Joshua 5: 9–12; Psalm 32; I Corinthians 5: 16–21; Luke 15:
1–3, 11b-32
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, March 31, 2019.
“BEYOND HELP?”
(Homily text: Luke 15: 1–3, 11b-32)
Let’s
ask ourselves a question this morning: “Is anyone beyond help, beyond God’s
ability to forgive, God’s ability to open a new and better way of living?” Or –
put another way – is anyone an unforgiven sinner, for ever and ever, forever
shut out of a relationship with God? Or – to state this truth in yet another
way – is anyone “stuck” in their current situation?
This
question is a good one to ask as we listen to the very familiar Parable of the
Prodigal Son, set before us this morning. (It’s worth noting that this parable
is one that Luke, alone among the Gospel writers, imparts to us. We are
indebted to him for giving us so much of the Lord’s teachings that no one else
does.)
I’ve
said before that our Lord is a master story-teller. His parables are chock full
of detail, inviting us deeper and deeper into the truths He sets before us.
That’s surely the case with this parable: The more we look at it, the more
there is to notice. Wow!
Since
there are three persons in this parable, the younger son, the older son and the
loving father, it’s possible to consider three different angles to this
parable. At the heart of every parable, however, there lies one, main point or
purpose.
In
the case of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, that central theme, central truth,
has to do with God’s loving and forgiving nature. (In fact, the structure of
the parable places the father’s expectant and loving welcome of his younger son
at the center of the text.)
That
said, let’s look at the parable from the perspective of the older, hard-hearted
son. Unfortunately, because of the title
by which this parable is usually known, our attention might be directed to the
younger son. In order to see what the Lord has to tell us about the attitudes
of the other two persons in the parable, we have to be intentional in shifting
our focus.
The
older son, who discovers that a party has been going on, to which he had not
been invited, confronts his father, and on the basis of his faithfulness in
doing everything the father had ever told him to do (his works, in other
words), claims a rightful place in the father’s life and legacy. (I will
confess to you that I’ve wondered for a long time now why the Lord told this
parable in this way, telling us that the father threw a party for the younger
son without calling out to the older son, who was in the field, to come and
join in. I think there’s a reason, which I’ll comment about in a moment.)
Remembering
that a parable – or any passage of Scripture, for that matter – can be examined
from three perspectives: 1. What did the parable or passage of Scripture mean
to its original hearers or readers; 2. What did it mean to the early Church;
and 3. What does it tell us today?
Viewed
in this way, the Parable of the Prodigal Son could be examined from the
point-of-view of what was going on in the Jewish culture of the day. For in the
day and time that our Lord Jesus Christ came among us, the prevailing attitudes
of many had to do with who was clean and acceptable to God, and who was not.
Consider, for example, how often Jesus gets into trouble with the Pharisees
because He hung around with “tax collectors and sinners”. To the Pharisees, one
didn’t do such things, for “those people” were unclean, unable to enter the
Temple and offer sacrifice. If one were to associate with such persons, they,
themselves, would also be unclean and unable to enter the Temple’s precincts.
Moreover,
we get the impression that the Pharisees and those who shared their views
considered “tax collectors and sinners” to be so unclean that no amount of
repentance, no amount of Temple sacrifice, could ever clean them up. They were
permanently locked into their sinful state, a state that excluded them not only
from a relationship with God, but from a relationship with most anyone else,
except Jesus, apparently.
It’s
possible to make a connection, then, between the older son’s hard-hearted
response to his father and the attitudes of the Pharisees and of many in
Judaism in that day. Perhaps that’s what Jesus wanted His original audience to
see, and to see clearly. Reliance was placed, in those days, on what one did to maintain a relationship with God.
We could summarize this attitude by saying that the reliance was on one’s
faithful adherence to the precepts of the Law of Moses. Consider how often
Jesus got into trouble with the Pharisees for doing something that was
forbidden on the Sabbath. I think that’s a good example of what was,
apparently, a very common attitude.
But
Jesus’ consistent approach is an entirely different matter. He makes it clear
that it isn’t what one dues that will make them acceptable to God. Instead,
it’s the attitude of the heart that matters, and specifically, an attitude of
the heart that acknowledges our sinful state and which relies on God’s loving
and forgiving nature. So, Jesus seems to be telling us, those who rely on their
own deeds won’t be invited into the welcoming-back party.
Let’s
fast-forward now into the time in which Luke was composing his Gospel account.
Some scholars think he was writing in the late first century, perhaps around
the years 85 – 90 AD.
By
then, the Church had gone out into the Gentile world, into the Greco-Roman
culture of the Roman Empire. People were coming into the Church with questionable
backgrounds. We can get a glimpse of the sorts of background that some who’d
become Christians had by reading St. Paul’s lists of the things that they did
before coming to Christ. Often, he will add that, now that they are Christians,
they can’t be doing those sorts of things anymore.
Now
we are able to see the applicability of the younger son’s situation: Not only
had the “tax collectors and sinners” responded to Jesus’ great, good news that
no one was outside of God’s ability to love and to forgive, but that divine
love extended now to Gentiles, as well, even Gentiles whose past was quite
sinful. Perhaps that’s Luke’s intent in sharing this parable with us.
In
our time and place, living in the twenty-first century, we can see that some
attitudes that were common to the Pharisees 2,000 years ago are alive and well
today. Our culture can be quite unforgiving, permanently excluding some who’d
wandered off into crime and wrongdoing from a new and promising life.
But
let’s focus squarely on our own, personal outlooks. Do we think that, because
some are poor, they deserve their lot in life for some reason or another? The
Pharisees believed that, apparently. Do we think that, because some have
checkered pasts, even God couldn’t clean them up? The Pharisees believed that,
too, apparently.
If we
take to heart Jesus’ teaching, set before us this morning in the Parable of the
Prodigal Son, we must acknowledge that no one is outside of God’s ability to
forgive. No one is outside of God’s ability to welcome (or to welcome back)
into a loving, personal and intense relationship. No one is beyond having a new
and better life. No one.
It is
good for us to remember that God has already loved us and has welcomed us into
a relationship with Him. He’s done that in Baptism, which marks the beginning
of God’s loving welcome to us. As we make our way through life, the blunt truth
is that the stain of sin hasn’t been completely removed from us. We are, all of
us, “fully trained sinners”, capable of wandering away from God’s holy and
righteous ways. It doesn’t matter, in truth, whether our transgressions are –
from a human point-of-view – minor or major ones. To God, they’re all the same.
Potentially,
then, we could find ourselves outside of God’s love, unable to ever return to
an intimate and loving relationship with Him.
But
the loving father in today’s parable informs us of God’s true nature. For God
waits, looking for our return, waiting for us to say, with the younger son,
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you”. By claiming those words,
we turn away from any reliance on the “good things” we may think we have done.
God’s mercy alone is the basis for renewing our relationship with Him.
