(Note: "Laetare" means "Rejoice". This Sunday is also known as "Mothering Sunday" or "Refreshment Sunday" The liturgical color is Rose or Pink.)
En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.
When I was in seminary, the joke we constantly heard and repeated was: If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans. Just when we think we have it all figured out, when we think we know who we are, where we’re going, and how to get there… God moves in a way we didn’t see coming and we have to rethink, redirect, and repent, that is, turn around and go another way – the way God is showing us.
As the Israelites wandered in the desert, the traditions that guided who they were and how they lived had to be suspended as they let go of what was and walked on in faith toward the future God had prepared for them. At times, I think, it was hard for them to tell if they were actually heading somewhere or if they were just wandering around lost.
And it seemed like it took forever to get there. The generation who began the journey was now dead and gone and a new generation was arriving at their God-given destination.
Their identity hadn’t changed. They remained God’s people, but their understanding of themselves and their tradition was changed. Their exile in the desert had made it impossible to keep some of the traditions so important to the Israelites: circumcision, food laws, etc. As a people traditionally tied to the land, this wandering people also had no laws to govern their ways as wanderers. They had to figure it out as they went along.
Now, however, they have arrived at the Promised Land. Honoring their forebears, they began re-instituting the traditions that proclaimed their identity and belief. But they did this as a new generation in a new place, with a new understanding.
Yet as much as they had grown, there was more still to learn. There always is.
The Israelites time in the desert had revealed only part of the big picture of the will of God for God’s people. The rest of the story (as Paul Harvey would say) is found in the words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke.
The parable of the Lost Son (fka: the Prodigal Son) is the third of three parables Jesus uses to teach about reconciliation. Remembering that it is in Jesus that the whole world is reconciled to God, Rabbi Jesus tells a wild story, filled with things that would make his listeners cringe. For example, a son asking his father for his share of the inheritance would be akin to a death wish; (Source: C. Hasalm, montreal.anglican.org); the image of a Jewish man, even a desperate one, wishing he could eat the slop of swine would be horror upon horror for a kosher people; and no older self-respecting Jew would ever run to greet his son. (Source: C. Hasalm, montreal.anglican.org)
In addition, I think there are a few reactions Jesus counted on from his listeners (then and now). For example, it was the son’s own choice that led him to his desperate situation. He was selfish, disrespectful, and disobedient. He made his bed… (as they say). The father’s welcoming of the lost son fails to hold him accountable. To use the language of A.A. -the father is acting like an enabler – denying the very real problems the son has and creating an atmosphere where those destructive behaviors will continue and continue to do harm. And finally, the older brother’s resentment is justified. He’s been good and faithful all along, and hasn’t asked for reward. But now his father kills the fatted calf for his low-life brother, and he’s (understandably) upset. Fair is fair… and this is not fair!
Looking at this parable from a “human point of view” as St. Paul says it, these reactions make sense. But we who are followers of Christ must no longer look at things that way. We are a new generation, in a new place, with a new understanding. We are ambassadors for Christ, and we have been entrusted with bearing the message of reconciliation to the world because that is the rest of the story: that in Jesus the whole world has been reconciled to God by the forgiveness of sin.
Jesus teaches us that like the father in this parable, God does not count our trespasses against us. God in Christ also welcomes sinners, and still eats with us, every Sunday, right here, at this Eucharistic feast.
The beginning of the Gospel reading clarifies for us that the world doesn’t love hearing about that kind of extravagance of mercy and love. We’re good with that, of course, when it’s our own sin that needs forgiving, but we’re often less happy about it when it’s someone else’s sin. Then we, like the older brother in the parable, feel justified in our resentment. Some of us even feel justified in being violent toward the sinners we particularly hate – something we see way too often on the news.
As you know, the clergy of DWNC was on retreat last week at Valle Crucis. Our retreat leader was Brother Curtis Almquist from the Society of St. John the Evangelist, a monastery in MA. At one point, Br. Curtis said: “If you don’t have mercy for someone, you don’t know enough about them.”
God does know – and God never fails to seek the lost and bring them home with a joyous welcome. And God has called and prepared us to be partners in this work.
That’s why, as we consider this parable of the Lost Son, we have to remember that we don’t know what led him to ask for his inheritance. We don’t know how he came to disrespect himself so much that he would live a life of such self-destruction. We don’t know what inner demons convinced him of the lie that he wasn’t worthy.
Everyone has a story that plays out within the silence of their hearts. For some it’s an interior battle. God knows our stories. God knows our interior battles. God know us enough to have mercy on us.
And here’s the best news: God’s mercy is always available to us. All we have to do is repent. All we have to do is turn back and claim it.
In the parable, the lost son “comes to himself.” He wakes up, shakes off the fog in his head that clouds his thinking and realizes that he can go back home where he once knew love. He utters the words of repentance: “…I have sinned…” and look at the response he gets - there is rejoicing!
When we wake up and realize that it isn’t God who fails to love us, but we who fail to love ourselves, heaven rejoices! Laetare! Because once we do that, we can be led the rest of the way. Once we truly realize the unfathomable love that God love us with, then we truly are a new people in a new place with a new understanding. As St. Paul says it: we are a new creation.
Then we see with the eyes of God and we notice that everyone is beloved. We respond with the heart of God, which breaks over anyone’s suffering - no matter how we think it came about. We respond with the heart of God that rejoices whenever someone returns to themselves, returns to love, and feasts on the food of life.
It’s always been so for the people of God. As the psalmist says: “Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the LORD; shout for joy, all who are true of heart.” Rejoice! Laetare! for we are loved by an extravagant God.
A final word about the older brother in the parable, who represents us: the church. Like the brother, we try to live faithfully, and we’re tempted to be judgmental about someone who seems to ‘get away with’ not “being-hāve” as my kids would say. (I should explain… I’d say: ‘Behave!’ They’d say: ‘I am being-hāve!)
Did you hear the father’s response to the older brother? Hearing this as the voice of God, the reply was: My child, I am with you always. “All that is mine is yours.”
Think about that for a minute – it’s overwhelming in its reality. What if we believed it when God says to us, My child, I am always with you and all that is mine is yours”?
There God goes again with that extravagance of love… and all we can do is rejoice! Laetare!
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