A
question: The name of the parable that
we have in this morning’s Gospel is??? The
Prodigal Son. This younger son
certainly is a significant character in the story. With great brashness and insensitivity he
asks for his share of the inheritance before the Father is even sick, much less
dead, and then goes off and wastes it all on "loose living". This younger son certainly did some stupid,
mean, and very destructive things. He
hurt his family, wasted his money, and very easily could have ended up dead.
Now
you could argue that the Father was not very wise, and not even very loving, in
giving in so easily to the younger son’s demand. Would it not have been better, for the
younger son’s own good!, for the Father to not give the son any
money, to take away the car keys, and to ground the younger son for a year or
more until he got sane again?
I often think this way.
But
we know, in fact, that God has given us a terrible freedom, and does not
prevent us from doing horribly wrong things.
We know we are free to do mean, hateful, demeaning things that are
destructive to ourselves and to others, things with really serious consequences.
We know this because we read about them
in the paper every day. We know this
because we’ve ourselves have done them.
And God does not stop us. God
does not protect us from ourselves. I
wish God would. Think of all the
heartache, embarrassment, painful regret and lasting, gnawing guilt that we
could avoid if God would only stop us before we do something mean or vile or
stupid. If you’ve ever awakened some
morning and said, ..”Oh God, what did I
do?”… you know what I am talking about.
But
God so badly wants us to be free to give ourselves to Him, that God even
allows us to freely hurt one another and our own selves. And so the Father lets the younger son
go. Freedom is tough.
The
younger son is very significant to the story.
In many ways he is the protagonist.
But still, he is not the key to understanding the parable.
Then
there is the Father. He is a very
important character too in the story. If
for no other reason, than for the fact that he is a stand in for .....? GOD!
And what an image for God.
Here is an image of God Who is anxious and eager to forgive. The Father stands on the hill top, anxiously
searching the horizon for the younger son’s return. As soon as he sees him, still a long way off,
the Father runs out to meet him, throws his arms around him, kisses him, won’t
let the son finish his little rehearsed speech of apology, gives him a new
outfit and throws a big party. This
Father is more prodigal with his love and forgiveness than even the younger son
was with his inheritance. The Father is
a great lover and a great image of God.
For Jesus knows a God who is always, always, always, eager and anxious
to forgive. God wants badly to reconcile
us and heal us and love us.
The
Father is very significant to the story.
He teaches us so much. But still,
he is not the key to understanding the parable.
Finally,
there is the older son. Given the
dynamics of the parable, the way the story works as a story, he is the
key. For at the end of the parable the
issue is not with the younger son. That
is resolved. Nor is the issue with the
Father. He’s O.K. The critical issue is with the older
son. ¿Will he go into the party and
accept his Father’s love and accept his brother as his brother, or will the
older son remain caught in his bitterness, pride and self-righteousness, and
choose to isolate himself?
We
are given a clue to the centrality of the older son at the beginning of the
Gospel. You remember that the sinners
and tax collectors were all gathering around Jesus to hear him. This upset the Pharisees and the
scribes. They murmured and grumbled
about this. They didn’t approve.
You
see, they didn’t think it was fair. The
Pharisees and scribes could tell that Jesus was something special, that he was
very much in tune with God. But here
they were, the good people, the people who worked hard at keeping the law,
doing what was pleasing to God, keeping the commandments, not sleeping in on
Sunday morning but getting up and coming to church, and they end up standing on
the outside of the circle around Jesus.
Meanwhile, all these sinners, tax collectors, drug dealers and
prostitutes, had elbowed and pushed and squirmed their way up to the front, right
in front of Jesus. And instead of
shooing them away and sending them to the back of the crowd, where they
belonged, Jesus welcomed them. And the
Pharisees and the scribes did not approve.
And
so, Jesus addresses this parable to them.
Not to the disciples. Not to the
sinners and tax collectors, but to the Pharisees and the scribes.
The
Pharisees and scribes have gotten a bum rap.
They weren’t bad people. In fact,
they were the good people, the people who worked at it, who tried to do what
was right. They were like us. But they
did have a problem. They, like so many
of us, began to believe that they did it.
That
is understandable. It is so easily,
almost inevitable it seems, that when we have put a lot of effort and energy
into something, worked hard at it, tried our best, stayed with it and
succeeded, that we begin to believe that we did it. But that is not true. ¿Where did the talent, the energy, the perseverance,
the intelligence, even the time and the opportunity come from?
We are tempted to believe that they all came from ourselves. But they didn’t. They came from God. Everything is a grace.
The
older son thought he could earn the Father’s love. "For years now I have slaved for
you. I never disobeyed one of your
orders, ..." And he thought
the Father owed him. And so he thought
the Father’s celebration at the return of his brother was terribly unfair.
The
Pharisees and scribes worked hard at doing what was right, at being pleasing to
God. They thought they could earn
their justification, and God’s love.
They thought God owed them, that they belonged up close to Jesus.
And so they thought Jesus’ welcoming
and eating with sinners was terribly unfair.
We
can, and do, easily fall into this trap as well, working hard at doing what is
right, subtly beginning to think of our goodness as our accomplishment,
with some claim on God; God owes us, earning our salvation and God’s
love; and even thinking that God’s prodigal love for all is terribly
unfair. But that is wrong.
The
correct understanding is given to us today by St. Paul in the second reading:
"All this has been done by God, who has reconciled us to himself
through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation."
"All this has been done by God,"
God does it. God chooses us to be His children. Any choosing we do is irrelevant compared to
that. God reconciles us to himself
through Christ, and any good that we accomplish is the result of God’s grace,
not the prerequisite for earning it.
This
beautiful parable of the prodigal son is not addressed to the sinners out there
on the streets, not addressed to the indifferent people out having coffee at
Starbucks this Sunday morning, but to us, the church goers, the good
people. The parable instructs and warns
us not to take our goodness as our accomplishment, but as God’s gift to
us.
"All this has been done by God," "All this has been done by
God,"
Thanks be to God!
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