L.J. shares the following reflection on Sunday's reading from the Gospel according to Luke:
Who hasn’t made a mistake in life? Everyone has hurt someone, intentionally or not. Once we realize our sins, though, I think many of us punish ourselves. Society, religion, and even our families add to this sadness when they proclaim we should feel ashamed because moral perfection is expected. Today’s parable of the prodigal son destroys these attitudes and reveals a God who doesn’t care for perfectly observed moral behavior but delights in us just as we are.
Who hasn’t made a mistake in life? We all have. Everyone has hurt someone, intentionally or not. Once we realize our sins, though, I think many of us punish ourselves. Society, religion, and even our families add to this sadness when they proclaim we should feel ashamed because moral perfection is expected. Today’s parable of the prodigal son destroys these attitudes and reveals a God who doesn’t care for perfectly observed moral behavior. The God of Jesus Christ doesn’t seem to care about our sins as much as our presence. The parable is one of Jesus’ strongest invitations to rejoice here and now because God loves us as we are.
After the younger son comes to his senses and decides to go back to his father, he presumes he will meet judgment and punishment. He meets neither. Similarly, God will not let even our mistakes keep us from divine happiness. God will use them to awaken us to the joy we always already have. After we come to our senses, only surrender is needed. However, this is difficult, if, like the younger son, we believe God punishes us for our sins. The medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich teaches it is not God who punishes sin. “Sin punishes sin,” she says. The younger son’s dissolute life led to extreme poverty. Mobsters who kill to support a criminal empire usually wind up murdered by rival crime syndicates. Most of all, sin punishes sin because it makes us deeply unhappy.
God does not punish us. God delights in us. Before his son even gets home, the father rushes to embrace him, ignoring his son’s rehearsed confession. The father loves his son as he is. God delights in us as we are, whatever we’ve done. No one needs to prove worthiness by perfect moral behavior. The father’s embrace of his son represents a fundamental Gospel truth. Just as the father was always there for the son only the son didn’t know it, divine happiness is within us only we don’t know it. The younger son models the best response to God’s delight: he lets the father embrace him, offering no resistance. All we need to do is let God delight in us. Once again, only surrender is needed.
The centerpiece of this famous parable is the feast. The father tells his household, “let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again.” The feast symbolizes God’s joy and ours in God. It is the enjoyment of the blissful nothingness within and among all people. Everyone, everywhere can enjoy the feast, which is always happening. We already have this blessedness within us. We can close our eyes, breathe deeply, and draw on God’s joy this very second. To do so is to sit down at table and to eat with God. Will we do so? Or, will we miss out on the banquet because we insist that happiness be on our terms? The older son refuses to celebrate. He thinks it isn’t fair that his brother gets a lavish feast when he’s never had even a small dinner with his friends. After all, he’s been obeying their father all his life! It’s as if he is saying, “What good has my morality done for me?” He is placing his happiness in perfectly observed moral behavior, in doing everything right.
How do we refuse to be happy? How do we predetermine happiness in our lives? The father reminds his older son, “You are here with me always; everything I have is yours.” Happiness has no conditions. It is always within us. The older son could have had a feast anytime he wanted, but he was too preoccupied with his own morality. He needed to let that attitude go, just as the younger son “came to his senses” and left everything behind to return to his father.
Just so, Jesus calls us to joyfully leave behind our ideas of happiness and let nothing but God be our joy and our bliss. So, when we feel sad or unhappy, we do well to turn our attention to the God within and let our negative emotions be. Our task is to consent to God’s merciful joy this very moment, and not to programs for happiness that don’t work. When we feel bored, confused, frustrated, uncertain, anxious, drained, stuck, upset, we sink into the indistinct nothingness of God. We sink into joy. Meister Eckhart writes, “Do not be afraid, for this joy is close to you and is in you: there is not one of you who is…so remote but he may find this joy within himself, in truth, as it is, with joy and understanding, before you leave this church today.”