Fr. Jim preaches on the story of the prodigal son, and how when the son returns home his father doesn’t punish him, but rather he rejoices and celebrates because his son was lost and now is found. Fr. Jim teaches us that we come to God not by gettting it right, we find God by getting it wrong.
Homily Transcript
When I was 16 years old my parents took us kids to the Eastman Theater to see the RPO and before it started we were looking around at the chandelier and the stage and the magnificent space in the Eastman Theater and my mother said, ”Jimmy isn’t it exciting to be here?” And I said to her, “I could care less”. I was being a rude, teenage brat. But I’ll always remember my mother’s response…I’ll always remember it. She didn’t say, “Hey! We spent good money on these tickets. You’d better change your attitude.” Or, she didn’t say, “That’s no way to talk to your mother.” She didn’t say anything. She smiled. And it was a genuine smile. So I realized she wasn’t listening to my rudeness. She wasn’t listening to my disrespect. She was listening to my heart. She knew something was wrong, that I was going through something. She knew I was depressed. I was in pain. I learned a lesson that day: If somebody attacks you they are really calling for love.
In the story today the lost son says something very rude to his father. “Give me my share of inheritance. I want everything that is coming to me.” Who cares about you Dad? It’s about me. Just like Judas said to the priests, “How much will you give me if I turn him in?” Who cares about Jesus? What about me? How much will you give me?
So how does the father respond to this rudeness? We are told the father divided the property between them. Just like my mother. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t say, “Don’t talk to your father like that!” or, “Don’t be rude.” Instead he listened not to his rudeness or his disrespect. He listened to his son’s heart. He knew his son was going through something. He wasn’t happy. He needed to go through some transition. So the father let him go.
You parents know how difficult this is when your child has to leave your care. You know they are going to make mistakes. You know they are going to get hurt. But there is no love without freedom. He lets him go.
After a few days he sets off for a distant country. Can you relate to that? This is really a story about us. All of us have gone to a distant country. We have different names for this: Vision quest, pilgrimage, spiritual journey, voyage to find ourselves, midlife passage.
Actually Jesus did this twice that we know about in his life. That he made a little journey. The first was when he was 12 years old. He abandoned his parents for three days and he is looking for a new reality in his life. Three days he took off to find something, to find himself and when his mother reprimands him on the third day he doesn’t even apologize because he knew he was after something.
The second time he did that was when he was 30 and he spent 40 days in the dessert battling his ego.
So on our spiritual journeys, on our vision quests, there will be similarities. We will all experience risk, fear, uncertainty, darkness, danger. We will confront our demons of ego, self-absorption, pride, negativity. We will struggle with grief, disappointments, wounds, suffering inadequacies and almost certainly we will all experience failure.
So at first things are ok with the lost son. He is young, he is healthy, and he has tons of money. He has a great time. But then he comes to the limits of his resources. He runs out of money. He is starving. He is on empty. Plus there are external factors that he can’t control. It says that there is a famine in the country. Something bad happens to the country. So not only does he have his personal failures, there are circumstances he can’t control. We loose our job. Somebody dies. We get cancer. We get Alzheimer’s. Our spouse divorces us. The son hit bottom.
If you were here a few weeks ago you may have heard that woman from Jennifer House. She gave a testimony about her life. She lived at Jennifer House, which is our home for woman coming out of jail. She thought she could make it on her own so she left Jennifer House. But she hit bottom, she said, on Christmas day. Here it was Christmas, she wasn’t with her family. She is out in a cold garage shooting up on Christmas day. That was her bottom. She called up Jennifer House, she called up Sarah Lee and said, “Come and get me. Bring me home.”
What makes us turn around? Something usually stops us. We get caught in an affair we are having. We develop health problems from overeating. We loose our marriage because of alcohol. We loose our job because of drug abuse. We are fired. Somebody exposes us. Like the Me Too movement. It’s usually nothing noble. We just hit bottom. Our game falls apart. It’s a death before we die. We actually die many times before we finally die. It’s a pattern in our lives. For St. Paul he was struck blind on the road to Damascus. But he had many deaths after that. He was stoned. He was whipped. He was arrested and put in jail, he was ship wreaked. But you know this happened to Paul so many times that he didn’t fear death. He saw it as a passageway. An entry to something else. And actually the final death is not an end. Life is changed. Not ended.
When a monk had his house burned down, his hut, the abbot said, “Don’t worry! This will make dying easier.”
You know I think of that story sometimes like when my computer blows up and I hadn’t back it up…this will make dying easier. Say that to yourself the next time a little problem happens. There are a lot of little deaths before the final death.
So at this point in the story the son is dead. Which is what the father said, “He was dead and has come back to life.” It’s not a permanent death.
Now comes Easter Sunday. He says I will rise. That’s what he said. Get up! I’ll rise and go back to my Father. I’ll go home. Ah! But what if my Father hates me. What if he wants to punish me? What if he wants to banish me?
Alice Walker, a German psychologist, wrote a story about a man who had been abused as a child. His father beat him and beat him for every little mistake. The father wouldn’t even call his son by name. If he wanted him he would whistle at him like you would a dog. Hatred seethed in this boy. But he couldn’t vent it on his father. So he kept it within and he kept nursing and nursing all his life. And then sometime later the son discovered that his father’s father was a Jew and his distorted thinking led him to believe that the Jewish blood was the reason for his father’s bad behavior. The boy’s name was Adolph Hitler. We know the rest of that terrible story.
Unfortunately many of us grew up with fathers that were perhaps abusive. Or absent. Or emotionally disconnected. And we sometimes wonder, “Is God like that too?”
But here in this story Jesus says, “Absolutely not!” Jesus is a loving, compassionate Abba, Daddy. The kind of Daddy we all wanted to have. That’s who God is.
While the son was a long way off the father was filled with compassion and he ran to meet him.
You have heard this before that the only time God runs in the bible is right here. When he runs to welcome the wayward son. We are told in Genesis that he walked with Adam and Eve – He walked in the cool of the evening. But he only runs once. When he comes to welcome somebody home. He loses his dignity. He doesn’t care. His robes are flying. He ignores the fact that his son rejected him. He doesn’t care because he is home! So glad he is home.
The son says, “Father I have sinned against you. I don’t deserve to be called your son.”
Now here is the essential part of the journey that we are on – the journey that all of us are on. Confession, repentance, apology, admission, a failure. AA calls this the fifth step. Catholics call it the sacrament of reconciliation. Which we are going to have a week from tomorrow.
Unless we admit our shortcomings and our faults we are going to project them on somebody else. We are going to blame somebody else for what is wrong here. Unless we totally admit it.
So after he confesses and says I don’t deserve to be called your son. What does the father do?
When I was a young priest, I was stationed in Elmira and I was with a very conservative pastor. I did a lot of stupid things. If this pastor, on Sunday, gave a very conservative talk. I would get up the next Sunday and refute every single thing that he said. It was stupid! After I got thrown out of there, I saw the priest about four months later as a priest gathering. I went up to him and I said, “Eddy, I am so sorry for being an idiot. I was so immature. I really put you through a lot of stuff.” He didn’t say, “I forgive you.” But I remember what he said, “Jim, why don’t you come down to Elmira and stay overnight. We’ll go out to dinner and we’ll have a great time.”
What did the father do to the lost son? He hugs him and he says, “Let’s have a party! Let’s get the music going. Let’s get the fatted calf.” He refuses to shame him. He doesn’t punish him. And this embrace allows the son to let go of his dark side. So that he can walk in the light.
That’s what we mean with the phrase that Jesus takes away the sins of the world. When he holds us he absorbs our mistakes. He lifts our burdens so that we are free. It’s a rebirth.
So this is a story about us. Our spiritual journey. Our vision quest.
You know, people aren’t converted by sermons like this. They are not converted by reading spiritual books. People are converted by suffering. By personal failure. By facing difficult challenges. We go on a journey, we get broken. We come face-to-face with our failures. We let go of our ego, we surrender, we trust, we look to God’s grace. It is only through a broken heart that God can enter. We come to God not by getting it right. We come to God by getting it wrong.
By traveling outward we come to the inner center of our existence. If you are going through a dark time right now, if you are struggling with something just remember that life is a cycle. After the storm comes the calm. After the winter comes the spring. After Good Friday comes Easter. After failure comes forgivesness.
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