Fourth Sunday of Lent
God of all creation,
How splendid and majestic is the world you created! It reveals your glory;
it teaches us about you.
When you made us in your image, you gave us this command:
care for the world and for all the creatures in it, for this is our common home.
Yet your holy creation cries out, for our home is ‘burdened and laid waste,’ scorched and scarred.
Come among us that we might remember our interdependence.
Let us see the face of your Son in those who suffer from the destruction of our common home.
Help us to be stewards who honor you in the world you have made
for the good of all creation and for future generations.
May your justice reign forever! Amen.
-From the Querida Amazonia Study Guide by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
The context of the story in today’s gospel are complaints ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ Today’s parable was originally aimed at those who excluded or marginalised others and disparaged Jesus for embracing, affirming, and including people who were ‘tax collectors and sinners.’ Jesus was revealing God’s heart to people who had fallen through the cracks. Jesus reveals God’s character or heart through searching for, finding and rejoicing when the lost are found. Ultimately, it means we each matter. We are uniquely desired by and important to God. This fellow who welcomes sinners and eats with them is constantly searching for us, finding us, and rejoicing over our presence. We do not move in a God-less world. We are always in God’s world and in God’s care. God loves this world and will search through its cracks to bring out the humanity of people left behind.
I think that this is why we need to focus, not on the end of the story, but the beginning with the father’s actions towards his two sons – the one who leave as well as the one who stays. Love for the younger son is enough is not to hold on to him but let him go. There are no conditions attached to the son’s freedom, no instructions as to what to do, where to go or how to spend his inheritance. Love is freely given. And there are no questions, or recriminations on his return, just the joy that he has returned. We see in the parable much about accepting love, and about being loved. God cannot help but love us. We do not have to earn God’s love and need not begrudge the fact that God’s love is freely given to all people – both the bad and the good. And to claim that love for ourselves means we cannot refuse it to others.
Rev Jon Owen, the Wayside Chapel pastor in Sydney’s Kings Cross is known for hanging out with all kinds of people. Today’s gospel story reminds me of his recent post where he said we can have experiences that throw us sideways by the gift of seeing someone outside their usual context. He says the mundane or ordinary has much to offer, it is often avoided precisely because it is mundane or ordinary. Recently, he was ordered to take a day off. Whilst taking time away, and lost in reading, a person came and leant close to him, saying ‘I thought it was you!’ It was the face of a stranger, a young man. It gradually dawned on him who he was after some dancing around in conversation. Not long before, this man was poisoning himself due to the pain and shame he bore in his heart. Now, he was sober for over a year. Owen believes that when one comes through the Wayside and walks away feeling met rather than worked on, it is good day. Often, because of their pain, people cannot see the gift of a loving presence in front of them. A miracle ensures when they realise that others are present with them and for them in small acts and gestures without judgment – that they are seen through the eyes of humanity, not judgment. Richard Rohr says that here Jesus turns religion on its head. We thought we came to God by doing it right, and we find that we come to God by doing it wrong—and growing because of it! He suggests that the only things strong enough to break open our heart are things like pain, mistakes, unjust suffering, tragedy, failure, and the general absurdity of life – things that lead us to the edge of our own resources where we experience what we cannot fix or control or understand. This parable less about being or doing wrong, but about being lost. Jesus’ concern was and is always for the lost. There is little about culpability, blame, or finding fault and everything to do with recovering and reclaiming the lost. We can be holding it all together and still be lost in the depths of grief or despair. We can be lost even when doing all the right things and appearing right.
Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians comes to mind where he says that we need to look deeply beneath the surface and see the sacred in every face – including ourselves. The tendency is often to focus lifestyle, history, social standing rather than glimpse the Christ within. Regardless of what we think of ourselves, each of us is God’s beloved and who embraces us. Paul’s reference to the new creation is a call to view people from God’s point of view. There is something sacred in every person. Even beneath the face of evil, there is something of God, who is calling us beyond the pain, prevarication, violence, and abuse, toward the new, towards healing and wholeness. The call is there, but will it be answered? And what can we do to promote the healing of those who have turned away from God’s vision? We can overcome our reluctance to descend to Jesus’ level and to reach out to the kind of people he counted as his special friends. The message of today’s gospel is come together, join in with others, because God’s Reign belongs to all people, even those we may not want to sit with - the unwashed, poor and despised (Indigenous people, Muslims). It is in being accepted, we become a new creation, with a new identity, new relationships, new values and self-image, and a new place in the social order. We have seen inclusion and exclusion in the global support for Ukraine in contrast to Gaza, Yemen, Somalia, Syria. If the father today had followed the rules and practices of the time, he would have shut his son out of home and his heart. But this is a story of a God who is driven by love, not rules.
The clear message is that God’s radically inclusive love particularly embraces all including those society excludes or disdains. This love includes caring for our fellow creatures and honouring Earth’s gifts rather than destroying what is good and beautiful for the sake of profit, comfort, and convenience. That is our mandate as church people. Unfortunately, people experience just the opposite. As God embraces the so-called ‘loser’ in the world’s eyes, we too are to offer a love that welcomes back, a love that reconciles, a love that cuts through hurt and pain, a love that continues to cross boundaries. God’s power is shown in kindness not retribution. No one is written off. No one is beyond transformation – even though we might wish that to be true. The story in the gospel is open-ended. There is no conclusion. It is up to us to do that.