The New Man

1992 (Year C) 19 July / Pentecost 6

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

Here’s a thought. In the beginning God created all that is. And behold it was very good. ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ said God, ‘fill the earth and conquer it.’ And then God looked on all he had made. And the world was the way God meant it to be. Truly it was very good.

You can read the story again and again. It is the story of revelation. The revelation of the relationship between God and the world. And it always ends the same. What God created was very good. But one thing was missing. There was no religion in the world. Yet that’s the story God saw that it was good. Then in Genesis chapter 3 we get the first ‘religious’ question in the Bible; ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’ And with that question, the serpent’s question religion entered the Bible and human history. And it’s never left.

Religious questions plagued Jesus wherever he went. ‘Is it right to do this? ... Is it right to do that? ... What must I do to inherit eternal life? In heaven whose wife will she be?’ To almost all of these Jesus gave no clear-cut answer. It seems that if at all possible he wouldn’t be drawn into a ‘religious’ answer. He was concerned to reveal God in creation and his response to religious questions was to tell a story. And the point of telling stories is obvious. It wasn’t to duck the question. It was to let those who heard the story relate more easily to the point. It enables us who hear the stories again and again feel ourselves there. To experience what it’s like for all those who are involved. It let’s us make the connections for ourselves. Above it makes a point simply and ensures that we work out the answer, our response in community.

Now the story that formed the gospel today probably one of the most memorable in the New Testament. The prodigal son and the forgiving father. And forgiveness is a constantly recurring theme of the New Testament. It lies at the heart of the Good News that is to be preached to all nations. It haunts the pages. And it’s probably best captured in essence in the one who goes away and squanders all his father’s money only to come home and face the one who gave him the gift.

Yet ultimately Jesus isn’t talking about a religious question. He is giving a revelation of God in creation. It’s not the religious story of the examination of a young man’s conscience, although that’s there. It’s not about confessing sins by name, although that’s there as well. It’ not about the integrity of confession or mortal and venial sins. Of absolution and satisfaction made for sins. All those things are the things of religion not revelation. What it is, is a story of forgiveness and the celebration and of coming back to life of one who was dead.

When we hear such stories, we make obvious connections. We become the prodigal, being welcomed home by God. We recognise our need of forgiveness as we recall those things we’ve done wrong. Occasionally we recognise ourselves in the brother who stayed at home, and our hardness of heart surprises us. Less often I guess do we imagine ourselves as the father. Yet there are times when we are called to be the father extending forgiveness to others, reaching out and embracing those who have wronged us. That’s necessary as well but much harder to do and I suspect something which we’d rather not think about all that often.

The point I’m trying to make, perhaps not very well, is that these stories are not answers to religious questions. They are much more than that. They reveal God to us and in the revelation they actually ask questions of us. Some of the questions are these –  ‘When was the last time you looked at your life in relationship with God? When was the last time you looked at your life in relationship with your brother and sister? When should you have extended the arms of forgiveness and in reality withheld them? The answers to those questions might just take a little time to sort out. And they will only come if we help each other to discover the answers.

These are not the only divine revelations in the story. There is a least one more. The whole basis of the story is intimacy. Intimacy between the prodigal and his father, before ever the son could speak to the father he ‘had compassion on him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said, ‘Father I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son’. There is intimacy between the son who stayed at home and the father – enough for them to a share that son’s pain and hurt and sense of rejection. The intimacy between these three characters mirrors that which exists between the three persons in the Godhead. It serves as encouragement and goal for us, the children of God.

Intimacy. This is to be one of the hallmarks of all our relationships. This is one of the things which will mark us out as Christians for it’s actually a revelation of the God we proclaim. Each and every one of us is invited into the intimacy of the divine feast where with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit we will offer praise as is most justly due through all eternity. AMEN