The Sánchez Archives TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME Year C

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Calling All Prodigals!

EXODUS 32:7-11, 13-14
1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17
LUKE 15:1-32

Just after 8 a.m. on March 16, 1985, Terry Anderson, the Chief Middle East Correspondent for the Associated Press was kidnapped off the street in Moslem west Beirut. In that moment, he began a journey which would lead him to teeter on the precipice of despair and soar to the heights of a new-found faith. During his first few weeks of confinement, Anderson was deprived of food, slapped, punched, kicked, cursed at and spit upon. With his legs and arms chained to a metal cot, he felt that he was, as he said, “on the edge of madness, of losing control completely, of breaking down.” From the edge of madness he began to plead with his captors; his request for a Bible was granted and in that moment, he began the journey that would lead him back to God.

In his book, Den of Lions (Crown Publishers, Inc., New York: 1993), Anderson chronicled that journey, acknowledging that he had “lost his way for a while, was not a good man - chasing women, drinking.” Having left the church when he was young, he leaned toward agnosticism for several years. By the time he had marked his fifth month in captivity, Anderson realized that it had been twenty-five years since he had admitted his weaknesses and failures via sacramental reconciliation. When the opportunity to do so arose, he was grateful: For Anderson, opportunity came in the person of Father Lawrence Jenco, a Catholic priest and fellow hostage. As they sat together on the floor, Jenco’s warm smile and kindly manner enabled Anderson to ask God for forgiveness. “I have sinned,” he admitted, “in word and in thought, in what I have done and what I have not done.” With his hand resting lightly on Anderson’s head, Father Jenco assured him, “In the name of a gentle loving God, you are forgiven.” Then he pulled the younger man’s head to his shoulder and hugged him. Both men were crying as one received the full flood of the other’s anger, guilt and remorse and returned only warmth, love and understanding. Although he would not be free to return home to the U.S. for another seven years, Anderson had already found his way home to God and the freedom of forgiveness. Secure in that experience, he also found therein the spiritual strength and stamina that enabled him to survive the remainder of his captivity.

In today’s gospel, the gathered assembly is invited to consider the homecoming of another survivor, whose sinfulness had caused him to lose his way and whose father’s love had drawn him home. While the prodigal son was not a hostage in the political sense, as was Terry Anderson, he had allowed himself to be taken hostage by his own rebellious will. When, at last, he sought to be freed of his own misdeeds he was welcomed home without question and without criticism by a father who rejoiced over him in love. However, Jesus’ parable also featured another brother, who, by his refusal to rejoice at his younger brother’s return, proved himself to be prodigal as well. Held hostage by the smallness of his heart, the elder brother resented his father’s generosity. In his self-righteous indignation, the Pharisees and scribes, to whom the parable was addressed, were challenged to recognize a mirror image of themselves. In the joyous homecoming experience of the younger son, the tax-collectors and sinners, who had also gathered to hear Jesus’ teaching, were to find the promise of a forgiving welcome by God.

In today’s second reading, the author of 1 Timothy shares the experience of Paul who recognized that he had wandered from the truth and rejoiced in having been found by God. He had known the path of the self-righteous prodigal and had allowed himself to be taken hostage by too narrow and legalistic a view of salvation. By God’s grace he had come to understand the largesse of the divine heart and became its champion, preaching the good news of God’s unconditional love, calling every prodigal home.

Today, all who celebrate God’s love may, at various times in their lives, have reason to identify with Paul or with one or the other of the two prodigal sons. Through every season of our spiritual journey, we are assured that the God whose love has brought us into being is ready and waiting to celebrate our return home.

EXODUS 32:7-11, 13-14

At first reading, and given its literary context, this excerpted narrative, in which the Exodus author detailed the prodigality of Israel, is quite surprising and even a little shocking. So soon after having entered into a covenant relationship with Yahweh (Exodus 19) and while they were still in the initial fervor of their “spiritual honeymoon”, how could the people so easily stray? Moreover, how could poor escapees from Egypt, who had to flee for their lives so quickly that they did not even have time to wait for their bread to rise (Exodus 12:33-34). . . how could they possible have accumulated enough gold jewelry to fashion a molten calf. Elsewhere in Exodus the ancient author hinted at an explanation by telling his readers that the Egyptians had foisted articles of gold and silver upon the departing Israelites (Exodus 12:35-36). This might account for the “How” of the golden calf but does not offer a reasonable or logical solution as to the 7”Why?” this transgression occurred. A consensus of scripture scholars suggests that the key to understanding this episode lies in asking the question, “When?”

Most agree that the apostasy of the golden calf actually took place at a later time in our saving history, viz., during the tenth century B.C.E. reign of Jeroboam I. First king of the northern kingdom of Israel, Jeroboam set up two golden calves in the sanctuaries of Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:28). Images of bulls and/or calves had been worshipped in the ancient world for at least three centuries prior to Jeroboam’s tenure as king. In Egypt, the god Apis was so depicted as was Ba’al in Canaan. Among the Israelites, the fabrication and worship of the golden calf was not so much a deliberate deviation to idolatry as it was a desire to visibly represent Yahweh. Such representation was, of course, forbidden according to the terms of God’s covenant with Israel (Exodus 20:4).

The fact that this later transgression was anachronized, i.e., transferred back into the Exodus narrative, as well as the attention given this event by the ancient author (three chapters!), serve only to underscore its significance. Brevard S. Childs (The Book of Exodus, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia: 1974) has suggested that this incident illustrates that at the heart of sacred tradition lies Israel’s disobedience and rebellion. “Not an incidental straying, the golden calf is representative and characteristic of humankind’s penchant for prodigality, just as God’s acquiescence to Moses mediation was representative and characteristic of the divine penchant for mercy and forgiveness.

With this incident, believers are put in touch with the rhythm of sin and forgiveness which pervades the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Whenever, and however God’s loving overtures and invitations to relationship are met with human arrogance or turned aside by human sin, God will nevertheless remain a receptive and attentive parent, partner, and provider. By virtue of this belief, every prodigal son and daughter can take heart and find hope.

1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17

One of the principal proponents of what has been called liberation theology, Peruvian scholar Gustavo Gutiérrez has suggested that prodigality, or sin, is not to be considered as a individual, private, merely interior reality - asserted just enough to necessitate a ‘spiritual’ redemption which does not challenge the order in which we live. Sin is to be regarded as a social, historical fact, the absence of brotherhood and love in relationships among men, the breach of friendship with God and with other men” (sic). Paul, whose conversion to Christ is described in this pericope from 1 Timothy, understood that his own foray into sin and his subsequent experience of forgiveness had a profound effect not only on himself but also on the world in which he lived. For this reason he told and retold his story, thereby intending to offer to everyone who would listen a challenge to conversion. Centuries before Gutiérrez, the apostle to the gentiles realized that his own turning to Christ could become both the voice that would call others to forgiveness and the vehicle that would facilitate their coming home to God.

Classified among the Pastoral Letters (along with 2 Timothy and Titus), the pseudonymous letter known as 1 Timothy was probably written toward the end of the first or early in the second Christian century by a Pauline disciple who was familiar with his/her mentor’s teachings and sympathetic to his concerns. Addressed to Timothy, who was described by Paul as a brother and fellow servant in the gospel of Christ (1 Thessalonians 3:2) and as a beloved and faithful child (1 Corinthians 4:17; 16:10-11), this pastoral letter affords its readers a glimpse into the life and ministry of the evolving church. As Pheme Perkins ( Reading the New Testament, Paulist Press, New York: 1988) has explained, the pastoral epistles met the crisis of creating a community structure which could maintain itself and its tradition long after the apostle founders had passed from the scene. Though many of the specific rules detailed in the pastorals have been dropped or modified, the basic model for installing persons in specific ministries have continued to this day.

Paul’s own call to the ministry had been extended to him during this conversion experience en route to Damascus. From that point onward, the two events were inseparably intertwined, such that his preaching of the gospel was grounded in a personal experience of Christ and in the salvific power of his presence. Paul was fond of comparing his life before Christ with his life after his Damascus experience. Like John Newton, the eighteenth century C.E. composer of Amazing Grace, Paul would declare his past openly. . . “I once was lost”. . . “I once was a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man filled with arrogance” (v. 13). He was humble enough to hold himself forth as a bad example as well as a good example, always careful to credit the power of God’s amazing grace for his transformation. Portraying himself as “the worst of sinners” and “an extreme case” (vv. 15, 16), Paul invited others to marvel at the mercy of God and therein to find hope and help for dealing with their own need for conversion.

Today’s second reading ends with an eruption of praise before the mystery of God’s loving goodness. With Paul, every forgiven and transformed prodigal can rejoice in offering the only God of us all honor and glory forever and ever! Amen!

LUKE 15:1-32

In his novel, Cry the Beloved Country (1948), South African educator, author and reluctant politician, Alan Paton, told the story of a father and son in Johannesburg. The boy had strayed to what Winston Churchill had called “that alien land where standards and ideals are lost” (A Far Country). Desperate to find his lost son, the father searched the entire city, street by street. Relentlessly, tirelessly, he traveled from reform school to Shanty Town, to the jail, inquiring of everyone he met until, at last, he found his wandering boy and brought him home. Like the loving father featured in today’s gospel, he did not reproach his son but rejoiced in the fact of their reunion. How many of us can claim a similar generosity? How often are the remorseful among us met with the welcome which the prodigal received? Do not the words, “I told you so!” trip too easily off the righteous tongue? Fully cognizant of our shortcomings and of our tendency to measure the ways of God against our lesser human standards, the Lucan Jesus puts us in touch yet again with the graciousness and tender mercies of God.

Comprised of a triplet of parables, this pericope focuses on a series of lost items which most of Jesus’ listeners would not have troubled themselves to retrieve. Logic would seem to dictate that it would be foolish to leave 99 sheep in order to search for a stray or that it would not be worthwhile to clean an entire house to find one lost coin. More importantly, what logical person would add insult to injury by pining after a prodigal and profligate child who had willingly broken his ties with his own and then brought disgrace upon himself and dishonor to his family name? But this assault on human logic is precisely the point of these three Lucan parables, each of which was intended to communicate the manner in which God deals with sinners, viz., with a love that defies logic.

Careful readers of this gospel will notice that it is woven together by a series of three statements, each of which affirms the depth of God’s love and assures sinners of a ready welcome home. In verses 7, 10, and 32, the Lucan evangelist underscores his point that when the lost are found, i.e. when those who are dead in sin come to life, there is great rejoicing in heaven! As Luke Timothy Johnson (The Gospel of Luke, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville: 1991) has explained, these verses stand as a direct rebuke to the grumbling of the scribes and Pharisees concerning Jesus’ receptivity to the lost among God’s people; they should be joining in the celebration!

Through the attitude and behavior of the prodigal, the Lucan Jesus was also offering a lesson to sinners. According to the law (Numbers 36:7-9), a father could legally abdicate or dispose of his property by making a will; the eldest son would have received two-thirds of the property and the remaining sons (in this case, the remaining son), would have divided the other third (Deuteronomy 21:17). However, the father would continue to own and manage his property, the division and dispersal of which would not take place until he died. By asking for his share while his father lived, the younger son was, in effect, treating his father as if he were already dead. Obviously, such an action was a complete contradiction of the commandment: “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12).

Besides disavowing his father and familial responsibilities, the younger son also severed ties with his homeland and his faith. The distant land (v. 12) to which he traveled was obviously in gentile territory; Jews would not have kept pigs (v. 15) as these were classified among the unclean animals (Leviticus 11:7; 14:8). Having sunken to the depths of economic, spiritual and moral depravity, the prodigal finally “came to his senses” (v. 17); in other words, he assessed his situation and decided to go home. Even though “his initial motive was not particularly lofty (the desire to be better fed, v. 17) the confession he planned to make was a classic. He expressed sorrow not for what he had lost but for what he had done: he had sinned” (Leon Morris, Luke, Intervarsity Press, Leicester, England: 1988).

Nevertheless, when he returned to his father and confessed his sin, “against God and against you” (v. 18), and when he suggested his own punishment (“treat me like one of your hired hands.” v. 19), he was not allowed to wallow in the luxury of self-imposed guilt. His father’s love was so overwhelmingly transforming that he was compelled to stand in the truth of what he had done and accept that he was totally unworthy, yet fully blessed and forgiven. Although the gift of his complete restoration to his former status as son was unexpected and undeserved, might it not also have seemed a burden more difficult to bear than reproach? Such a gift required that the prodigal and every prodigal who hears this parable face the daily challenge which is integral to such radical and free forgiveness; such a gift requires that the forgiven also be forgiving.

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