Week 24 (Year B) Sunday

Readings: Isaiah 50:5-9; Psalm 114; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35

 We often come back to this moment in the course of the liturgical year: 'who do you say that I am?', 'you are the Christ', 'he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly', 'get behind me Satan', 'whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me'. It is right that we should re-visit this moment regularly. It is a crucial moment in the public ministry of Jesus, a turning point between two great acts of the drama. It is literally 'crucial' for this is where he speaks about the cross for the first time. But it is crucial in every other sense of the term: a crossroads, a critical moment of decision and commitment, a defining moment in which things move radically on to a different level, essential for understanding Jesus and His work.

Up to now he has been the popular preacher, healer and exorcist, much in demand, teaching nice things, telling very good stories, and working pleasing miracles. Who would not be in favour of someone who provides what he does, freely, generously, and with no strings attached?

But now things become more complicated and he struggles to convince even his closest followers. It is not that his mission has changed. He continues to be a teacher, healer and exorcist. But the healing of the world's wound, the casting out of its demons, convincing the world of its predicament and its solution: all of this is much harder than the first act of the drama seems to imply.

He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things. That teaching will not be complete until we see his good work and its meaning, his death and resurrection. It is a teaching that requires not just instruction but also initiation. Jesus now moves between the disciples and the crowd and those disciples closest to him and Peter whose paradoxical understanding of Jesus is the paradigm of all our misunderstandings of Jesus. We want him, of course, he is the Christ, and we want his work of loving and healing the world. But the problems which require that this work of loving and healing takes the way of the cross are the same problems which prevent us from understanding why that must be so. It seems unfortunate and unnecessary, this death for our salvation. It seems, perhaps, exaggerated and fanatical, to allow oneself to be cornered in the way he did. How can a loving God require such a thing, what sort of strange divinity demands this kind of sacrifice and suffering?

In asking such questions we are merely filling out Peter's question to which Jesus reacts so strongly: 'you are thinking not as God but as human beings do'. We must seek, then, to have the mind of Christ if we are to have any hope of understanding love's necessities. The loving servant of the Lord, who does not rebel or turn back, who gives his back to those who beat him, is not cowardly or weak in doing this. The face that is buffeted and spat upon is also set like flint. He knows he will not be put to shame but will be upheld by God who is his help. By his works he shows us his fidelity. By his works he shows us that he is serious about what he teaches. We ought, yes, to trust God completely, even into death, and so into any dark and bitter experience that is less than death.

Inevitably we fall back into thinking as human beings do: it is very difficult for us to do otherwise. We continue to translate Christ and his teaching and his work back into terms that seem reasonable in our way of thinking. But we are called beyond that, to think as God thinks, to know as God knows, to allow ourselves be initiated into the mysteries of divine love. Then the principle that 'whoever loses his life for Christ saves it' is simply common sense, as clear as day in the kingdom Love rules. We will never get our heads around this by logical thinking alone. It is only by following Christ on the way of the cross, allowing his Spirit to illuminate our suffering and our prayer, that we begin to learn his wisdom (which is folly to any merely human way of thinking) and to live by his strength (which is weakness to any merely human way of thinking).

Week 24 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Sirach 27:30-28:7 [27:33-28:9]; Psalm 103; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35

This Sunday’s readings challenge two pieces of popular wisdom. The first is that a person who has had a particular negative experience will automatically be sympathetic and understanding towards another person having a comparable experience. Much pastoral care and counselling support operates on this basis and it seems reasonable. We expect that those who have experienced a particular loss or anxiety will be better placed to help others undergoing that loss or feeling that anxiety.

But the servant in the gospel parable has no sympathy for the man who owes him money even though his own creditor had just released him from a much greater debt. His action is astonishing to those looking on and it remains astonishing to us, to the point where we may well be unmoved by the torture to which he is subjected at the end. We might even find ourselves rejoicing in that torture and saying ‘well good enough for him’.

And here is the wonderful trap set by this parable, because we then find ourselves behaving as he did. Who is he except a character in a story with a fictional debt, and who are we except real sinners who have been released by God from a real debt, the consequence of our sins. We might imagine the wicked servant turning his head on the rack, looking towards us with bloodshot eyes, and saying ‘so you think you are different from me? Which of you, even though you have been released by God from the debt of your sins, has not sometimes refused to forgive others, has not borne grudges and nursed hurts, has not manoeuvred to get away with things yourself while calling others strictly to account?’

The other piece of popular wisdom challenged by the readings is that human beings make progress by forgiving and forgetting. Once again it seems reasonable, the advice often offered to people who cannot leave behind some sad experience or painful betrayal: ‘try to forgive and forget, you’ve got to move on and not allow this thing to continue to poison your life’. But the readings today tell us that forgiveness is possible not by forgetting the past but by remembering it, by remembering more about the past, and by remembering our present situation, and by remembering our future destiny. If popular wisdom says ‘forgive and forget’, biblical wisdom, coming to a climax in Christ, says ‘remember and so learn forgiveness’.

The wicked servant’s colleagues are astonished that he could so quickly forget the mercy he had been shown. If you or I find it difficult to forgive somebody, then we can begin here, by remembering the times we have been forgiven. The first reading, from the Book of Sirach, begins its teaching about forgiveness from this point. It is not reasonable to expect forgiveness and mercy if you are not prepared to show them. It is absurd to continue to ask mercy of God if you are not prepared to show mercy to others. We need to remember at least that much.

But there are other things we ought to remember as we try to forgive. Remember the end of your life, Sirach says, remember destruction and death. How will it seem looking back, we can imagine him saying, if you have not been able to find a way to forgive. Perhaps he is also reminding us of the judgement, that each of us must give an account of himself to God and where will we be then, anxious to be forgiven but not understanding what forgiveness means because we have not practised it ourselves.

Remember the commandments, Sirach continues, and remember the covenant of the Most High. ‘Do this in memory of me’, Jesus says at the last supper. Remember the covenant of the Most High, the new and everlasting covenant, sealed not by a (fictional) heartless servant stretched on the rack, but by the (real) Son of God nailed to the cross. If you want to learn forgiveness remember how the human heart of the Eternal Word was pierced. Remember how that blood dissolved the walls of hostility between people and established peace. It is not a case of forgiving and forgetting. It is a case of remembering, remembering many things, and so learning what forgiveness means.

Those who believe in Jesus are to be ambassadors of forgiveness in the world, and messengers of reconciliation. But forgiveness is not easy to do and the capacity to forgive is not one that is wilfully achieved. No matter how powerful we consider our willpower to be we cannot force ourselves into forgiveness. In the end it is a gift from God as Alexander Pope intimated in his famous comment that ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’. Perhaps it is not strictly speaking something we ‘do’ but something we find ourselves capable of experiencing, a fruit of the Holy Spirit in us, a sign of the life of Christ in us, a participation in the divine nature, a way of relating to others in which we find ourselves (by God’s grace) becoming compassionate as the Heavenly Father is compassionate.

Week 24 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 15:35-37, 42-49; Psalm 56; Luke 8:4-15

Some parts of the west of Ireland have become overrun with gunnera tinctoria. It is called either Chilean rhubarb or giant rhubarb and has spread like wildfire in places, forcing out the indigenous shrubs and bushes. It produces seed pods by the thousand which explains of course why it has been able to spread so quickly. It has also, it seems, found lots of favourable soil in which to flourish.

Nature is not mean when it comes to seeds. Flowers and animals produce them by the thousands, even by the millions, with extravagance and what might seem like recklessness. There is a profound desire somewhere that nature should continue, that what is alive should increase and multiply and fill the earth

The first meaning of the famous parable of the sower is simply this then: as in nature, so in the dissemination of the Word of God. It is freely available, shared extravagantly and recklessly, cast upon the earth here, there and everywhere, preached to people everywhere, public, free, available.

Often the interpretation Jesus gives is taken to refer to different kinds of people but it might be more true to understand it to refer to four different moments in anybody's reception of the Word. All hear the Word, nobody is deaf to it, not even those represented by the stones. At different times and in different circumstances we who have heard the Word relate to it as if we were stones, or thorn bushes, or pathways, or good soil.

There are obviously also two different meanings of the term 'life' and two different terms are used in the gospels. One is the kind of life (zoe) God wants for His creatures, the life he gives to all things by his spirit,  the life he wants his human creatures to have in all its fulness. And there is another kind of life (bios) whose cares and riches and pleasures prove too much of a distraction for us and take us away from our service of the Word of God.

The call of Jesus to us is to allow the Word find its way to our life in its deepest sense so that we are not just existing but living, so that we are not just living biologically as if we were only animals, but are living spiritually also, living the life not just of the first Adam but of the last Adam, a life that takes us beyond what we can imagine might be possible for us.

The different moments of our relationship with the Word of Life require different kinds of pruning. There are struggles to be engaged, things to be learned, insights to be painfully gained. So it must be, for all living things, they must learn to live in their environment. If we are to live in the environment that is called the kingdom of God then it can only be by receiving his Spirit which prepares the ground of our hearts, making them to be good and honest places where fruit is brought forth in patience.

Week 24 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; Psalm 51; 1 Timothy 1;12-17; Luke 15:1-32

'A man had two sons' is almost as familiar as 'once upon a time'. Jesus' story of the prodigal son, which begins with these words, is one of the greatest stories ever told. I was introduced to it in school as the parable of the prodigal son. Later a clever scripture scholar taught me that it was more accurately described as the parable of the prodigal father. In a third moment I heard it preached about as the parable of the elder brother, that he is the key figure in the story. And one year I heard a preacher, perhaps a bit desperate for a fresh angle on it, describing it as the parable of the unsuspecting calf. That's probably not going to be a runner as, indeed, neither was the poor calf!

All three human characters are important and teach us something about ourselves, about our relationships with others, and about God.

The younger son is the best known character in the story, the one who is anxious to leave home and go away, have a good time and see the world. His request for his inheritance says to his father, in effect, 'it's time you were dead': give me my inheritance, let's read the will now. One can imagine the kind of wound that must be to a father and yet he lets him go. The son's departure is a radical rejection of 'home'. In his eagerness to be gone, to have new experiences and find something more sophisticated and more exciting than what he has been given at home, the younger son had become insensitive to the love of his father.

Worse is to follow as he wastes what he has been given, falls on hard times and finds himself reduced to looking after pigs, hungering even to share their food. It is difficult to imagine anybody sinking lower. He is completely lost, his plans and dreams in tatters round his feet, adrift in an alien and foreign land.

But, the gospel tells us, 'he came to himself'. What does this mean? It is the turning point of his story and so is worth pondering. Henri Nouwen, meditating on Rembrandt's painting of the return of the prodigal, interprets it to mean 'he remembered whose son he was'. He remembered his father. He is unable to claim anything more from his father who has already given him his share of the inheritance. All he can stand on is the fact that he is his son. He feels unworthy now to be counted as his father's son but conceives the hope that his father will take him back as a servant in the household. So he takes the long journey home, long at least in terms of the moral courage required.

While some people will find it easy to identify with the rake, the younger son, others may well see themselves in the older one and sympathise with his position. After all he has been working hard for his father. He stayed with him at home, tried to do his best, looked after the family property. We can understand his dismay when the wastrel comes home, having destroyed a goodly portion of the family's property, and the father welcomes him back like a hero and throws a great feast in his honour.

The elder brother has the more difficult task if he is to come home to his brother in spite of resentment and bitterness. He refuses to join the party. He cannot enter into that joy. There is a great tragedy here as a good person finds himself alienated from home, struggling with things from which it is more difficult to be converted. we are not told whether the elder son was able to make the journey required of him. In the context in which the story is told, he represents the Pharisees and scribes who are murmuring at Jesus receiving sinners and eating with them. We know that some of them at least were not able to enter into Jesus' way of understanding God's salvation and we know the price that Jesus was asked to pay in order to convince the elder brother.

The father appeals to the elder son to come to himself, in other words to remember whose son and brother he is. In referring to the prodigal as 'this son of yours' the elder brother disowns him and, in effect, disowns his father also. In reply the father reminds him that it is his brother who was dead and is alive. Like his younger brother, the elder son needs to remember who he is, where he belongs, where home is. He must let go of rivalry, acknowledge the reach of his father's love, and be grateful for it if he is ever to share in the common joy, the 'sound of angels cheering' as a sinner repents and returns to the household.

The story has an open ending and we are not told what the elder brother said or did next. In Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity there is a space at the front of the picture and a place set at the table for us, the ones looking at it. Perhaps this parable does the same in literary form, ending with the eyes of the characters on us who have up to now been looking at them. How am I, how are you, to be reconciled with your father and your brother, with your mother and your sister? The story of the prodigal son and the elder brother does not end on a page of the gospel text but in the life of each of us as we struggle with difficulties similar to theirs.

The third character in the story is the father, old and, in Rembrandt's painting, almost blind, but full of compassion, watching out for his son and rushing to meet him before he arrives at the house. He represents for us the heart of God, which is rich in mercy and open to all equally. This is the first and everlasting love which has brought us into being and which sustains us in all our ways even when those ways involve journeys through selfishness and ruin, through resentment and bitterness. We may see ourselves in one of the sons. We may even see ourselves in both. But we are called to see ourselves also in the father, to live from the nature which He has shared with us, becoming merciful, as he is merciful.

Week 24 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32

A Man Had Two Sons ...

... thus begins one of the greatest stories ever told, that of the prodigal son. It is sometimes now called the story of the prodigal father or even the story of the elder brother. All three characters are important and teach us something essential about ourselves, about our relationships with others and about God.

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest and writer in spirituality, died some years ago. One of his last works was a long meditation on the parable of the prodigal son using the text of Luke 15 and a painting by Rembrandt, ‘The Return of the Prodigal’, now in St Petersburg. (Nouwen’s book is entitled The Return of the Prodigal Son. A Story of Homecoming, and was published by Darton, Longman and Todd in 1992.)

The younger son is the best known character in the story, the one who is anxious to leave home and go away and have a good time and see the world. His request for his inheritance says to his father, in effect, ‘it’s time you were dead’. One can imagine the kind of wound that must be to a father. Yet he lets him go. The son’s departure is a radical rejection of ‘home’. In his eagerness to be gone he has become deaf to the voice of love.

Worse is to follow as he wastes what he has been given, falls on hard times and finds himself—horror of horrors for a Jew—reduced to looking after pigs. Worse still is his hunger to eat even what the pigs were eating. It is difficult to imagine anybody sinking lower. He is completely lost, his plans and dreams in tatters round his feet (like his shoes in Rembrant’s painting), adrift in an alien and foreign land.

But ‘he came to himself’. What does this mean? It is the turning point of his story and so is worth pondering. Nouwen interprets it as meaning ‘he remembered whose son he was’. He remembered his father. He is unable to claim anything more from his father who has already given him his share of the inheritance. All he can stand on is the fact that he is the son. It is true he has messed up his life. He feels unworthy to be counted now as his father’s son but perhaps the father will take him back as a servant in his household. And so he takes the long journey home, ‘long’ at least in terms of the moral courage it required.

Some people will find it easy to identify with the rake, the younger son. I suspect, though, that more of us see ourselves in the older one and sympathise with his position. After all he has been working hard for his father, stayed with him, tried to do his best, looked after the family property ... and when this wastrel comes home, having destroyed a goodly portion of the family’s property, the father welcomes him back like a hero and throws a great feast in his honour!

The elder brother has the more difficult task, to try to ‘come home’ to his brother in spite of resentment and bitterness. He refuses to join the party. He cannot enter into that joy. There is a great tragedy here, a good person finds himself alienated from ‘home’, struggling with things from which it is more difficult to be converted. We are not told whether the elder son was able to make the journey required of him. Perhaps this is because the story is addressed also to us and presents us with this question: are you to be reconciled with your father and brother, with your mother and sister? The story of the elder son does not end on a page of the gospel text but in the life of each of us as we struggle with similar difficulties.

We are told that the father appealed to the elder son to ‘come to himself’. Disowning his brother (and father?) the elder son refers to the prodigal as ‘your son’. In reply the father refers to him as ‘your brother’. Like his brother, the elder son needs to remember who he is, where he belongs, where ‘home’ is. He must let go of rivalry, learn to trust, be grateful, and share in the common joy, the ‘sound of angels cheering’ as a sinner repents and returns to the household.

The third character in the story is the father, old and, in Rembrandt’s painting, almost blind, but full of compassion, watching out for his son and rushing to meet him before he arrives at the house. He represents for us the heart of God which is rich in mercy and open to all equally, the first and everlasting love which has brought us into being and sustains us in all our ways even when those ways involve journeys through selfishness and ruin, through resentment and bitterness. We may see ourselves in one of the sons (or in both). But we must also come to be like the father, ‘compassionate as our heavenly father is compassionate’.