Homily @ Lent: Loving and Forgiving

 

Year C /  Lent / Week 4 / Sunday 

Readings: Joshua 5.9a,10-12 / Ps 34 (R/v 9a) / 2 Corinthians 5.17-21 / Luke, 15-1-3, 11-32

“The tax collectors and the sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say, and the Pharisees and the scribes complained.”

This is how our gospel reading begins this evening. St Luke describes the eagerness of sinners who want to see Jesus and hear His message. They want to be in his good company. The Pharisees and scribes, on the other hand, complained. 

It’s obvious who we want to identify with in this gospel reading. Isn’t this why we, like those tax collectors and sinners, come to Jesus in this retreat? To find courage to love God, and with God’s love, the courage to love one another as Jesus himself showed? Even more, isn’t this what Jesus is inviting us, once again, to remember and imitate this Lent, and so, reorder our lives from sin? I believe our answers are a ‘yes’ because we know Christian discipleship involves listening to Jesus, and following Him to God, the Father.

Much has been said about the relationship between hearing and life. Consider. Make time to listen. Practice active listening. Put on your listening ears. Tell me your story; I want to hear.  Be present when you’re listening. Listen attentively. Listen carefully.

Yet there are many times when we are not very good at hearing what is being said. Perhaps we have too many distractions.  Perhaps we fear hearing something we don’t want to hear. Perhaps the story we hear is so familiar that we believe we already know its message and there’s nothing more to learn.

But here we are, on retreat, wanting to listen to God and His message for us. So what has God been saying about the theme of our retreat, “The Courage to Love: Walking Together with Jesus as Community”? Now, in the light of Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son, what more might we be hearing about loving in community?

I suspect many of us know this parable too well. We’ve read and prayed about it often. We’ve also heard it proclaimed at Mass and reflected on in homilies and books. That’s why my initial thoughts as I prepared this homily were: “Sure, I know this gospel reading and I know what I should say about its message.” Perhaps, you feel the same way too.

As I prayed to write this homily, I felt a gentle urging from God to listen deeper. And God directed my attention to the Pharisees and scribes taunting Jesus. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they cry.

Rather than focusing on the elder, hard working son who despite doing everything right never gets a party, I was overwhelmed with the joy expressed by the father who sees his wayward son metaphorically come back to life. Indeed, this is a very good reason for a joyful celebration; there is no better.

Indeed, this is the same promise repentance and conversion offer all. It points us to the only place that matters - God’s forgiving and loving embrace.

We hear this same message in St Paul’s letter to Corinthians. Listen again:

And all this is from God,

who has reconciled us to himself through Christ

and given us the ministry of reconciliation,

namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,

not counting their trespasses against them

and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Yes, nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

This is well expressed in the love of the father in the gospel story for both his sons – it is loving and forgiving. Such is God’s love. Jesus tells us this story for us to know it, and to also make it our own way of loving and forgiving. We’re to practise it prodigiously or lavishly for others, especially in community – be it with family and friends, work or school, church and the world. In a manner of speaking, we are to waste all you and I have received in God’s love on someone else, especially those in need. We waste our education, our gifts and talents, our skills and knowledge, even our faith life on others. For their good, not squander these on ourselves selfishly like the younger son who takes, hoards and squanders his inheritance. 

The younger son’s conversion begins when far away from home he honestly recognises his sin and desires to return, saying, “Father, I have sinned; I am not worthy to be your son.” Lent invites us to do the same. This is what repentance and conversion is really about, not more prayer, more fast, more charity. 

It takes courage to recognise our sinfulness, especially towards God and each other. It takes even more courage to be honest and vulnerable and to say, “I have sinned.”  When we do, we allow God to enter more deeply into our lives and change us for better – not just because it is Lent but for every person in our lives, especially those we’ve been hurt by or those we have hurt.

Only then can we really understand why Jesus’ message about the prodigal love of the father is the appropriate response to taunts of the Pharisees and scribes. It is this: we need to have the heart of the father who loves his younger son beyond his sinful wastefulness and his elder son beyond his dutiful but resentful obedience.

Such a heart would help us realise the hope you and I are honestly asking for in this retreat, as well as in Lent. To live and love like Jesus by opening our hearts to everyone.

We can when we choose to trust that this kind of a heart – resembling no other than Jesus’ heart – will draw us into an abiding trust in God’s love. There we will come to know ourselves as God, the Father, knows and loves us: as His beloved, even in our sinfulness.

 

Jesus’ message about the prodigal love of the father is the appropriate response to the taunts of the Pharisees and scribes in today's gospel reading. It is this: we need to have his big heartedness that loves his younger son beyond his sinful wastefulness and his elder son beyond his dutiful but resentful obedience.

Such a heart would help us to realise the hope you and I are honestly asking for in Lent. To live and love like Jesus by opening our hearts to everyone. We can when we choose to trust that this kind of a heart – resembling no other than Jesus’ heart – will draw us into an abiding trust in God’s love. There we will come to know ourselves as God, the Father, knows and loves us: as His beloved, even in our sinfulness.

 

This truth dwells in our hearts as God's love and compassion for all, including those we see, even judge, to be like those tax collectors and sinners. Only when we claim it will we find the courage, even more the mercy, to be Jesus to them. We then can love and forgive them, and truly welcome them back into our lives. When we do, they will “taste and see the goodness of the Lord” that the psalmist sings. They will because we would have prodigiously, lavishly, wasted the love of God in our hearts for them. This is what redemption also looks like. Shall we?

Preached at the Courage SG Lenten Retreat

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash (detail)