Today’s question is another easy one. How many of you enjoy watching reruns? How many of you have seen the same episode of “Law and Order” or one of the various “CSI” productions more than once? Mainly when you couldn’t find anything else of interest on the usual channels.
When we watch a rerun, we often know how it’s going to end, especially after the first few minutes – while we’re trying to remember the plotline. And when we do recall the next scene, it allows us to focus on other things we might have missed the first time around. That’s the advantage of reruns. They allow us to focus on elements we might have missed during our first exposure.
For almost every one of us, today’s gospel reading is a rerun. I doubt if there are any here today who have not heard the parable of the Prodigal Son at least once before in your life. For many of us, it’s considerably more than once. And so, when we hear the opening lines, we know exactly how it’s going to end. Many of us could probably tell the story, almost verbatim, to someone else. We know that it’s a parable about reconciliation, about a reunion of a father and a wandering son. About returning home. Actually, all three readings for today have the same theme: reconciliation, reunion, returning home.
In our first reading from the Book of Joshua we heard how the Israelites finally reached Canaan, following their Exodus from Egypt. Having completed their last Passover of the Exodus, they now ate of the yield of the Promised Land and no longer depended on manna from heaven. They had returned home to begin a new life.
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians also spoke of a new life, a new creation in which God has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation. It is through Christ that we are reconciled with God, that we are reunited to him, that we have returned home to him.
And then there is, of course, the parable Jesus addressed to the Pharisees and scribes, those who complained about Jesus being reconciled with sinners with whom he dined. Jesus who dared to reconcile himself with tax collectors who gathered money on behalf of the perceived enemy, the Roman Empire.
Jesus spoke about the young man who recognized the errors of his ways and desired to return home. A young man who had demanded his share of his inheritance from his still-living father. And now, in a time of disastrous results, he wanted to return to the life he once had, even if it meant that he must now work as a servant and not enjoy his former place as the favorite, younger son.
This young man is not unlike many of us today. Is there not one of us who wishes, to some extent or another, to return to a place of comfort which we lost through our own errors, our own failures? Have I not wished from time to time, that real life could be like a computer game in which, when I have failed to accomplish what I set out to do, I could hit the re-boot button and start again without any penalties?
However, in Jesus’ parable, the young man did not desire to re-start his life. He did not want to begin where he had left off before everything went bad. He merely wanted to be forgiven. He was willing to accept any conditions necessary in order to be reunited with his family.
And then there is his father, the one who knew immediately that his returning son was repentant, that he was, indeed, sorry for his actions, for his errors that had led to his failures. The father, who rushed out to meet the returning son. The father who desired to celebrate his son’s return. The father who wanted to have a tremendous banquet to celebrate their reconciliation, their reunion.
And then there is the elder brother, the one who had no desire for reconciliation. The one who wanted a continuing revenge for the perceived injuries to his own pride. The one who had always, without any hesitation, been loved by their father. Yet he remained the resentful brother, who like the Pharisees, was jealous of the interaction of the always-loving father with those who, having been lost, desired to change and to return home.
When we hear this story, there are those among us who become the younger son. Those who recognize that through our own demands and actions we have injured ourselves and others. Those who are estranged from themselves, from their co-workers, from their friends or from their family. Those who are contrite about what they have done or failed to do in their own relationships; and now seek reconciliation within themselves, or with others, or with God.
There may also be among us those who, having been hurt by someone we once loved, now seek only a continuation of the hurt. There are those who, like the elder brother … and the scribes and Pharisees … desire revenge rather than reunion. There are those in our society who seek continuing abandonment of those who have offended us by supposedly squandering the resources generously allotted to them.
Here in the middle of the journey we call Lent, each of us knows what time and talents we, ourselves, have squandered; what treasures we have mis-spent. We know which gifts God, our Father, has given us. Gifts we, ourselves, have lost or wasted. We know what broken relationships need to be mended. Here in the middle of this journey of Lent, we are, once more, given the opportunity to recall how we have become estranged from our own selves, from others, and from God. How we now desire to make amends. How we are contrite, sorry for what we have allowed to happen. How we desire reconciliation.
It is through Christ that we, in the words of Paul, have been given “the ministry of reconciliation” and entrusted with the “message of reconciliation.” A feast of reunion, of reconciliation, awaits each one of us. An Easter banquet awaits each of us. But first, we need to begin our homeward journey. Now is the time to stop watching reruns of our own lives and race towards a reunion, a reconciliation with our own self, with others, and with God, our forgiving Father.
Fourth Sunday of Lent; March 18, 2007
Jos 5:9a, 10-12; 2 Cor 5:17-21; Lk 15:103, 11-32