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I have often found myself relating more to the prodigal son who walks away in this parable. I spent eight years without faith, without knowing God’s love for me.
When we walk away, when we are able to see God's gifts of love, forgiveness, and life to us, we aren’t always walking away from faith or from the church. Sometimes we are walking towards something else. The son in this story doesn’t seem to think of himself as walking away from his father, but rather of traveling out into the world to live the life that he wanted. Sometimes we might find ourselves walking away from God even when we know what God is doing in our lives. Sometimes we don’t even realize we are walking away, sometimes we just drift away from God and before we know it, we find ourselves feeling empty, feeling drained, feeling like we missed something and we aren’t sure what it was. But in Jesus’s parable, the son realizes that he had missed something. He had spent all of his money, squandered it away, and now he needed to feed himself. He needed to fill his stomach, to fill himself. He begins to reminisce about the good old days when he was with his father. He begins to remember how generous and kind his father was. The son remembers that not only did his father give him what he needed and what he asked for, but his father also took care of his hired hands too. The son decides to return, and to beg his father for forgiveness, he plans out an entire speech! He believes he might be able to earn back his father’s grace by working as a servant on his father’s land. We are the children who think we can earn God’s love. We want to do it ourselves, we want to earn God’s love and forgiveness. But that’s not how God’s love works. God’s love isn’t something we can earn. God’s forgiveness is not something that we can merit, Christ went to the cross out of God’s great love for us, and that is not something we can ever earn. God is the Parent who rejoices in us. Like the father of the prodigal son, God does not want us to work to earn God’s love, God wants to give it to us. God wants to put those strong and comforting arms around us and kiss us. God is filled with compassion and love for us and wants us to share that love and compassion with others. Not for God’s sake, but for our own. The son originally had a whole speech planned, he had a plan to earn back his father’s love. But when he was faced with the love and compassion his father gave him, all he could do was ask for forgiveness. We are the children who need forgiveness. When we walk away. When we drift away. When we squander our gifts. God is still filled with compassion for us, wanting to join with us in a reconciling hug. God is the Parent who forgives us before we even ask, and celebrates our coming home. God forgives us, and celebrates that we have been found. God celebrates God’s children finding their home in God’s powerful love. And like God’s Son, who was dead and is alive again, we are made alive again in Christ. We are the children who wonder how God can forgive so much. Like the Pharisees who saw Jesus sitting and eating with tax collectors and sinners, sometimes we see the radical grace God gives to people around us and we wonder how God can forgive that person. We wonder how God can work through them. We might find ourselves grumbling. When the older son refused to go in, his father comes out and tries to plead with him, but the older son is too upset because he did everything right, everything he was supposed to do, and his brother did not and yet upon his return, upon his reconciliation back with his father, there is only joy and celebration. It’s not fair. We are the children who want everything to be fair. We crave fairness. But like the father of the two sons, our Parent, God, doesn’t act out of fairness when it comes to God’s mercy, but completely out of love for us. We often struggle with how God’s reconciling love can really be for all, especially through our human understanding of “fairness”. Whenever we talk about the struggles we have with those in the world who do terrible things still being loved by God, about God’s sense of justice and fairness, I always think back to a car ride to my grandma’s house when I was very young. My two younger sisters and I were in the back of the car, and if we were really, really, really good, my parent’s would stop at McDonald’s on the way home, and we would get a Happy Meal. We were nearly halfway home, and I felt like we were getting closer to the exit we would take to make this pit-stop. And just then, my youngest sister, Heidi, starts kicking me. She was probably only two or three at the time, but her little feet knocked against mine as she giggled at my growing anger. But I wanted McDonald’s, I wanted my McNuggets, and she would not take those from me. So I tried to use my big girl words. I asked her very nicely to stop. She didn’t. She began laughing and kicking harder. Toddlers are not known for listening to big girl words. So then I tattled. “Mom! Moooom! Heidi won’t stop kicking me.” My mom turned her head and told Heidi to stop, which she did…for about 30 seconds. Eventually I gave up, because I thought that I would be rewarded for my good behavior, and little baby Heidi would be punished. I had a righteous sense of justice and fairness, that is, until we got to McDonald’s. My mom put in the order in the drive thru, and when I heard her say two Happy Meals, I broke down. All my little eight year old body went into full tantrum mode, I was doing far more than grumbling. I screamed, “Don’t let Heidi get anything! She was bad! She kicked me the whole time and didn’t stop when you told her to! She shouldn’t get anything!” And in the drive thru line, my parents looked at each other and let out a mutual sigh, and then looked back at me. “She has to eat too, we’re not stopping anywhere else.” WHAT? Why did I bother to behave if it didn’t matter? I could have been pushing her back and I still would have gotten McNuggets. I wanted their love and care for us to be completely fair. I wanted a sense of justice for Heidi’s misbehavior. But like God’s love for each and every one of us, the love and care my parents had for myself and my sisters wasn’t something we could actually earn. We are the sinners and tax collectors that Jesus ate with. Sometimes we are the Pharisees who grumble. We are the children who want everything to be fair. We are the children who wonder how God can forgive so much. We are the children who need forgiveness. And God is the Parent who sends a Son into the world to bring about a new kind of fairness. Jesus goes to the cross to wrap us in God’s arms of reconciliation, to gather us all in together. Jesus dies and rises from the dead so that we might celebrate a new life found in him. So that God may always rejoice when we stumble home, so that Christ might shower us with celebration and joy, so that together we can see God’s fairness, God’s justice, God’s call is one for all, together in those strong and comforting arms. Thanks be to God.
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