Lent 4
“The death side of things grabs our imagination and
fascinates us as fear and negativity always do, I am sad to say. We have to be taught how to look for anything
infinite, positive or good, which for some reason is much more difficult.” --Fr. Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for
Our True Self
In Jesus’ “Parable of
the Prodigal Son” the father and the elder son see the returning prodigal
through very different eyes. The
father, runs and greets his lost son, wrapping his arms around him with joy in
his heart. The elder son scoffs at the
return of his brother, and sees the father’s actions toward one who has
“devoured your property with prostitutes” as a personal affront. One response is positive, the other
negative. One focuses on forgiveness and
reconciliation, the other on judgment and wrath. One sees the best, the other the worst in the
situation.
Rohr, I think, is right.
We human beings quickly default to the negative. We have a bad habit of putting the worst
construction on people’s behavior, words and intentions. We are too often quick to anger and slow to
forgive. Maybe that’s because we’ve been
burned so many times. Our default to the
negative is also conditioned by the messages we hear day in and day out from
the media and from one another.
Conflict, lack of civility, personal attacks and the vilification of
those who are different, or of a different opinion, seem to be the way of the
world these days (especially during an election year).
Maybe that’s why it is so hard for some people to grasp the
concept of God’s grace. Jesus teaches
and demonstrates that God’s love is like the father’s love. God is the one who greets us, wraps loving
arms around us, and welcomes us with joy in spite of who we are, where we’ve
been or what we’ve done in the course of our lives. God doesn’t kill the fatted calf… God offers up the life of Jesus in order to
undo our human propensity to judgment and wrath, and, in so doing, opens a way
to reconciliation and life.
What would the world look like if we humans learned how to
default to the infinite, the positive and the good? What if our first response to the prodigals in
our lives looked more like the father’s than the elder son’s? What if we looked for the best in the people
who cross our path? That is the Way of
Jesus. That is the Way of forgiveness
and reconciliation. That is the Way of
Life.
Rohr goes on to say this, “We have spent centuries of
philosophy trying to solve the ‘problem of evil,’ yet I believe the much more
confounding and astounding issue is the ‘problem of good.’ How do we account for so much gratuitous and
sheer goodness in the world? Tackling
this problem would achieve much better results.” I think the father in Jesus’ parable would
agree.
Peace,
Bishop Mike
Please feel free to share this if you found it
meaningful! Thanks for reading.
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