Lent 4C. 2 Cor. 5: 17-21; Lk 15: 1-3, 11-32
AIM: To help the
hearers understand the good news of God=s love,
free but not cheap
A preacher held up a crisp new $20
bill. AHow many people here would like to
have this?@ he asked. All hands went up. Then he
crumpled the bill into a ball and asked again: AHow many people would like to have it
now?@ Again all hands were raised. So he
threw the crumpled bill on the floor and stomped on it. AAnd now, how many would like to have
it.@ Still all hands were raised.
AWhat I have just shown you,@ he explained, Ais that the difference between a
crisp new $20 bill and a soiled one in our eyes is the difference between a
good person and a bad person in God=s eyes. God loves them both equally.@ Why?
Paul gives us the answer in Romans 3:23, AAll have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God.@
At the beginning of today=s gospel Jesus= critics protest angrily: AThis man welcomes sinners and eats
with them.@ Jesus answers that complaint with one
of his best loved stories. It has just three characters. Each is important, as
we shall see. The story begins with C
The younger son.
AFather, give me the share of your
estate that should come to me,@ the young man demands one day. He is bored, fed up, and
rebellious. He wants to get out, live it up, do his own thing. Sin, of any kind
originates in the idea that my desires are the most important thing in
the world; that the only thing which stands between me and happiness is my
inability to do or to have what I want. The younger son assumes that once he is
free to do his own thing, his life will be transformed and wonderful. Transformed it is. Wonderful it is not.
AAfter a few days, the younger son
collected all his belongings, and set off to a distant country, where he
squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.@ In a single sentence Jesus paints a
picture of wasted talents, wasted time, wasted human potential. The young man
is not only physically distant from home. He has also traveled far from the
atmosphere of love which had surrounded him there, and which he mistook for
interference with his freedom. When he has run through all his money he is
forced to take work far more degrading than any he had to do at home: feeding
pigs. Jewish dietary laws brand pigs as unclean. Even today observant Jews eat
no pork.
AComing to his senses,@ Jesus tells us, the young man
reflects that he is worse off than the lowliest servant back home. He realizes
that there must be yet another change in his life. The carefully rehearsed
speech which he prepares for his homecoming shows, however, that this change is
only skin deep. What actually motivates his return is not regret for wasting
his father=s money, and wounding his father=s love, but still concern for
himself. To put food in his belly, and a roof over his head, he is willing to
accept a certain amount of embarrassment. Skillfully Jesus now directs our
attention to the second character in the story C
The father.
He is clearly an affluent farmer and
landowner. AWhile he was still a long way off,
his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.@ How was it that the father saw his
son Awhile he was still a long way off@? He was looking for him! He grieved for his absent boy. At once the
father runs down the road to greet him, to fold him in his arms. That detail
would have shocked Jesus= hearers. In the patriarchal society of that day the sight of
a wealthy head of a family running was as unthinkable as, for us, the spectacle
of a bishop entering his cathedral on a skateboard. There is no word of
reproach. He won=t even permit his son to finish his well rehearsed
speech. Immediately the father orders a
celebration.
This is the heart of the story. AThat is how good God is,@ Jesus is saying. God is not a stern
judge, who must be appeased by prayers and sacrifices and good works. God is not difficult to satisfy, a
fault-finder to be feared. God is a God of love. Like the father in this story,
God forgives us when we wander off into distant places, when by our own fault
we squander and waste our Father=s gifts in ways which may bring us
short-lived thrills but no true happiness C only misery, servitude, and shame.
The son in his father=s arms is a picture of what the theologians call Agrace@: God=s forgiveness and love C granted not as a reward for services
rendered, but as a free gift. God=s grace is free. But it is not cheap.
Paul tells us the price of God=s forgiving love in today=s second reading. AFor our sake [God] made him to be sin
who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.@ Those words refer to Calvary , where Jesus, dying a criminal=s death, cried out: AMy God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?@ (Mk 15:34). In that moment Jesus
felt that he was in a distant country, far from his Father=s love. Jesus, who did not know sin,
freely took his stand, on the cross, where we are, as sinners: under the wrath
of God, alienated from God=s love. He did this so that we might become what Jesus is: Athe righteousness of God.@ Jesus= agonizing death, with its feeling of
being shut out from God=s love, is the price of God=s forgiving love, which we see in the
father=s free forgiveness of his younger
son. I repeat: God=s grace is free. It is not cheap. It cost the lifeblood of
God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This second scene in Jesus= story ends on a note of joy: AThen the celebration began.@
There is one, however, who refuses to share this joy C
The older brother.
He stands for Jesus= critics, who complain: AThis man receives sinners and eats
with them.@ He stands today for people who, when
they are told that God loves sinners, are indignant. How outrageous, they
protest, to suggest that God loves people of bad moral character: drunkards,
spouses who cheat on each other, people who lie, steal, destroy people=s good names through gossip; people
who go to singles bars, gays. AYou=re telling me God loves scum like that, Father? People who
never go to church? I don=t buy it.@ God is supposed to love faithful, Mass-going Catholics;
members of the Knights of Columbus, the Legion of Mary, the Blue Army.
The older brother=s litany of complaint shows that he
too is in a distant country: physically at home, but far removed from his
father=s attitude of love. He has never noticed
his father=s grief all the time his brother was
away. Now that he is home again, the elder brother refuses to acknowledge him. AYour son,@ the older brother calls him, as if
to say: AYour son, perhaps, but no brother of
mine.@ He is filled with resentment, envy,
and hate. The father does not condemn this son either: AEverything I have is yours,@ he reminds him. Farther than that
love cannot go.
AWho in the story suffered the most?@ a Sunday school teacher asked the
class after reading them this story. One of the brightest children answered at
once: AThe fattened calf.@ Next to the fattened calf, however,
comes the older brother who remains outside while the party goes on inside. He
does not even taste the fattened calf he himself probably helped to raise.
Or did he? Did he change his mind and
go in after all? Jesus doesn=t tell us. Jesus
leaves the story open-ended. He does so because us wants us to supply
the ending. This Mass C every Mass C is a celebration of our heavenly Father=s freely given love and forgiveness. The
price of that forgiveness was the poured out blood of his Son, who did not know
sin, but whom God made to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of
God in him. We supply the ending to the story by confronting honestly the
questions Jesus is putting to each of us right now:
Is the Mass for you a celebration of
joy? Or is the Mass for you merely an obligation to be fulfilled? In other words C Have you heard the good news?
Are you joining in its celebration?
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