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Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 27 2026
Thus says the Lord:
You say, "The Lord's way is not fair!"
Hear now, house of Israel:
Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?
When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies,
it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die.
But if he turns from the wickedness he has committed,
and does what is right and just,
he shall preserve his life;
since he has turned away from all the sins that he has committed,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
R. Remember your mercies, O Lord.
Your ways, O Lord make known to me;
teach me your paths,
guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my savior.
Remember that your compassion, O Lord,
and your love are from of old.
The sins of my youth and my frailties remember not;
in your kindness remember me,
because of your goodness, O Lord.
Good and upright is the Lord;
thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice,
and teaches the humble his way.
Brothers and sisters:
If there is any encouragement in Christ,
any solace in love,
any participation in the Spirit,
any compassion and mercy,
complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love,
united in heart, thinking one thing.
Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory;
rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves,
each looking out not for his own interests,
but also for those of others.
Have in you the same attitude
that is also in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people:
"What is your opinion?
A man had two sons.
He came to the first and said,
'Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.'
He said in reply, 'I will not,'
but afterwards changed his mind and went.
The man came to the other son and gave the same order.
He said in reply, 'Yes, sir, 'but did not go.
Which of the two did his father's will?"
They answered, "The first."
Jesus said to them, "Amen, I say to you,
tax collectors and prostitutes
are entering the kingdom of God before you.
When John came to you in the way of righteousness,
you did not believe him;
but tax collectors and prostitutes did.
Yet even when you saw that,
you did not later change your minds and believe him."
* * * * *
"When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him."
"Even when you saw that..." Now there's a loaded phrase if ever there was one. John had made such an impact, you'd think the religious leaders would have been looking for something to show that he was the real thing, a prophet commissioned by God, and the proof would be seen in some good results from his preaching. "By their fruits you will know them." The axiom is timeless.
But, Jesus says, even when you saw sinners turn away from their sin in response to John's call, you still did not believe in him. Why not? This is willful blindness, and we might well ask: What lies behind our cynical scepticism?
There will be many different answers: Religion solves nothing; it's not reasonable; it doesn't go far enough; it's not proven.
But in contrast, if someone is close to despair, feeling he will never be any good, never get over his wild behaviour, or his anger or his gambling habit, if someone says to him: 'It will be okay. God will forgive you and fix you up! He is merciful', this one will believe it.
Mercy is the great healer! And God is all merciful. This is the message that has dominated the readings over past weeks, and in fact it is the main teaching running through all the Scriptures. Yet we find this hard to swallow! Why?
We are very good at making sure people know about their obligations to improve their conduct, to restore justice by restitution and penalty. We demand a society of law and order, and claim our right to live at peace. And we are shocked in reading the bible to discover it is actually one long narrative of human failure, broken pledges, cruelty, revenge and endless hollow cries of self pity.
What we miss is the key message: that our Father is merciful. God is at work trying to convince people that he is all-forgiving. And he's got his work cut out because for some mysterious reason we don't want to believe it. Launch a crusade to punish those who do evil and we'll enlist in our thousands. Proclaim mercy and pardon and we start to complain it's not fair. It seems we'd rather take revenge than forgive; even for ourselves we think punishment is more fitting than mercy. Being forgiven is very humbling.
We are like the little child who was told not to climb on the fence but did so and fell to the ground. Now he's crying loudly, but more from embarrassment and shame than from any physical hurt, and refusing to be comforted. You might even see him punching the parent who is trying to give him a warm cuddle.
If you've ever had the privilege of reading the Qur'an you will have been struck by the opening line: "In the name of God the all powerful, the all merciful" The same words open each of the Surah ["chapters"] that make up the large collection of revelations received by the Prophet. It is almost as if Muhammad was commissioned to bring to the fore the essential theme that Christians seem to have lost sight of, that Allah, the all holy, is all merciful.
We see forgiveness all around us. Our First Nations people are outstanding in their efforts towards reconciliation and healing. They say: Let's just do it together. We can't live in the past. I've yet to hear any of us immigrant Australians express a parallel wish with as much warmth.
On the sports field sometimes we see losers warmly congratulate the one who beat them, but all too often it's a cold, grudging tap to serve as the obligatory handshake. Sour grapes! Wounded ego. Hurt pride. Self pity. We love to shrink back into self pity. We will look for reasons to show we've been badly done by. Anything, rather than generously accept our humiliation. So it is when our Father offers us mercy.
To accept mercy for everything requires us to lower ourselves to the level of total dependence. Impossible, you say. It can't be right to abandon my self-esteem to that degree. Well, yes! That is what Paul says that Jesus did: Though he was in the likeness of God he lowered himself taking the likeness of man, and then lowered himself still further, taking the likeness of a slave. A slave has nothing. Nothing. No rights; no dignity; nothing to be proud of. If he dares to assert himself, his owner has every right to crush him completely. That's what it's like to be a slave.
A slave can be sentenced to death at the whim of a Roman Governor; there is no right of appeal, no review, no justice and no mercy. The slave has no rights. That's the level Jesus lived when he emptied himself of himself.
The hymn Paul is quoting goes on to say: "Because of this - on account of this self-emptying - God greatly exalted him" . Jesus took life's journey to its bitter end to teach us one of life's greatest lessons: it is to be lived fully, even when this involves something as awful as was his cruel public execution.
"Because of this, God greatly exalted him."
We need to add: it is in his exaltation that we are saved. We are incorporated into his body as it is raised from death to Life; into his person, in fact, since He is Son of God enfleshed - incarnate. Being flesh like us, He is able to experience life as we do; able to experience God as we do, in joy and pain, in anger and hope, in trust and thankfulness - and love.
Embraced by God's love full of mercy we can abandon all our "rights", so that we allow ourselves to be simply loved for ourselves and forgiven for everything.
quoted goes on to speak of the Father's exaltation of the Son, but I suspect Jesus would have wanted us to keep our eye on the Father's mercy.
It is literally without limit. The only obstacle is that in our pride we oppose it, we push back against it, we refuse to believe it is being given right now - to me!
"Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you." Because they don't deny the poverty that their 'profession' locks them into. They know they need God's mercy to lift them out of it.