24th Sunday Reflection: Extravagant Gifts For The Unworthy
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – Extravagant Gifts For The Unworthy – 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time – (Luke 15:1-32)
The story of the prodigal son loses its impact because of our western understanding of family, meals, worthiness, sin, and the rights of inheritance.
The story is addressed to the Pharisees and Scribes, members of the establishment who are interpreters and teachers of the law, upholders of tradition, wisdom, and moral codes. Scribes’ knowledge of the law empowered them to draft legal documents, contracts for marriage, divorce, loans, inheritance, mortgages, and the sale of land. Pharisees were also legal experts who followed ‘the traditions of the fathers’.
The Pharisees and scribes are horrified, disgusted, and repelled. Jesus welcomes sinners, he eats with them, at one table, sharing food. Meals were sacred occasions and those who were invited brought blessings to your house and family. Rabbinic regulations forbade eating with ‘sinners’. Eating with sinners defiled you, equated to eating from the same plate as someone suffering contagion. Righteousness came through ritual purity and separation from sinners.
Jesus’ story in response to their reaction could not have been more incendiary.
The younger son first commits a major sin by requesting his inheritance from the father, meaning he really wished his father was dead so he could have his inheritance… collective gasp! A Middle Eastern father at the time would have reacted to this request with an explosion of righteous rage. Instead, the father does the opposite by separating the property and watering down the inheritance… an even louder collective gasp at such reckless foolishness.
The younger son now travels into the hated gentiles’ territory and commits another huge sin… being wasteful. By squandering his portion of his father’s livelihood he loses his family identity and no longer belongs to the family. Could things get any worse? Yes indeed… the defiant younger scoundrel now hires himself out to a local farmer to feed pigs. This is deadly serious. Jesus is piling onto the boy sin after sin where it is impossible for his religion to save him.
He chooses to feed pigs, taboo unclean animals, illegal under Judaic law. The Jews believed devils lived in pigs and the boy, having fed pigs, meant that he was feeding demons.
Things go badly for the young man and he faces starvation. All that is left to the prodigal son and the only thing he brings back to his ‘former’ family’s estate is his great hunger and the hope of working as a servant to fill his belly. It is this hunger rather than any conversion experience that drives him to acknowledge being unworthy.
The recognition and embracing of the defiled ‘dead’ son by his father, now defiles the father in terms of the law. Now also the obedient and toiling elder son who shows his contempt for the wasteful, defiled, and sinful reprobate becomes the outsider to the community celebration… ouch!
How often do we, as leaders, as community, turn away from God’s feast those we consider unprepared, those whom we judge as unworthy? There is so much emptiness, spiritual hunger and so many broken hearts around us. Perhaps we also like the scribes and the Pharisees and the older son, have forgotten that all that is required is an acknowledgement of unworthiness, our emptiness and a pang of hunger for this food at the feast of God? It is God who provides the feast, it is God who raises the fallen, the hungry, the broken-hearted, and it is God who gifts God’s self through the heart of Jesus to us in the Eucharist. This is the gift of Love that comes first, Love that changes everything.
Like the scribes and Pharisees, we have added so many heavy burdens, so much law, so much control, so many disputes, and so many exclusions. From first beginnings, we have piled law upon law so that charity has become secondary, almost an afterthought. Have we become so wise in our own eyes that we have become gatekeepers to this wonderful gift of love? Perhaps we have forgotten that it is Jesus who satisfies our hungry souls. If we have lost our trust in Love that forgives, we no longer trust Jesus to do what he has promised?
When last have I consciously invited somebody to come with me to Jesus, to taste and see that the Lord is Good, to experience compassion, mercy, and forgiveness? Lord as you will, Lord as you know, Have mercy, Have mercy.
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