LENT WEEK FOUR YEAR C PRODIGAL

LENT – WEEK FOUR – YEAR C- 18^TH MARCH 2007.

PRODIGAL –

 

Each week, the scene changes on the high altar.. to reflect the gospel of the day… this weekend.. we see the moment when Father and son are re-united… in a heartful embrace…. a hug of joy… of love….  of all encompassing inclusion….. where hurts are forgotten, apology speeches are left unfinished…. and all that seems to matter is love….  and joy……    and what lies ahead…  not the sad road that lies behind them……

 

the true tragedy of this parable is that the older son.. so terribly hurt by the younger sons actions… and his father’s seeming non appreciation…  has lost the ability to rejoice with love and joy when something truly amazing was happening…..     I wonder if the older brother had seen this moment of embrace… if he had gotten caught up in the father and the younger son’s reunion… if the father had grabbed him too and brought him into the hug…..   would he have melted too…   as so many do, under the overwhelming love of the father.. who we know is really God…..

 

This gospel is often known as the parable of the prodigal son….

 

you know what… I always thought that the word prodigal meant…….   something like disobedient…..  or off-the-rails  ….  or…..   lost…..  I was very surprised to learn that the word prodigal…..     comes from the same derivation as the word prodigious…  meaning  enormous…..  extraordinary in size, amount, extent, degree, force, one often hears of an artist or a musician whose talent is prodigious…….   

 

so .. the parable, (if we accept that title for it … and there are many other titles we could call it)…..    the “prodigal son” is…  the story about the enormously reckless, extravagaent  and wasteful son…….  

 

but, something has just occurred to me as I look at this (all-too-familiar) story……..    the recklessness of the son pales by comparison with the reckless, extravagaent and enormously generous actions of the FATHER….

 

this is certainly a story of conversion…..   which also shows that even if we (even just) begin to move back towards right relationship with our loving God… God will pelt down the road to meet us, before we have hardly come into sight…..before we have hardly begun to say sorry let alone mean it or feel the full effects of it…….

 

It is probably why that amazing picture painted by Michaelangelo on the Sistine chapel in rome is so central to the whole scene…..   it is picture of Adam, the first created person…    his reclining…  his hand hardly lifting… and God..by contrast straining and stretching fully to touch his hand and fill him with life and grace…….   God stretches beyond God’s reach…  we respond sometimes with the merest lift of an ambivalent hand…..

 

The ‘wandering and wasteful spending son (in today’s Gospel) is transformed into a loving son by the generous and unimaginable forgiveness of his father…… and through a banquet… not to celebrate or to reward him for his mistakes… but a banquet that symbolizes the re-birth….. the res-establsihment of the young man as the son of his father…..

 

The most extraordinary thing about this gospel story.. and it has not hit me quite like this before now……  is that the father… (and Jesus) seems to be saying….

 

you want to be reckless… you want to be wasteful…  fine…  but its just a shame you chose the wrong priorities….    if only you could be extravagant and wasteful in the following things..

 

absolutely reckless in forgiveness….  forgive extravagantly…   forgive even when you wonder if you should…  forgive even when it is not merited……..     cancel debts when it is against ones better judgement…    be utterly reckless in forgiving…..

 

give… of time and of talent… even to those who – on pausing – one might be able to say… but what have they done to deserve it…    who cares… give anyway…. 

 

love…   even when its not deserved… even when its thrown back in your face……   be extravagaent in love……..

 

The prodigal son’s mistake was that he was wasteful in possessions and spending and apparently drinking and partying and all manner of material things until he had nothing left……..   he should have been extravagant.,..  as should his older brother… in helping and supporting his father on the farm…  above and beyond the call of duty…   utterely wasteful in time and generosity….     utterly uniniterested in getting back something for the price of it….  

 

Be ….reckless in loving….  reckless in forgiveness….  ridiculously generous in support, encouragement, forgiveness, praise and love….

 

the father was…..   Jesus the son followed in his footsteps…..  and suffered terribly for it….  but you know what…   I reckon it was worth it ……

 

 

 

 

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is it your will that your child be accepted into the extravagant and unconditional love of God the father?

 

is it your will that your child be baptized into the faith of the church which we have professed with you?