SEEKING INSIDE AND OUTSIDE

The Gospel reading of today reveals ‘Who God is?’ The understanding of God in all religions of the world are based on one’s experience, community traditions and supernatural myths. In Judeo-Christian religion the understanding of God is based on divine revelation. Judaism and Christianity cannot think of categorizing God with particular experience or ancient myths. Till the Incarnation of Christ, the understanding of God in Judaism was not complete, it was evolving through various events in Israel’s history, prophecies and pagan influences. It is Jesus who gives definitive and comprehensive idea of God. He reveals God as ‘Father’. In the Old Testament, God was addressed as creator, omnipotent, king, warrior, bridegroom and so forth. It was uncommon for a Jew to treat God as ‘Father’, albeit God was called ‘Father’ for 17 times in the Old Testament. Jesus opens the New Testament, a new era, a new teaching that reveals GOD as ‘Father’ and US as ‘His Children’. Very often Jesus spoke of God as ‘Father’, He taught His disciples to pray to God by calling upon Him as ‘Our Father’. This prayer implies that God is not just ‘MY’ Father but ‘OUR’ Father, meaning others are my own – one’s own – brothers and sisters. We all have one ‘Father’ and all of us make up one human family. Today’s Gospel is about this one universal Father and our one human family.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is not as much about younger son who is lost outside, rather it is so much about the elder son, who is lost inside and merciful Father, who seeks both outside and inside to restore the family. The life of the younger son is very clear, he goes away from his father both physically and emotionally. He prefers to stay outside his father’s house in a far distant land. He cut off his link with his father and family. The elder son is a faithful firstborn son of the family. He remains with his father to lead the family after him. The return of the younger son makes the elder son to grow in hardness of heart. The younger son comes home to lose his sonship and be a servant at his father’s home (Lk 15:19). On the contrary, the elder son comes home to lose with his servantship and become a son of his father. The elder son says, “look, all these years I served you” (Lk 15:29). The faithful son who remained with his father tells that he had lived with his father as a ‘servant’ not as a ‘son’. Just as the younger son lost his sonship by going outside home, the elder son too had lost his sonship by remaining inside home. The father of the family goes out to seek both of his sons to come inside. One son comes home to serve, another son comes home to grieve. The younger son seeks forgiveness for his trespasses, the elder son seeks justice for his loyalty. The father is meek and just, he embraces both to be his sons.

The context for Jesus to say this parable is the grumbling nature of Pharisees and Scribes who criticized Jesus for receiving prodigal sons into his company. The Pharisees and Scribes expected Jesus to associate with religious people, instead Jesus welcomes the company of sinners and tax collectors. The Pharisees and Scribes could not understand the merciful nature of God. Their vision of God was legal God, who gives justice by rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked. Jesus says to them that God rewards both the wicked and the righteous equally, because the reward is not based on human effort but on God’s seeking out. “For he [God] makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:45). This is a foolishness from human thinking. The God who treats equally both good and bad is a foolish God. This God is equal to foolish shepherd who leaves 99 sheep in the field and goes in search of one lost sheep (Lk 15:4-7). This God is equal to foolish women who ransacks the whole house just to find one denarii (Lk 15:8-10). But St. Paul says that this foolish of God is wiser than human wisdom (1Cor 1:25). Human wisdom seeks good of the righteous and death of the wicked but foolishness of God seeks eternal life of both the righteous and the wicked, because both are his children. For human, other is real other who is outside oneself, but for God, other is His other self within whom He resides. That’s why He said whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren you do it unto me. (Mt 25:40).

Our God is merciful to welcome both the children who are outside His kingdom and children who are lost within His kingdom. As His children are we ready to be enclosed in His embrace that demands to accept Him as ‘Our Father’? – implying others are our brothers, sisters and neighbours. May this Season of Lent bring sons and daughters who are lost both outside and inside to the embrace of the MERCIFUL FATHER.