Lent 4, 30 March
Readings: Joshua 5.9-12; 2 Cor. 5.16-21; Lk. 15.1-3, 11b-32
Theme: The Journey to Freedom
The Book of Joshua is concerned with the taking possession of Canaan under Joshua, who is the successor of Moses, designated to lead the people out of the slavery of Egypt into the promised land of Canaan. It is this theme, of journeying out of slavery and into freedom, which is the theme of our Bible readings for today. This is expressed in the passage from Joshua which tells us of the Israelites celebrating the Passover at Gilgal and eating the cakes and parched grain of the land of Canaan. From now on, they will no longer need to eat the manna provided by God in the desert, but can live from the crops of the land of Canaan. It is a moment of return, a time of reconciliation as the people find a homeland.
This theme of return is taken up by our Gospel reading, which is the well-known passage that is often known as the ‘prodigal son’. The scene of this passage is set by the tax collectors and sinners who want to listen to the message of Jesus, though the Pharisees and the scribes are clearly unhappy that Jesus is eating with sinners. It is to both of these groups that Jesus recounts this parable and so it holds a universal message about God that all are invited to hear.
It begins by Jesus presenting the characters in the story. The first is the father, a man who had two sons. The younger of the two sons is the profligate one. He wants his inheritance now so that he can indulge his passions in a distant country, which the passage tells us he does so by squandering his property in dissolute living. However, once he has spent all his resources a famine hits the country and he falls on hard times. The experience of hiring himself out as a farm worker convinces him that it is time to return to his father and to acknowledge his faults. As he returns home he is met by his father who is full of compassion for him and treats him as his long lost son. The elder of the two sons is irked by this. He feels hard done by because he has been faithful and perceives he has been given little, while the younger son who was profligate is treated with special attention. I am sure this is a scene most parents can recognize. When one child is treated the other child often expects the same. It is quite common and this is why parents often have to buy treats for each child.
But rather than simply a lesson in human nature and its various weaknesses, this parable is fundamentally about the father who is the figure of God for Jesus in this passage. Rather than relate to both of his sons with the kind of calculus that they are operating with, Jesus indicates that God operates differently with us. God is only concerned about our welfare and to offer us all that he has for our flourishing. As the father says in the passage to the elder son, ‘son you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours’. This is quite a statement when you think about it. It indicates that God is offering us his life in its entirety. In other words, we like these two sons are invited into a relationship with God through his only Son, Jesus. However, unlike Jesus, we are not his children by nature. Only Jesus is the Son of God in that way. Yet, through adoption, we too become children of God because in God’s generosity all are invited to share in this filial relationship with him.
This is the journey to freedom that is recounted in both the story of the exodus out of Egypt and into the promised land of Canaan, and of our own stories as we make this journey back to God in our lives. We may be either of those two sons in the story, the elder or the younger. And, in a way, both of them suffer from the same problem. Neither of them realizes what the father is offering them. The younger son goes to a ‘distant country’, a far off land, as if this place has something of importance to offer that the land of the father does not have in abundance. He clearly does not realize what is already being offered to him otherwise he would not have gone searching for something else. The elder of the two sons is rather similar. He is resentful of the younger, because he does not realize that all that the father has is his. Both of them share the same characteristic of not being aware what the father is offering to them. The question for us to ask here is, why is this the case? How is it that both of them could get it so wrong?
This takes us to another level of meaning in the parable, which in order to see, we need to realize that this parable of the ‘prodigal son’ is one of tryptic of parables in Luke 15 about God’s mercy to sinners which includes ‘the lost sheep’ and ‘the lost coin’. To grasp this meaning, we need to return to where we began in this passage, to where the Pharisees and the scribes were saying those opening lines of our Gospel passage, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’.” They are clearly not happy with this as the passage tells us that they were ‘grumbling’ that Jesus was welcoming sinners. What they have not realized is that God welcomes sinners. He is not self-righteous like them. This is another invitation delivered to us in this passage. Though we have heard and accepted the word of God, we are always in danger of priding ourselves on being upright. This attitude is not uncommon and it is a real turn off for others. The other way of being to which this passage invites us to is one of the deep humility of realizing that though we too are sinners, we have been redeemed by the Lord, and but for the grace of God go I.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.