comfortable and prosperous? How can we even imagine they would remain faithful when they could easily look on their success as “self made.” Bottom line, these people are bad investments. But once challenged by Moses, God wasn’t looking at the bottom line. Instead he looked with love and we are here today only because of that.

It’s the same way in the Gospel. A shepherd who cares about the bottom line isn’t going to leave 99 sheep in the wilderness to find one who is lost. He will instead cut his losses and concentrate on the sheep who don’t wander. And not to belabor this point, any shepherd who leaves the 99 to search for the one will soon have no sheep at all.

We find similarity in the man with two sons. It bears noting that the younger son would have gotten his inheritance when his father died. He essentially told his father he didn’t want to wait until he died, he wanted his share now. Perhaps the father agreed hoping that his son would take his share of the land and till it himself. Maybe he was so hurt by his son that he just did what was asked. But when this son then sold off the land and hit the road, the father would have been justified in writing him off. This son came back hoping to be hired as a servant, unsure if even that was possible. The father could have locked the door and invested only in the son who remained faithful.

But, and I believe this reaches to the heart of these readings, the love of God does not focus on the bottom line or worry about long term investing. As the father in the Gospel learned, nobody can hurt us like family can, but we are never absolved of our duty to love. That doesn’t mean there aren’t limits to what we can endure, and we aren’t called to endlessly put ourselves in a position to be hurt.

But we do need to focus on what it means to love even those who hurt us. I’m grateful for Moses’ advocacy and God’s mercy at the base of Mt. Sinai. And I suspect that had God “started over” again with a new group, that group would have disappointed him too. God’s faithfulness to us, whether he was the God of Mt. Sinai, the Good Shepherd, or the Loving Father, informs all of us in our relationships.

Let’s choose love.