Homily Thoughts 4 Lent C

   This weekend's Gospel of the "Prodigal Son" invites our deep meditation on the love of God the Father for all of his children, 'prodigal' and otherwise.  The point that I would like to leap to, leaving all else aside for this short reflection, is the line where we hear the son saying, "I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.'"   (Luke 15: 18-19)

   There are at least two things working in this line that are relevant and important to us as we hear this parable and we see our own faces in the mirror Jesus points at his followers:

   First:  The movement of the son is ultimately one of conversion.  Another word for this moment might be metanoia, where one's 'mind' is 'made new'.  The son, realizing the horrible error of his ways, decides that he cannot live like this anymore, and must go find help and deliverance--even at the hands of the one he has sinned against most dreadfully.  He knows that while he has no right to the assistance, let alone love or respect of his father, that he nonetheless has some degree of confidence in protection and sustenance as the least one in his house.  So he heads home based on that smallest glimmer of the father's love remaining deep within his heart.

   Second:  He knows who he is as he prepares to stand before his father and beg his way back into the house.  He is a son, but he is also an unworthy sinner who has dishonored his inheritance along with the life and livelihood of his father.  There is a relationship which is being weighed... the wholeness of the father-son relationship versus the corruption of that relationship through sin.

   We know how the story ends... the father wraps his arms around the son and takes him back into the house, with a ring and sandals and a festive meal.  We have heard this story so many times, that we might need to back away from it a bit to consider the surprise or incredulity that the first hearers of this parable might have had as Jesus told the story, perhaps with a little smirk on his face.

   Certainly there is a moral angle to the story... do not dishonor the Father, turn from your evil ways of squandering your Father's gifts and return to him for forgiveness and repair of this essential relationship, God's love is forever.  These are all important lessons and they are all true.  Once again, we hear the familiar, yet ever-more urgent call to repentance, conversion, and sacramental confession.

   I want to look at it more deeply with an appreciation of what is actually happening to the son, as I invite us to stand in his shoes and take on his identity a bit more closely.  What happens when we sin?  We damage or break the relationship we have with the Father, certainly becoming unworthy of our participation in his household.  But even more distressingly, we cut ourselves off from God's sanctifying grace, in which we 'live, move, and have our being'.  Now, in our sin, we are not instantly zapped into non-existence, as plausible a solution that might be in the hands of a wrathful god who might call back his gifts upon a transgression.  Our created reality has an integrity that transcends sin--a concession of the mercy of God, I would contend.  But why?

   First: the integrity of our being preserves human free will to love God or not.  Imagine the coercive pressure you'd feel to "be good" if you saw your neighbor get zapped out of existence for something small... let's say a parking ticket?  We are not puppies being trained with dog-biscuits.  We are intelligent beings with the glimmer of divine life rooted deeply within us, inviting us to use that greatest power we have: to freely love as God has freely loved us.  It is a virtue that must be practiced and perfected across a lifetime of experience... sometimes granted and strengthened as one encounters the shadows of sin and overcomes the darkness by God's grace.  In any case, free will is a most important ingredient written into our human nature.

   Second: the integrity of our nature lends the opportunity for redemption.  As long as we draw breath, we can start crawling back to the source of life, no matter how ugly the transgression might have been.  Can we call to mind stories about deathbed conversions, confessions, and baptisms?  Death itself--the reality that our existence is finite--is a great encouragement towards making the most of the time we have, and living in a state of holy readiness for the unexpected time when we will be called to account for our lives.

   Third: there is a relationship that perdures, even through the darkness of sin.  Those who sin against God as given their free will to do so, and God continues to love them.  The most horrifying reality of God's love is hell.  In God's love, if one were to prefer his/her own pathetic, pusillanimous self-interests, God will accommodate allowing the soul to turn in on itself, and away from the eternal love of the Father.  The fire of hell is none other than the fire of God's love tormenting the committed sinner who wishes that he/she could completely abandon that love and exist only in and for himself/herself.

   Fourth: it shows us that God's way is not to 'throw away' mistakes.  He doesn't create evil or defective creatures.  He doesn't throw the glop back on the potters wheel and start over when something defaces his creation.  He fixes it.  He restores it.  He reconditions it.  He re-creates it.  As long as we walk upon this earth, we are subjects of God's creating hand.  He didn't simply create us in our mother's womb, wind up the top, and let us spin away.  He is intimately involved in our continuing creation (and when necessary, re-creation), as long as we live.

   Martin Luther had the theory that the human person saved by Christ is "simul iustus et peccator", which roughly means, "both justified and a sinner at the same time".  There is something wise about this... can you think of the time when it seemed like you had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, battling it out for your conscience and soul?  While we want to do good, there are appetites and desires within us that lead us astray.  A famous quote from a young Augustine illustrates these conflicted desires, "O Lord, make me chaste, but not yet!"  As long as we live, we are subject to the conflicting desires of body and soul, heaven and earth.  Luther's theory is interesting and true on a certain level, for we do spend our lives being 'two minds' about so many things--we ultimately do need to make a choice.  But Luther understates the beauty and power of what happens when the son rises up to go to the Father.  The son is a rank sinner and has no claim at all on the father or his house or his wealth or even his goodwill.  To have the father accept him back, both as a son and as a sinner (iustus et peccator), is to admit an unpaid debt into that relationship.  The father may proclaim and insist that "all is forgiven," but we as observers know that until every last penny is restored to the father and the indignity of his profligate ways are repaired, the son 'owes' the father something in justice.  The father is not interested in offering a cheap forgiveness... a forgiveness declared in words and emotion and sentiment for a good ending to the story, 'covering up' what happened in the past.  The father goes far beyond covering up or tolerating sin for the greater good of reunion:

   "Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it... this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again..."  (Luke 15: 22-24)

   The father does not welcome his son back with mere words and emotions, coerced by the darkness to cover up the son's transgression for a greater good in having him restored to life.  There is transformative union of mercy and justice in the father's actions.  The father's forgiveness is made manifest as he invests the returning son with signs that denote a deeper reality of the filial dignity restored to him... the robe representing the son's share in his father's wealth and fortune, the ring representing the son's authority to bind and lose and otherwise contract business in his father's name, and the sandals representing his status, not as a slave to the damaged relationship they have put behind them, but as a son.  With this, they slay the fatted calf and enjoy a festive feast.  The son is not simply forgiven in words, but also in deed.  He is completely restored to all that the father has, not out of duty or right, but out of the father's reckless, prodigal love.  The son who was dead is now re-created anew in the household of the father.

  And so, the story comes full-circle now, as the son, realizing who he is--a sinner against heaven and his father--now realizes that he is restored as a beloved son.  All the son needed to do was realize who he really was and then turn to his loving father.  The restoration in the father's transformative love was full and perfect--not just tolerating the sinner back into the house as a servant who owed his life to the father, but as a son, who was restored to life and the inheritance of the household.