March 27, 2022

You may have heard this story before about a well-dressed man who approaches the counter at an airport departure gate without a ticket, and demands to get on the next departing flight. The worker says: “I’m sorry Sir, but that flight is completely full’. Nonetheless, the man keeps insisting, and also asks: “Do you know who I am?” The worker says: “One moment, Sir.” Then she turns on her microphone and says to everyone seated there: “This man does not know who he is -- can anyone help?”

I thought of this with the ‘prodigal son’ from today’s gospel – when he comes to his senses as verse 17 says: “But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!”. William Barclay has an interesting comment about that line ‘Then he came to himself’ & I quote: “Jesus believed that being away from God prevented people from being truly themselves. That was only possible once they were on their way home … he believed that we are never essentially ourselves until we come home to God.”

Barclay also sees this parable as among the greatest short stories ever told, and he thinks it should be called ‘the parable of the loving father’ since the ‘prodigal son’ is not the hero of the story. And when the father finally sees his lost son appearing on the horizon that he’s longingly been examining perhaps every day, the father asks his servants to bring the best robe and a ring and shoes for him. Barclay explains that the robe stands for honour, the ring for authority, and the shoes for a son rather than a slave, since slaves did not wear shoes, but children of the family did wear them.

As the traditional interpretation goes, the elder brother comes in for a lot of scorn in Barclay’s commentary. In recent decades, however, there’s been much empathy for him, and the realization that he represents many of us in the churches, for example – people who’ve worked hard to be right with God … and do not really relish the thought that God would throw a big party for the sinners, while expecting the rest of us to just keep on doing our good work. A previous bishop in another diocese where I worked would sometimes start his sermons with words like this: I speak to you a sinner among sinners, a beloved of God amongst the beloved of God, etc. Made us stop and think. On one level we know this – that we are both sinners and God’s beloved as well. On the other hand, the contemporary Anglican church does not seem to speak much of us as being sinners, and I’m not saying they should, but it bears reflecting upon occasion.

I also found a great commentary on our first reading from Joshua, which on its own sounds so innocent – just a few verses talking about how now that the Israelites had come to the promised land, they no longer needed manna from heaven because “they ate the produce of the land.” This is stated twice in these four short verses, so it sounds like simple gratitude, but as Professor Tyler Mayfield explains:

"Even though this story does not contain the violence often associated with the book of Joshua, it is important to note that the arrival of Israel into the land is both a fulfillment of a promise and the source of great violence for the people who already live in this land. We cannot read these stories as if the land is empty, as if the Israelites found themselves in unoccupied territory that is free for the taking. We must acknowledge the presence of the Canaanites even if they are not explicitly present in today’s story."

Mayfield goes on to discuss the human tendency to see the world in ‘us vs them’ terms, and through that often tribalistic process we protect and prioritize “us” as those for whom God’s choicest blessings should be reserved. And we think of “them” as less important people whose wellbeing does not matter as much as our tribe. It’s an all too common and dangerous human tendency, that we certainly see played out in various so-called ‘theaters of war’ as if the horrendous violence pressed upon the children and families of the “others” or “them” is somehow just collateral damage … that can be excused as armies press ahead to crush and destroy the so-called enemy.

What will it take for humanity to truly live up to an understanding of what the Lakota have called ‘Mitakuye Oyasin’ – All our Relations? That we are all related and therefore we’re all ‘us’ and there’s no ‘them’. Sadly, the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, has many stories of God supposedly telling people to go and kill that other group and steal their land and consume or steal what that land produces. Jesus came to show us such an entirely different version of God. God is that loving father in our gospel story -- straining his eyes every day to look way down the road as far as he could see – in fervent hope that the child who has rejected the parent – will come to their senses and find their way home. May we rejoice in a loving Creator God who cherishes all that, and all whom, they have made. And may we help the world find new ways towards lasting peace, for ALL God’s children, Amen.