Homily   Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time - September 12, 2004

 

 

 

Fr. Bill Baush recounts this story:

 

A youth ministry, Tony, was preparing to give a retreat for the kids in his group and he couldn’t get his thoughts together.  So it was about two o’clock in the morning and he said, “I’ve just got to have a break here.”  So he went down to the local diner to get a cup of coffee.  While he was sitting there at the counter three guys came in – three bums, as he called them, down-and outers and one of them said to the others in a kind of half-drunk voice, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.”  One of the other guys said, “So what?” And they had a cup of coffee and left.

 

After they left, Tony said to the waiter, “These guys come in here all the time?” The waiter answered, “Yeah, they come in here every night around two o’clock. They have some kind of crummy watchman’s job at the factory.”  So Tony said to the waiter, “I overheard they guy say it’s his birthday.  What do you say? He’ll be here around two o’clock tomorrow morning – let’s throw him a party.”  “Why not”, said the waiter.

 

So Tony got some decorations and he got some kids from the retreat and he got a big birthday cake and they spread the word around.  And around two o’clock the next morning the three bums came in and lo and behold the diner was filled with people! And they sand “Happy Birthday” to Rob.  And Rob was so overcome when they presented him with the birthday cake that he was speechless for the moment.  Then he collected himself and asked if he could take the cake home instead of eating it there; he wanted to take it home so he could look at it; no one had ever given him a cake before in his life.

 

After the party was over, there was an interesting conversation.  The waiter leaned on his elbow on the diner counter and looked across at Tony and said to him, “I bet you belong to some church.”  And Tony responded, “I belong to the church that throws parties for bums at two o’clock in the morning.”  The waiter looked at him and said, “If I could find such a church, I’d join it in the morning.”

 

 

We’ve heard the gospel story so many times. Its probably one of the most popular and repeated story of Jesus. As we listen to it again today we could almost not hear it. We could just let it slide over us – this familiar story.

 

But if fact it is a difficult story –if we’re hones about it. The message of this parable of the prodigal son or the loving father or the crazy forgiving father is at the heart of what it is we are to believe about our God and is at the heart of who we need to be as followers of God’s Son.

 

In our first reading we see more of this image of our God. The Judeo-Christian God is not aloof and far away and unrelenting. This God is not a vengeful God this is a God who wants a covenant with the people and while God wants us to be faithful to the covenant –so God also is faithful to the covenant. This is a God who almost recklessly calls us to the covenant in spite of our failures and foibles.

 

And so Jesus gives us some interesting characters in the Gospel to help us understand our God.

 

The father in the story chooses to allow his sons the freedom to their inheritance. Its not something he needed to do – he choose to do it. And so the younger son wanting nothing to do with his father takes his money and runs. He wants no connection – he wants his individualism – he wants his freedom.

 

And the older son in the story sees not responsibility to his brother – he seems to look out only for himself and for his needs.

 

But the father is the amazing one. Not only does he give his sons the freedom to hurt him – he acts almost recklessly to forgive them.

He runs to the younger son to welcome him back.  He overlooks the hurts and sees him first and foremost as his son. He wants his older son to join him and when he doesn’t he goes to him.

This is a father who overlooks the obstacles to be reconciled. He ignores the faults to be one.

 

The image that Jesus gives of this father is counter cultural to his time. The dignified Hebrew patriarch would never go running from his porch to the son to embrace the wayward one. The Son should come to him.

The dignified Hebrew patriarch would never negotiate with the older son who refused to come into his house.

This man like the people who are pictured in the other parables – the man who abandons a whole flock to find one sheep or the woman who goes crazy looking for a lost coin and then probably spends more than the worth of the coin to party with her friends when she finds it.

This is radical behavior. And Jesus tells his audience and you and I that his is how his God acts. The Pharisees and the scribes who heard it must have been blown away by it.

But how do we respond?

When we contemplate this God as imaged by Jesus – this God who is so anxious to love us that our sins, our transgressions, our failures, our complacency about God are overlooked by God. Above all our loving God wants us!

 

And while this can be wonderful to know – if we can believe it – the other side of the coin is that Jesus tells us that this is how we have to act as well.

And that is perhaps the hard part for – the stumbling block.

Is it possible for us to be as loving – as desirous of unity with one another? Can we want reconciliation so much that we don’t expect perfection of the other? Are we willing to  run from our porches to be linked with those who don’t see things exactly our way? Being loved by this reckless God can we also recklessly love?

Or are we so full of our own mindset about behavior and appearance and the like that we could never be the church that throws parties for bums at two o’clock in the morning?

 

Are we so afraid of what is different that we’d never embrace some one who looks, speaks, acts differently? Are we afraid of diversity?

 

Are we so filled with fear that on this anniversary of 9/11 we are willing to hate instead of looking for the links to those we seem to be so estranged from?  Are we too willing to name as “terrorist” anyone who doesn’t 100% believe as we do, act as we do, dream as we do?

 

The challenge of the Gospel is enormous of course. We are asked to recklessly love because our God does, to unceasingly forgive because our God does, to constantly work to reconcile because our God does.

 

We can’t be like our God –its out of our reach. But we recognize the invitation to aim for our God as we aim for the Kingdom of God.