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Church Of The Good Shepherd |
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Priest’s Sermon |
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Perhaps we do not have to earn God’s forgiveness but there is one thing we must consider that does lend complexity to the story. The issue is not so much how badly that son disrespected his father and wasted his inheritance in reckless living. That may be forgiven by a loving father. The further question is the son’s intention in approaching his father. Yes, he was desperate and needed to be rescued from an intolerable situation. Remember, however, that the son had carefully rehearsed what he would say to his father. So the question for me is whether the son was truly sorry for how he had acted or was he planning to manipulate his father and eventually exploit him further. Forgiveness would not help the son then. Indeed, the father would be enabling the son to continue in his profligate and scheming ways. Let us assume that this was not the case, that the son had a change of heart, and that he reached out to his father with sincerity. Then, to understand the complexity of the story we need to distinguish between justice and love. Understanding God’s justice is never easy. Basically, the difficulty lies in the fact that we confuse our sense of justice with God’s capacity for love. In human and secular understanding, the two have become entangled and muddled. Justice has to do with fairness; love has to do with selflessness. Justice is balanced; love is extravagant. Justice almost always involves some measure of retribution; love calls us to reconciliation. The deeper truth of the story of the Prodigal Son lies in coming to grips with the breadth and depth of God’s love. In the words of the hymn, it requires us to contemplate the “wideness of God’s mercy,” to imagine it from outside and beyond the narrow confines of the human perspective. During this time of Lent, when we are meant to prepare ourselves spiritually for reliving the story of Jesus’ passion, his death and resurrection, we need to keep Saint Paul’s words from our second reading clearly in focus – that through Jesus’ one astounding act of self-sacrificing love, “God was reconciling the world to himself.” And not just reconciling our one self-selected flock of faithful believers gathered in any one place at any one time, but the whole world, once for all time. The breadth of God’s embrace is unknowable to us. The depth of God’s love is incomprehensible – and certainly immeasurable from a human point of view. It is not for us to decide who falls within God’s grace – nor is it for us to decide who should be excluded from his mercy. It is for us to surrender to that great love. Thanks be to God! The Reverend Susan McCone, Diocese of Connecticut, Sermons that Work. Fr. Merritt Harrison March 14, 2010 |