Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32 is the Gospel lectionary text for Lent IV, next Sunday.
This is Grace. We may not
like it when it is given to others who we deem “undeserving,” but that is
precisely the point of it – undeserved loving-mercy given freely. We certainly appreciate it when we receive
it, knowing that we are not deserving, but also knowing of our need for it.
When we walk away from God, there are
consequences. It may feel like freedom
and independence at first, but what we are missing is not just a safety net for
our over-indulgences, but the connection to one who is our resource for life
itself. God is everything. God is life and God is love. God is the source of joy and peace. God is all things. Separating ourselves from God does not bring
liberation in life, but bondage to a life without the source of life and all
that is possible in it.
We have walked away from God in empire. We have given our devotion to the god of
self, and have over-indulged not only our egos, but also our immediate
gratification, our baser passions, our childish oppositional rebellions, our hatefulness
and our desire to be all things for ourselves and others around us. We have charged off to follow the gods of
self – greed, lust for power, desire for status and hatred. We have taken God’s love and grace and run
with it, trying to keep it for ourselves and necessarily withhold it from
others. We have re-created a world that
divides people, damages the lives of others and destroys community because of
our focus on self. Empire does that.
What we have walked away from is life with the
source of life, love, joy and peace. We
have walked away from our place in community, our responsibility to others, our
mental and spiritual health, our comfort and accountability from being in
relationships of love and grace. What we
have walked away from is God’s Way in Jesus – the way of Agape Love and
Grace. We have also walked away from
helping to maintain a sustainable way in life for ourselves, others around us
and the creation of which we are a part and upon which we depend. We have walked away from the one who is
wholly other, the only true God, to try and be our own gods, flawed,
self-serving and destructive to all around us and within.
We are the prodigals.
Many of us are also the ones who have stayed in
relationship and have striven to continue the work of the Good News of Jesus in
the world. We say we believe in Grace
and the Way of Agape Love, so we have continued to live in relationship with
the Source and with one another, and we continue to follow the Way.
But when the prodigals come home, and many of them,
I pray will come home, how will we receive them? Will we welcome them home with open arms, as
does the Source? Will we celebrate their
return and recognize that their lessons have been learned the hard way, and
thank God that we did not go that way?
Will we open our hearts and lives to them again, or will we begrudge God’s
Grace because we hold a grudge against them for their arrogant venture into
unfaithfulness? Will we hold it against
them forever and use it whenever we can to punish them for the damage they did
to our world, to the church, to the community and to many of us individually?
Perhaps the answer lies in how they come back. Perhaps, if they come with a confession and
in humility, asking to come back without special recognition of any kind, we
will welcome them back with open arms and engage in restorative justice,
re-building the relationships and the world together. Or, perhaps we will then be the ones who
wander from the Way, and exhibit the same prideful ego, belief in entitlement
and privilege and justifications for abuse that they did. We will be the ones addressed by God to
repent – change our thinking so that our direction changes.
Clearly, the only one in this parable we are NOT is
God.
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