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Prodigal Son
from the Eadwine psalter
circa 1150
illumination on parchment
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Our father
– the one in the heavens – gives to us everything. All that we have. All that
we are. Our life. Our freedom. Our being. And, he loves us. He is love – with us.
Sometimes
we think – maybe – well, what’s so great about that? I don’t have much. I don’t
have as much as some of my neighbors do. Sure, they have something to be grateful for – but not me. And so we show
God our face of ingratitude.
Do
you know that look? If you have children, you probably know that look. Because
you know what’s it’s like to give everything to someone – for all that you have
to be theirs. And you know what’s it’s like for them to take it all – and to
take it for granted.
But
you also know, that when they do that, it does not lessen your love for them.
It does not quell in you the warmth of your affection for them – not one
degree.
When
a child says to me, “I hate you” or “I wish you were dead,” it does hurt, but I
know that they do not know what they are saying and so I forgive them – though
sometimes, in my fallenness, it takes a moment. And I go right on loving them
and providing for their needs and also, as I am able, for their wants.
Some of
us know something about what it means to be a loving father or mother, though
none know so well nor love so well as God, our father, who is in the heavens.
All of us, however, are children of a
loving father – the one in the heavens. And so all of us – believe it or not – know
something about being loved.
My
friend Ian Gerdon wrote recently that, “all humans are brought into existence
with two names: Amati (which mean Beloved) and Amandi (which means Ought-to-be-loved).”
We are beloved by God and we ought to be loved by humans. We are
created by love himself, out of his love, for loving, and being loved. While
our first name – which is Beloved – describes our true condition and the ground
of our being, our second name – which is Ought-to-be-loved – describes how we
all should respond to that reality in ourselves and in our neighbor. God loves
us and he calls us to love ourselves and one another.
Sadly,
we do not always love one another.
And, we are not always loved by
others. And, we do not always love
ourselves.
When we
feel unloved, it is always because some human has not loved us as they ought to
have. Sometimes that human is another and sometimes that human is myself – but
the defect or deficit in love is always on the human side and never the
divine.
God’s
love never fails. When we feel unloved, God loves us. When we think that God
does not love us, God loves us. When we do not love God, God loves us. When we
say to God like ungrateful children, “I hate you” or “I wish you were dead,” God
loves us. But we humans do fail to love. And our failings and the failings of
our neighbors can cloud our vision.
Our
neighbors’ and our own unloving thoughts and actions sometimes keep us from
seeing that God our father loves us, that he is with us. We fail to see all
that he has given us. And so we covet after persons, positions, and things that
are not given to us, but given instead to others. Ingratitude and covetousness
are ubiquitous and pernicious. To covet nothing that is our neighbors’ is a
kind of freedom that few of us know.
We are
too often like the ungrateful younger son who says to his father, “Father, give
me the share of property that falls to me.” In the usual course of things, of
course, a son receives his inheritance only after his father has died. So, by
asking for it while his father yet lives, the younger son is in effect saying
to his father, “I wish you were dead.” This is supreme ingratitude. It is a
failure to see that the father already
shares everything with his sons. They are with him always, and all that he has
is theirs.
But that
is not enough for the younger son. Really, he just seems to want his father out
of the picture. Perhaps he mistakes his father’s loving presence for some kind
of oppression or limitation on his freedom. As it turns out, taking his
inheritance and leaving is not gain for the younger son, it is loss. Though he thinks
it will be to his benefit, it is in fact his undoing. He does not know what is good
for him as well as his father does. While he briefly increases his possessions
and pleasures, for that he loses the loving presence of his father, and a
continual sharing in his abundance. His ingratitude leads to the loss even of
what he has.
And the
elder son is ungrateful, too. The two sons are not as different as we might
suppose. The younger son is overt in his ingratitude – taking his inheritance
and leaving. But the elder son’s ingratitude becomes clear when he refuses to
go into the house to celebrate the return of his brother and when he bitterly
says to his father, “you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my
friends.”
The
loving father leaves neither son alone in their ingratitude. When the younger
son comes in sight of his house, his father runs out to meet him. And when the
elder son will not come into the house to the feast, his father goes out to
invite him in. The father goes out to them both.
How like
these two sons we are!
Being
with our father – the one in the heavens – is worth far more than anything we
can gain from the world. But all of us are at times like the younger son. We turn
away from our father and go into the world to try there to sate our passions.
Hopefully, we have learned from this that such squander brings us nothing but
emptiness and ruin. And that it is only in the presence of our loving heavenly
father that we can find peace or rest. So let us who have turned to the razzle
dazzle of covetous worldliness now turn back again to our father. He will run
out to meet us.
Or
sometimes we are like the elder son. We have always remained partly in our
father’s presence – say, by coming often to church – but all the while we try
to hide in our hearts our ingratitude and petty jealousies. Let us let go of
all of that. Our father will come out and entreat us to come in to the feast.
Indeed,
he is even now inviting us into the feast. An antidote to the poison of our
ingratitude is available in this Divine Liturgy: the Eucharist. The word
Eucharist means thanksgiving. Ingratitude, then, is anti-Eucharist. And so, let
us give thanks to our father for all he has given us, above all for his loving
presence in our lives, and approach holy communion with grateful hearts.
