Mass readings for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Exodus 32.7-11, 13-14 Psalm 31.1-2, 10-11, 15, 17 1 Timothy 1.12-17 Luke 15.1-32
God worries about us. Now, not quite as we worry, because he is perfect peace and so there is no hand-wringing in heaven. Yet there is that concern that arises from his perfect love for us.
In the series of parables we hear today, Jesus tries to give an approximate description of this divine concern by reference to human experience: the woman who sweeps the house in search of the valuable lost coin; the shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep – also, a valuable commodity; most dramatically, most memorably, he likens God’s concern to the father in the famous story of the prodigal son.
While the first two parables try to give us the idea that we are precious to God, of value to God; it’s the last in this series, the well-known story of the prodigal son, that Jesus gives us an indication of the exact nature of God’s concern. The nub of the matter is in our identity, and our true, authentic identity is one that exists in relation to God.
Now we might think what alienates us from God, what causes us to be lost is sin. Makes sense: the prodigal we’re told wastes his inheritance, and not just by frittering it away, he does so through explicitly sinful acts. He hires prostitutes, he drinks to excess, he is gluttonous, he indulges his vices.
What is it that begins to reverse his descent? What is it that sets him back on the road from being the lost child of the father to being restored as the son who has been found?
The scripture tells us, the son “comes to himself.”
That is, he remembers who he is: he is the father’s son, and he has a home. He needs to return home, and to be restored as the father’s son.
That “coming to oneself”, remembering who we are as sons and daughters of God, this is how we find our way home to God. When we forget, that is when we are lost. When we forget who we are, that’s when we are prey to sin; when we live a lie, that’s when the devil gets his hooks in us, for he is the deceiver, the liar per excellence. Live a life of willfully denying who you are, live a lie, and you make your home with him; and he has no love for you; but he has his uses and his purposes for you that will end in your destruction – then you will neither be who you truly are, or the lie; you will be a miserable slave to the king of liars, starving spiritually, and inwardly as filthy as the prodigal son standing the muck of the pig pen.
Identity is a huge issue today. Indeed, we see around us all kinds of newly invented categories of identity with regard to sexuality and gender, and this is pressing on our young people to define themselves according to these things.
But we can fall into similar traps ourselves in thinking of ourselves in terms of more conventional identities: we identify with our job, our nation, our race, our place in the social hierarchy of the community, and even by our religion. And when we understand ourselves entirely in such worldly terms, we are lost.
The prodigal son adopted the identity of a rich playboy. Now that is a spectacularly bad identity to assume, because in that lies the short and fast and way to spiritual ruin; and that’s exactly what we see in the prodigal son. He runs through his inheritance very quickly.
Now, you might ask of me, what if you choose a more positive identity; something heroic or virtuous; isn’t it a wonderful thing to have the identity of pastor, isn’t that in being a holy vocation a worthy way to think of oneself? Yes, I suppose. But I would say that would be true of a lot of other vocations, careers.
I’ve been a student, a reporter, a political aide; I am a father, and indeed, I am a priest, but first, before all these, I am made in the image and likeness of God; and I am God’s son by adoption through Christ. That identity rooted in the truth and love of God then informs all those other roles and jobs, or at least it should.
We moved my daughter Helena into college last week. There were, and remain, feelings of trepidation, concern. Now, she has not set off into the world the way the prodigal son did, but there is the danger that she will “forget herself,” forget her essential identity, and be lost.
Parents know that fear, but I would say that anyone who invests themselves in another, as a teacher, a mentor, an advisor; providing another with the wisdom borne of your experience, you hope and pray that as this person goes out to take on whatever challenge, life itself, they will remember the lessons you taught them, but even more importantly, they will remember who they are as the good people you saw were worth investing your time and energy in. Some of you has become part of them; quite obviously if you are a biological parent this is true, but let’s not discount that spiritual connection that comes of being a teacher, a mentor, an advisor and a friend.
It is in that concern that we are like the father in the story of the prodigal; and, of course, we know that the father in that story is God – our concern for others, be they family, friend, neighbour, who appears lost, is a manifestation of the divine within us; we feel the ache of love for them, and like the father of the tale who every day looked down the road for his son and not seeing him was saddened, I know a lot of us are made melancholy by the sad reality that many of our loved ones, and so many others are going through life lost, far from God. Now, they may still be enjoying the life they have made for themselves in terms of career or some other worldly and superficial way of defining themselves, or they’ve sadly discovered how empty that is, yet in their crises they either don’t know who they are, or perhaps don’t want to acknowledge who they are.
Why would anyone want to forget that they are a child of God? Why would anyone want to eschew their dignity as being made in the image and likeness of God?
Well, it carries obligations; there is something of a burden in that. The burden of expectations that we often want to shrug off with a “leave me alone, for crying out loud!”
I do remember at one point in my own personal journey actually resenting my parents for worrying about me. You know, with my mom’s cancer, I’m really aware of how really comforting it is to have someone worry about me and regret that youthful petulance. How strange it is to consider that this threat has come to someone who worries about me, and how that makes me anxious; now I come to value the fact that there are those who, as the old song put it, serve “to watch over me.”
At the recent conference of clergy, the one held last week, there was discussion of the what the Church needs to be saying to people, what our proclamation to the world ought to be. So few take sin seriously, so the language of redemption, of salvation through Christ’s sacrifice doesn’t resonate.
Perhaps it lies in this: reminding people, recalling to them who they are: beloved sons and daughters of the most High.
We are in an era of prodigality. We have now several prodigal generations; and the identities they have as consumers, or as members of particular racial groups or ideological factions, may still be providing satisfaction, but as we see our civilization come under stress, as the assumption of continuing prosperity and social stability can not be so readily made, they will need to find their true home.
And so, this is our mission: to teach our children with renewed vigour their true identity, to steel them against the claims others will make on them. For those who have forgotten, we need to be the ones who will remind them.
That means getting into the schools, and into the public square; into homes, and into places of work and recreation, all as a means of finding a way into hearts and minds and so bringing people back to themselves, and hopefully before they find themselves knee deep in muck and filth, but even there, helping them come to themselves, brush off the dirt, and begin the journey home, to bring them back into the sight of the father who prepare to receive them with joy.
Amen.