Today is “Laetare Sunday” … getting its name from the beginning of the tradition Latin Mass of the day, where we hear "Laetare Jerusalem" ("Rejoice, O Jerusalem”) from Isaiah 66:10. We have a similar Sunday during Advent where the priests, and deacons, wear rose … or pink colored vestments, but have slightly different meanings. In Advent, the joy we celebrate is more about what is inside of us, while during Lent, the joy we celebrate is something that is reflected outside of us … it is something that we give away so that others may experience joy with us. In other words, we throw a party.
Today’s readings all talk about the reasons we have to celebrate. In our first reading, God has brought is people out of the Wilderness to the Promised Land. If you have ever been traveling for a long time, perhaps on a long vacation, there is a certain amount of joy that you have when you come back home … and while the vacation was hopefully better than wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, there is a happiness that comes from the knowledge that you are back where you belong and you can let go of any uncertainty or anxiety that you had while traveling. You may even have a little routine that you do in honor of the occasion … such as letting your family, friends and neighbors that you are home … this feeling is so powerful … that when you go to Disney and stay at one of their resort hotels, the staff there tries to recreate it by greeting you with the phrase “Welcome Home.”
Our second reading today talks about us being a new creation through the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Morning … something else we will be celebrating in just a few more weeks. Most of the time, if we break something, it can never be completely repaired … but it doesn’t always have to be replaced. In Japan, there is a popular art form (Kintsugi) that puts broken pottery pieces back together with gold lacquer … creating something new and beautiful. Sometimes I imagine that this is something very similar to how Christ reconciles us with the Father … because we can often still see the scars of our fallen human nature, but we are still beautiful to God … something the Father is proud to show others so that they too may become something beautiful despite their flaws. So today, we celebrate the joy of being a new creation.
And finally we come to our Gospel reading … the story of the Lost Son, also known as the Prodigal Son. Here we have two brothers … one leaves home and one stays. Whenever we hear a parable, it is often helpful to compare ourselves to each of the characters in the story to see if we have any similarities with them or their behavior. So … who are we? Are we the son who left or are we the son who stayed. Whenever I hear this story … I tend to look at the son who left as representing me. In fact … when I was about 5 years old, I was upset at my father and ran away from home … or at least that is what I told my father I was doing. Unexpectedly, called my bluff and helped me pack, while my mother anxiously watch me pull my loaded wagon a few houses down the road where I sat down for a long think … Now what? Even as young as I was, I knew that I did not have the ability to care for myself. Not only that … my father knew it too. Before too long, I turned to come back home and the welcome embrace of my loving parents …
But the younger son in the parable did so much more … in demanding that the father give him his inheritance now, something that he should only get when his father dies, he is basically telling his father that as far as he was concerned, his father was dead to him … that he not longer wanted Any relationship with his father. That has got to sting a little right? Later we see this was a mistake … and the father knew it was a mistake … so why does the Father so quickly given in to the younger son’s request? Should he not have tried to correct him first? Instead, the father is silent: he does not protest, nor does he try to express his love in words … Rather it is through his silence and his actions that he shows the love he has for his son, leaving the son free to go his own way, allowing him to cut himself off from the source of all his blessings, the father’s love … here is where we might reflect a little on the word Prodigal … the word itself is not in the scripture, but represents someone who spends his resources carelessly, or wastefully, without any thought to the future … live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself. And that is what the younger son did … and we know what happens: he spends all of his money and was forced to take a job caring for the pigs … this detail is important … you see, in the Jewish tradition, pigs are ritually unclean … and anyone coming into contact with them would also become unclean … separated from his sacred traditions and, most importantly, separated from God. He could not have fallen any lower. After a long think, the son came to his senses and decided to return home to his father … fully expecting to be rejected and to remain outside of the family as a mere servant. That is not what happens though … because even when the son is far away, out of sight and outside of the holy land, he was never truly cut off from his father’s love. We see this in how the son was received when he comes back. While still a long way off, the father sees son coming home and rushes out to meet him … and he could only have seen the son returning if he was always watching for it. I love this part of the story … we get a feel good, happy ending that St Ambrose teaches is a representation of the path of the repentant sinner … just as the father in the parable welcomes the son back with open arms, so does God welcome back those who repent and return to the Church. It is such a powerful message that became the central theme in one of my favorite hymns … Amazing Grace.
But that is only half of the story. What about the son that stayed? Upon hearing that his brother had returned, the older son becomes angry. His brother had already spent his inheritance … all that is left should come to him and him alone. It is not fair that upon his return, the younger son, the son that abandoned and left the family, should now enjoy the fruits of labor that he had no part of. Frankly … I kind of see his point … how he might feel cheated, not of his own inheritance, but of his father’s love. After all, he has done everything the father has asked him to do … surely the father should love him more! In other words, he felt that he was in a competition with his brother for his fathers love and attention and he felt betrayed because he had done everything that he was supposed to do in order to Earn it! But the father’s love does not work that way. In other words, for years he had done the right thing, but with the wrong attitude or reason. Because the father’s love, God’s love, is limitless. He does not take from one child to give to the other, but loves each child fully and completely …
And so the father comes out of the house to plead with his older son to come back inside and join the party … but we are never told what the son does after that; The ending there has not yet been determined. Now we should ask ourselves … how often are we the older brother? Probably a lot more often than we are the younger brother.
To put the whole story into perspective … When Jesus told these parables, he was addressing the Scribes and Pharisees who had been complaining about his association with sinners. It was the Scribes and Pharisees that were the interpreters of Jewish Law and they had the responsibility of making judgements on what was right and wrong human behavior … all of which was designed to help them get closer to God … with the assumption that the closer you were, the more God loved you; however, just like the father loved the young son And the older son, God loves the sinner And the righteous … but He will always rejoice when the sinner comes home. The question is … are we helping Him celebrate or are we still outside on the porch angry that we are not treated better than our brother?
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