Our Fall Into Amazing Grace

To the church in the diaspora[1]

& to the church of the unchurched[2]

March 18, 2007, Fourth Sunday of Lent

Joshua 5:9a, 10-12 II Corinthians 5:17-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Introduction

The second greatest parable

In my book the mother of all parables is the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10: 25-37). After that comes the Parable of the Prodigal Son—a story about a younger son who takes his inheritance, goes off to a foreign land, spends his money freely, is reduced to feeding swine for a living and then repents. He returns home and falls into the arms of a gracious father who fetches a rich robe to cover his son’s body and a ruby ring to adorn his finger and soft sandals to comfort his calloused feet, as an older son looks on and pouts ( Lk 15: 1-32).

Parables about the human journey

Both of these scriptural gems are stories about the human journey. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is about a Samaritan journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho. He comes upon a man waylaid by robbers who is in great need of the Samaritan’s compassion. But that parable is also about the Samaritan who needs his own compassion even more than the victim waylaid by robbers does, for it is the Samaritan’s compassion that makes him be who he is: a human being.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is also a story about the human journey--your journey and mine--which twists and turns and runs into dead ends and cul-de-sacs. A journey on which we all get lost sooner or later and have to find ourselves. A journey on which we all make a few bad turns (some of which are irreversible) and commit a few big whoppers which call for repentance and a journey back home to the father’s house.

What Jesus said of the two greatest commandments can be said of these two parables: "On these two depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (Mt 22:40). Both of these scriptural gems are found only in the gospel of St. Luke, and that’s why he is a very favored evangelist. The Parable of the Prodigal Son will be read again in this liturgical Cycle C on the 24^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, September 12^th, 2007. Then the missalette will bracket off sections of this long parable for a shortened reading to the Sunday assembly to accommodate the faithful who are anxious to get in and out! (That is not primarily the fault of the faithful!)

Different readings

A parable is a literary device whose words can trigger as many different insights and meanings as there are ears and hearts receiving the parable. A parable allows for different readings. Today’s parable can be read with a kind of hammed-up version. A rebellious young dude yells out at his old man: “Pa! I’ve had it! I can’t stand it around here anymore. Give me what I have coming to me. I’m getting out of here.” Or it can be read quite calmly and unremarkably: “Dad, please give me my share of the inheritance. It’s about time I move out and try to make it on my own.” Nothing gross about that. That’s been said a million times over by good sons and daughters. Both readings can do justice to the original Greek.

For the most part, tradition likes the hammed-up version of the parable. The rebellious younger son demands his inheritance, takes off for the big city and “wastes his money on riotous living” (King James Version). Other translations read, “wastes his money on the wildest extravagance,” or “on loose living,” or “on a life of debauchery.” The Living Bible’s version has the best version of all which pleases prurient minds: “The young man took off for a foreign land and there wasted his money on parties and prostitutes.”

We can ham-up the parable too much by concentrating on “parties and prostitutes.” Then it becomes not much more than a story about a young buck who journeys off into sexual immorality, suffers “the wages of sin” (Rom 6: 23) as he’s forced to feed swine, and then decides to journey back to the respectable morality of his father’s house. If by “respectable morality of his father’s house” is meant nothing more than “no more partying and prostituting” then the journey really hasn’t gone very far. In fact, it ends up right where it began.

Different nuggets

A parable is literary device which also allows for different nuggets. A mystic friend of minereading the Parable of the Good Samaritan gleans this nugget for herself: “I know that a man is lying out there half-dead. I also know that I can’t cope with it. So I don’t go to Jericho. I stay in Jerusalem within the security of the temple where I live out bread-breaking symbolically.” She gleans yet another nugget for herself from the same parable when she writes, “All I can do is pick up the wounded and dump them off on someone else. In my book it's the long haul, the abiding, tender, loving care that counts. That's why it's the innkeeper who's the Good Samaritan in my book!"

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son she gleans this nugget for herself: “The parable is really a story about a `disobedient’ son who obeys the Law of Growth which beckons a fledgling to leave the nest of the father’s house and fly away like a baby robin in late spring. The same Law of Growth beckons a father to open his arms and let go of his son, trusting an ancient wisdom which says, `If he returns to you, he is yours. If he flies away for good, he was never yours in the first place.’ The parable is also a story of an `obedient’ son, who disobeys the Law of Growth, stays home, plays it safe and never grow up but always remains a pouting kid.”

Different names

One and the same parable also allows for different names. Today’s parable has been variously named. Traditionally it’s been called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, because the younger son goes forth and squanders his money on “parties and prostitutes.” Others would call it the Parable of the Prodigal Father because the father squanders heaps of love and forgiveness upon a wayward son, as he decks him out with a rich robe, and puts a ruby ring on his finger and soft sandals on his feet. The missalette also calls it The Parable of the Swine Feeder, because of what waywardness does to a human being.

That gifted artist Sr. Helena Steffensmeier of the School Sisters of St. Francis called it the Parable of the Human Journey. When that little lady undertook to stitch the Parable of the Prodigal Son into one of her masterful tapestries (on display at Alverno College) she did not cut her piece vertically, up and down (as tapestries are cut) but horizontally—as one long piece stretching from left to right, from east to west, like a long winding road going up and over a hill and off into the horizon. Her long tapestry depicts the phases of the human journey: first youthful enthusiasm dashing off haphazardly and zigzagly into the future, then the disillusionment of life that has one feeding swine, and finally the painful growth of repentance that sends one back home to the house of the father. For Sr. Helena it was The Parable of the Human Journey.

Yet another name

Because of an event which happened in recent years and which traumatized many of us, we find yet another name for this parable in which a prodigal son at the end of his journey falls into the arms of a gracious father: The Parable of Our Fall into Grace.

Many of us will never forget the Sunday newspaper for May 23, 2002, which exploded with a story about the Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, OSB, and his liaison with a young man. Out of the blue that Sunday newspaper immediately turned the Archbishop into a public prodigal son. Shortly after that Sunday morning explosion, I received a long piece of e-mail. I read it and found myself exclaiming, “Right on!” I put it safely away for some future moment. Then while preparing a homily on the Prodigal Son, I suddenly realized that moment had come.

The piece was written by William Coats, an Anglican, for an Anglican diocesan newspaper. He sent it on to a friend (a Roman Catholic) who sent it on to a friend who sent it on to me. Mr. Coats writes to his Catholic friend, “Here is an incendiary piece I wrote for our diocesan rag. It is a little anti-Roman Catholic, but you will have to live with that. I ran into the Rt. Rev. Rembert Weakland in Milwaukee shortly after he became the Roman Catholic bishop of that Archdiocese. He was a good, indeed, a saintly figure. He celebrated his first Christmas Day Mass not at the Cathedral but at a Roman Catholic meal site (St. Benedict the Moor). He was a liberal churchman though hardly a radical. Still he was a Vatican II figure which gave hope to all us Anglicans….

“After the scandal had exploded with a vengeance the Archbishop asked permission from the Pope to retire, and the Pope, with a speed not shown in the cases of Cardinal Bernard Law or Cardinal Roger Mahoney (both now being sued), assented to the resignation….”

He continues his letter to the Anglican Diocesan newspaper, “In the first public service at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee after the Archbishop’s retirement, the faithful were `comforted’ by a homily delivered by the celebrant. The preacher spoke of the Archbishop’s `fall from Grace.’ The preacher condemned abuse and cover-ups, and asked for mercy and forgiveness. This is really too much for me! There is a strain in Roman Catholic theology which sees us human beings as naturally good but who fall from grace when they commit certain sins. It’s all so much nonsense!”

The Archbishop, Coates says, did not fall from grace. He didn’t fall from some goodness. He didn’t fall from some pristine pure state. He started out as we all start out—as prodigal sons with a mixed bag of good and evil. He started out with the possibility of obedience or waywardness. The Anglican Mr. Coats challenges us Roman Catholics to recall the words of St. Paul, who, he says, “has something more luminous to say on the subject than that homilist in St. John’s Cathedral that Sunday morning.” He quotes St. Paul in Romans, “There is none who is righteous. No not one. All have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom 3: 11, 23). Even the “obedient” older son, who stayed home and didn’t indulge in “parties and prostitutes,” has sinned and has fallen short of the glory of God.

St. Paul, Coates says, isn’t referring to a moment of sexual weakness which means disgrace. He is referring to the daily lot of all Christian people. None of us wake up in the morning clean. We all wake up to the knowledge of our failure: to what we should have done but didn’t do and to what we’ve done amiss. We all wake up to our deceit and indolence. He says the idea that one sexual sin should somehow besmirch a “clean” record is hogwash. The Archbishop and all of us besmirch our record everyday. Some of our misdeeds might be less harmful than his or less public than his, but misdeeds they are.

Coats concludes his piece by saying that if that kind of theology had prevailed in St. John Cathedral that Sunday morning, the homilist would, indeed, have delivered a very different kind of homily. In fact, if that kind of theology had prevailed in the entire Catholic Church, there would, indeed, have been much less moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth in the whole Archdiocese of Milwaukee when the news exploded that Sunday morning. His parting slam at us is this: “The Roman Catholic Church certainly has a right to preach and practice whatever theology it wants to, but as the dominant religion in this country it often gives the impression that its view is the Christian point of view. As a child of the Reformation and as an Anglican I say, No, it is not!”

Yes, indeed, says Coats, there is a fall in all our lives, but it is not a fall from grace but a fall into grace. And that give us yet another name for the parable that has a prodigal son falling into the arms of a gracious father: The Parable of Our Fall into Grace.

Conclusion

Our Fall into Amazing Grace

Our fall into grace is so wonderful that the Reformation sang of it with all its might in its hymn of hymns: Amazing Grace.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
was blind but now I see.”

The parable paints our fall into amazing grace with powerful strokes. It has the father going daily to the door of his house and looking longingly towards the horizon over which his son has disappeared, hoping against hope that his boy would someday come back home (Lk 15:20). Then one day he spies his son far off in the distance. He runs out to meet him. He gives him a kiss, and the son falls into the gracious arms of a father who orders his servants to fetch a rich robe to cover his son’s lean body and a ruby ring to adorn his boney fingers and soft sandals to comfort his calloused feet. He then orders the servants to kill the fattened calf and prepare a great feast, “For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and now I have found him” (Lk 15:32).

This parable will be read again on the 24^th Sunday of Ordinary Time in this liturgical Cycle C, September 12^th, 2007. (Then it will fall silent again for two whole years!) Tell whoever proclaims the gospel that day to forget about the brackets which shorten the reading of the parable. Tell him we are not “in and out-ers.” Tell him that we (who do not fall from grace) have all the time in the world to listen to such a magnificent parable about Our Fall Into Amazing Grace.

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[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!

[2] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!