4 Lent C March 10, 2013
Joshua 5:9-12 Ps.32
2 Cor. 5:17-21 Luke 15:11-32
What if I were to say or assume that I have
been so good and upright in my behavior that I am living proof that God loves
me more than God loves others. If I said
this, you might say to me, “Phil, have you even tried just the appearance of
humility?”
What if I said, “I have done the worst things
in my life so that I can prove that God does not or will not love me because my
deplorable nature can change the nature of God and make God not love me. "Look what I’m going to do God. I dare you to keep loving me." You
then might say to me, “Phil, you are not changing God’s loving attitude toward
you with your behavior; you are only hurting yourself, and so stop the
foolishness.”
The parable of the Prodigal Son highlights
another habit of the Gospel tradition, namely a preference for reclaimed
lives. Sometimes the Gospel makes it
rather boring never to have ever rebelled and experienced a dramatic
repentance. Is God better because God
can change the lives of really bad behaving people?
Sometimes in the born again circles of
Christianity, it is almost a badge of pride to wear to testify about how bad
you were before you got saved. In one of
our favorite story lines we like to hear about notorious bad guys who become
heroic saints. The story of reconciliation
and healed relationship is a chief tear jerker in our genres of life.
St. Paul referred to himself as the chief of
sinners because he was complicit in the murder of early followers of
Christ. And he was very profuse in his
praise of God’s mercy in his life. But
he is also the one who wrote, “Should we sin so that grace might increase?” His answer was no.
If all of the notorious sinners are getting all
of this attention because they trashed their lives and the lives of other to
come to the end of themselves and they get a hero’s welcome for turning their
lives around, what is the purpose of just being good and faithful without such
fanfare?
And what about all of our wonderful heroes in
our modern 12-step program culture? The
success of 12-step program has been wonderful in changing lives, but I bet if
you ask anyone in a 12-step program, they would prefer not to have been
addicted in the first place and never have had to enter a 12-step program.
So let me get to the point: the insight that
I saw in my most recent reading of the parable of the Prodigal Son is this: Nothing can change the loving nature of the
forgiving Father, meaning, nothing can change the loving nature of God.
In human terms or psycho-babble analysis of
the Prodigal Son parable, we might want to sit down with Dad and say, “Dad, let
me tell you about this notion of tough love.
Your son wants to take all of his inheritance as a teenager. And you’re going to let him do it? Dad, don’t do it, practice tough love, set
some boundaries or the next time you come and see me I might upbraid you for
dumb love, not tough love.”
But do you see how from our notion of love
where we might question the wisdom of the kind of love that the Father has.
Indeed from our human and controlling
perspective we might want to call God’s love, dumb love. And what is the nature of this “dumb love?” It is a profound permissive freedom and so
profound that it is both awesome and terrible at the same. The freedom that is abroad in the world is
evidence of God’s love and because of the terrible outcomes where saving
intervention does not occur. In our view this might be a dumb love.
What kind of love is God’s
love? Does the sun shine upon the
righteous and the unrighteous without partiality? Indeed we often think the sun shines more
favorably upon some pretty rotten people in our world. Why would it ever be permitted for the sun to
shine upon the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and many
others? Why can’t God be like an
omni-present smart bomb preventing with precision any misdeed in the world and
any misdeed in my life? Wouldn't God be
a better parent if God did immediate and specific interdiction all of the
time? Oh, I forgot God is too busy
assisting winners of football games and beauty pageants.
We can go into the shade or the clouds may
come out but we cannot change how and when and on whom the sun is going to
shine in a general sense. The history of
humanity coming to faith is a history of accepting the very essence of God to
be profoundly permissive creative freedom.
And how do we discover this? We
discover it as we experience that everything in this universe shares a degree
of freedom to exert an effect upon everything else. We really do not have big enough computers to
generate the probability scenarios for everything that is affecting everything
else that is. And so we have a total
environment of freedom. And in our lives
of faith, we are learning how to know this great permissive freedom as a
blessing of a loving and friendly God. God does not then intervene as an alien force;
God arises from within creation to inspire acts of faith and love and kindness
in the lives of men and women who in their lives are capable of imaging the
highest order of freedom in creation.
So let us not call the generous permissive
loving freedom of God, a dumb love. We
in our lives have a very limited freedom, but it is a significant freedom. In our limited freedom we do not have the
capacity to permit the kind of freedom that God permits. In our limited freedom we set goals for how
we should use our freedom. Do no
harm. Don’t be wasteful. Don’t be exploitive in relationships. Practice care and kindness. Embrace the fact
that human freedom is one of the most powerful gifts that God has given us.
So what about the Prodigal Son parable?
No matter how we use or misuse our freedom,
we are not going to change the loving nature of God. If I am the stay at home son who is dutifully
helping Dad run the ranch, I am not going to change Dad’s love for me. And I
have the freedom to continue to be faithful and receive this love. And if I am the spoiled, impulsive, get away
with everything younger son who knows that I can do better than Dad and my
brother with my inheritance, then Dad in his love allows me to do so because
Dad allows me the freedom to deny him and his significance to my life.
Whether the dutiful older son or the
impulsive rebellious, what does not change is the loving freedom of God who is
always already to reward the choice to turn towards repentance. The reparations of repentance may be
difficult so there is no reason to glorify rebellion over remaining dutiful and
faithful.
The story highlights how unfair grace is to
the notion of human exact justice. Salvation is unfair just like health
management in our society. A person who
practice good health behavior and yet pays the full medical premiums subsidizes
the person who does not practice good health behavior and who needs a
disproportionate amount of medical services as a result. Such health management does not seem fair. Salvation in God’s grace is unfair too.
What privilege is given to presidents,
governors and monarchs? The privilege of
their power give them the privilege of clemency. They have the freedom to pardon and that is
unfair, but it is a practice of human society.
God who is greater than all practices
clemency and pardon to all who apply for it.
The issue of the parable of the prodigal son is this: one party believes
that the other party needs pardon while assuming he did not need it himself. What the Gospel teaches us is not to compare our
relative needs of pardon. The older
brother needed a different kind of pardon on his own path of surpassing himself
in excellence than did his younger brother.
God’s grace is available and needed by all; it just has different
application in your case and in my case.
The season of Lent is about turning toward
God love and grace where we are and receiving a very specific measure of God’s
grace appropriate to our path of excellence.
So God’s love is not a dumb love, it is always available and we can’t
change the nature of God by choosing or denying God’s love; we can however be
changed ourselves depending on how we choose to respond to God’s love. Amen.
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