Lent 4- Sunday 30 March 2025
Luke 15: 11-32
©Suzanne Grimmett
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Happy are those who are called to his supper.
Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
but only say the word, and I shall be healed.
These are the words of invitation we use during Lent as we gather to receive Christ in bread broken and wine poured out. It is a piece of liturgy I love, but always one where I am aware that it can be misheard. So many people struggle for self-worth, that these words can seem to be reinforcing what used to be known as ‘worm theology’- a phrase likely coined from an Isaac Watts’ hymn with the words, “Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”
There are obvious problems when those who already have a reduced sense of self receive these words as further judgement or Divine disdain. And the counter-intuitive result is that when we feel judged we humans tend to not examine ourselves more carefully but double down and get defensive- which is natural! Where we think someone is threatening the value of our very being, of course we resist, we push back. But that defensive posture doesn’t prepare us for the kind of grace God is ready to lavish upon us- the kind of grace we have depicted so vividly in this very famous story we call the Prodigal Son.
We often hear people say, “I can’t come to church because the roof will fall in.” In a perverse way this is an expression of pride- it is saying, whether I am acceptable in this holy place is really is down to me and my own behaviour. The point of grace is that it is undeserved, and that we need to die to the kind of thinking that it is about us and our performance. Of course, people who go to church every Sunday are equally vulnerable to pride in a different way- we can start to think that we are acceptable to God because of what we do or say, or have done and said. The truth that we need to hold before us is always that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and nothing we can do to make God love us less.
The church is more likely to be made up of those who have ‘been with the Father always’- the older brother in this story. Resentment can become a binding habit of the mind that we need to arrest early before its creeping tendrils lay too much of a hold on us. Whenever we find ourselves heading down the path of thoughts that begin with ‘it’s not fair’ or ‘after everything I have done for them’ or perhaps more deadly still, the ‘how dare they!’ we would be wise to recognise it early. Sometimes patterns of thought like that can pick us up and carry us away with an explosion of feeling before we have had a moment to consider whether we could be instead remaining in a place of gratitude for all we have been given.
Sometimes when we are in the spirit of the older brother, we take up the authority of judging whether others should receive the grace that has been so freely lavished on us. How do we react when others are invited to Jesus’ party who we, if only secretly, don’t think are worthy? Perhaps we here need to remember that both sons are invited to the banquet, but only one refused.
It is often harder for those of us who have always behaved dutifully to overcome a secret belief in our inherent worthiness than it is for those who are painfully aware of how far they have fallen short. It is noteworthy, however, that we don’t hear the end of the story. Maybe the older brother stood outside for a while, but then realised how his own stiff neck was robbing him of joy. We need to remember that the invitation to the elder was never rescinded.
To receive grace does take some dying. We cannot, when we are in full defensive mode, allow the kind of cracks to appear in our armour through which the mercy of God may creep in and unravel us. Lent is a time when we become sensitised to our pride in its many disguises. Because you see, when we pray, “Just say the word, Lord, and I shall be healed”, what we are really doing is recognising the need to accept healing at God’s hands and not our own. With our best laid plans and self-help schemes, to pray this prayer is to acknowledge that we do not save ourselves.
Of course, while we call it “The Prodigal Son”, it perhaps should be called “The Prodigal Father”. Prodigal means to use resources freely and recklessly, to be wastefully extravagant. It is certainly the story of a son who wilfully runs through all his inheritance, having insulted the honour of his father by demanding it before he died. But it is far more the story of the Father who is recklessly extravagant in mercy and forgiveness, taking joy and delight in the squanderer’s return. How easy is it for us to accept such undeserved favour? Not just the restrained approval we might imagine but a ridiculously abundant, over the top joyful welcome of everything we are, our whole being? The father in this story does what no father of his time should have done if he wanted to preserve the dignity of his position- he picks up his skirts and runs to meet this returning wastrel. To add to the scandal, the prime motivation for the son’s return seems to be his belly when he recognises that even his father’s servants would eat better. It appears that this younger son with his rehearsed speeches can’t even do repentance right.
But that does not seem to matter. The party and the feasting, featuring that most valued family commodity, the fatted calf, continues unabated. What matters is that he turned around and came home. Even when our motivations are imperfect and past history against us, we are showered with honour. It is this that draws forth true repentance- not any scheme of our own to develop the right attitude. Salvation, to use a very religious word, is the work of God from beginning to end.
This story is a beautiful one to meditate on, allowing it to work in our heart, soul and mind. But that is not the only place for this story to bring transformation. If we leave it at only the personal level we are falling prey to our culture’s propensity for individualism- the very thing that keeps us divided from one another, competing for what we want and maintaining the mythology that it is all down to us. Individualism keeps us in a zero-sum game- for me to have more, someone has to have less, for me to win someone has to lose. This is not the economy of God, where the more we give away, the more we have. But zero-sum thinking is present wherever grace is reduced to a personal favour for those who think certain things or believe in certain ways. It is this kind of individualistic idea of salvation that makes it possible for Christians to absorb their faith into nationalistic ideologies, or to confirm prejudices held towards different groups. As Anne Lamott has said, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do”.
When we say, “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” it does mean the whole world. God’s grace is extravagantly poured out and we are not the gatekeepers of who should be invited to the party. The story of the prodigal father is a divine love song, inviting us to let go of all that would entice us to think it is all in some way down to us, or that we are guardians of the hospitality of God. We also can hear the love song for ourselves, and all the younger and elder sons that reside within us. But we are not to leave it with ourselves. The grace that we receive is the grace that we can share for the love of the world. In the words of Desmond Tutu, “Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God’s grace and God’s love for us.” If we are to dream of a world where there is more joy and peace, greater justice, goodness, compassion and love and hospitality, then this story does not just bring personal forgiveness and but shows us how we are to be in the world and with one another.
We are only small, but it is in our receiving and extending of grace that we can live into health and our fullest humanity, beginning with the humility of a prayer that says “Lord, only say the word, and I shall be healed.”
+Amen