Politicians name things trying to shape how you think about them. When some in Congress were doing away with inheritance taxes which were designed so that the children of multi-millionaires earned wealth instead of just receiving it, they called it a “death tax.” The Republican National Committee showed a picture of Judge Jackson during her hearing for the Supreme Court with her initials were crossed out and replaced with “CRT” meaning critical race theory. Instead of referring to the Affordable Care Act opponents called it Obamacare. Of course the most famous attempt to define by naming occurs in discussing abortion: are you pro-Choice or pro-Life? All of which says, you have to do some work to get underneath the name and see the real issue.
The same can be true when you read the Bible. For example, today’s gospel from St. Luke is traditionally called, you all know it, the ‘prodigal son,” right? My guess is that this is the most popular of all the parables of Jesus with poets and painters as well as preachers dealing with the subject matter. The problem comes in that the parable is not about a prodigal son, or at least not primarily about a prodigal son. It is really about a loving father. Did you hear how Jesus begins the parable: “A man had two sons.” So you really should not concentrate on the prodigal, which is to say the wasteful, son. You can’t even have as your focus both the elder and the younger sons. To understand the parable as Jesus spoke it you have to keep your attention on the father of the two sons. Let’s re-name this parable “My Two Sons.”
You can imagine the father, let’s call him Mr. TwoSons, thinking: I love that younger son of mine but he is a piece of work. After blowing through his inheritance and finding out he only had friends as long as he had money he got a job but didn’t like saying “you want fries with that” all day. So he comes home crying crocodile tears. “Don’t worry about me, daddy dearest, I’ll just sleep on the couch in the basement if you give me a job.” So add slacker to being is a user and manipulator and wanna be play-ah. I don’t buy his act one bit but, what can I say, he’s my boy and I love him so I welcomed him back. That, of course, caused trouble with my older boy who is always looking out for #1. Instead of seeing his long-lost brother with compassion he judges him in terms of dollars and cents. What is his coming back costing me? I love this son too but I don’t know how to get him to think with his heart instead of his pocket book. I love both my boys and don’t want to get back my lost son only to lose my other son.
Jesus tells that story so we will see how Mr. TwoSons acted as God acts. Jesus wants us to understand that even though we are a mess, God is always searching for us and wants us to feel that we are part of the family of God, that we belong. If you think about it the need to belong lies at the heart of so much of the difficulty we have in the world today. We as a nation are going through political turmoil because large parts of the population don’t feel like they belong to other parts. City vs. rural, coastal vs. heartland, educated elite vs working class, conservative vs. liberal, affluent vs. poor, immigrant vs. native – we as a country need to discover, or re-discover, that these diversities do not need to divide us but instead can enrich our identity since we all belong together. Or take the way racism tries to make it seem that this group belongs only with themselves over there and the other group only belongs to themselves over here. The race that we all belong to is the human race no matter what our skin or hair looks like. There isn’t any “them” and “us” – there’s only “us.” And isn’t the environmental catastrophe looming before us because we have forgotten we belong in creation and are not above it. Since we belong in the world we need to take care of it and nurture it and develop it and support it. When human beings don’t acknowledge that we belong in the circle of life we become part of the cycle of death.
Let’s not forget, too, that creating a sense of belonging is a very important chore that we have as Church. Too frequently churchy people make how you behave a pre-condition for seeing whether you belong or not. That politician doesn’t have the right opinion about Church teaching. He doesn’t belong. That couple has experienced the sadness of a broken relationship before they found each other. They don’t belong. Those people over there have a different sexual orientation. They can’t belong. And those youngsters dress funny and act irresponsibly. How can they belong? All of which seems clean counter to how the Father TwoSons acted. He didn’t wait for the boys to apologize. He didn’t expect them to say “I’ll never do it again.” He didn’t demand a change in lifestyle. He welcomed them with all their flaws. He assured them they belonged, they were part of the family. He looked beyond their fault and saw their need, as an old song puts it. As part of our conversion in renewing our church we must make sure that we let everyone know that they belong, no pre-conditions, no prerequisites. Since there isn’t anyone out there who isn’t a child of God, all are welcome in this place. Pope Francis has challenged the Church to think of itself as a field hospital where the only entrance requirement is that you need healing and wholeness. We all belong in such a Church as that.
