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22

  Our faith is not a refuge where we hide from the challenges of life. Our faith invites us to be pilgrims, to journey, to explore. Where do we journey and what country do we explore? You could say we set out somewhat like Abraham, who is our father in faith. All the Lord said to him was ‘Leave your country for the land I will show you’ (Genesis 12:1). Abraham trusted this word, pulled up his tents and set out for an unknown destination. What land might God show us today? Where does our journey lead? We could describe it as a journey into love, into mystery, into God. Now every journey of exploration involves leaving behind familiar places and situations. This can scare us. As the Galilee song says, ‘I’m not sure I want to walk past horizons that I know.’ The journey into love can be particularly frightening because love knows no boundaries; it asks everything of us; it invites us even to lose our lives. The one great commandment of love is more demanding than any decalogue or code of law. But the one who calls us forth on the journey promises to be with us. He even describes himself as ‘the Way’. If we trust him, we will begin to see that love asks all only because it first gives all. We don’t pay enough attention to this. We are asked to love each other unconditionally only because that’s how we are loved by God. There’s enough love to go round! ‘The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us’ (Romans 5:5).

  Journey and exploration lead us to the unknown and involve risk and a kind of insecurity. This can frighten us. We need not be ashamed to admit this fear. It is a very natural and common human experience. There is nothing wrong in wanting security and feeling fearful about the unknown. But we must not allow this fear to conquer and paralyse us. If this happens, it could lead us to resist all change and growth. It could tempt us to settle down where we are and cease our exploration. It could cut us off from the inexhaustible riches of the mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said that f a seed were to resist the risky process of entering the dark earth and dying there, it would remain alone, a poor dry little object depriving the world of the beauty and fruit it had to offer (John 12:24). In another parable Jesus described how a number of people were given talents by their Lord to use in his service. One of the servants considered his Lord to be a hard master and, fearing to take any risk in using or investing the talent he was given, he buried it in the ground. When the Lord returned from his travels, the servant dug up the talent and brought it to his master. For this he was rebuked. (Matthew 25:14-30)

  In the last chapter we considered an even worse consequence of giving in to our fear of risk and insecurity. We noted that it could lead to a complete distortion of the image of God and the nature of true religion. Out of desire for security we could create our own ‘safe’ God, a lawgiver with a set of clear-cut laws. With these we know where we stand. When we keep these laws we are safe and God will reward us. This of course destroys the notion of God as life, mystery, love. He ceases to be the God of gift, of growth and unconditional love. He becomes an employer, a static God out there who pays our wages when we keep his laws and ads an occasional bonus when we put in some overtime by fasting or almsgiving. This kills the living God, the dynamic God of the kingdom present among us, always working with us and for us. It destroys the sovereign freedom of God, because, by observing his laws, we exercise a subtle control over him: he is obliged to reward us. We are thus led away from an open, joyful religion of love, trust and gratitude to a narrow, gloomy, anxious striving for guaranteed salvation.

  This ‘small’ God of our own making s totally alien to the God revealed by Jesus. For him, God is Abba, the loving Rather caring and concerned about the smallest details of our lives. Jesus walked joyfully with this God in his own pilgrimage and invites us to do the same. He assured us that this very God, his Father, is our God and Father too. This was the good news he brought us. His greatest joy was to reveal to us the true nature of his Father. One of the most beautiful revelations of the Father given by Jesus is found in the story of the Prodigal Son. Jesus was moved to tell this story when he heard the Scribes and Pharisees complaining that he was too friendly with sinners. He was upset at the way these self-righteous men were obscuring his Father’s tender mercy So he gathered the people around him and told them that famous story which begins, ‘A man had two sons’ (Luke 15:11)

  In the story, one son, the younger boy, takes his inheritance and moves away from home and his father. He does not move just down the road. He goes far away. He leaves ‘for a distant country’. The father loves the boy dearly, but allows him to go. Love takes risks. The father trusts the boy, but the lad cannot cope with the freedom and the money. He ‘squanders his money on a life of debauchery’. He ends up lonely, hungry, empty. He has no money and no friends. This is a crucial moment for him but he survives it. He reflects and makes a big decision: ‘I will leave this place and go to my father.’ What enabled him to make this decision? Clearly there must have been a basic trust in his father, based most likely on some good memories of home. But he still greatly underestimates his father’s love. He hopes only to be accepted as a servant. Remember that this story is being told by Jesus, who now gives us a precious insight into his Father’s heart. Jesus tells us that the father is waiting for the boy, not with stick or lecture but with an embrace, with ring, robe and sandals. Food is prepared, musicians called and a celebration begins. There is music and dancing. Shakespeare warns us not to trust the person who has no music in his soul. Maybe Jesus is saying that surely we can trust a father who enjoys music and dancing.

  When reflecting on this story with young people on retreat, I love to say to them, ‘Was it not an amazing coincidence that the father of this boy was out at the front of the house on the very day the son returned!’ Their response is delightfully the same, ‘No! Silly! That means the father was there every day waiting and hoping the son would come. He was always watching because he missed the boy!’ In a country village in Ireland many years ago, a young son who had become addicted to gambling left home and went over to England. For a while he wrote back home. But then, silence. Once a week the bus from the city of Dublin passed through that village and every week the boy’s mother was at the bus stop in the village square when the bus pulled in. God the Father would understand that mother’s heart.

  The Prodigal Son is not disinherited. He is received as son and there is celebration, including music and dancing. In a remote village in Zambia lived an old lady called Veronica. She was lame most of her life because of a childhood accident. She greatly missed the village dancing. In recent years her condition worsened and she was confined to bed and unable to move about. On my last visit I found her in low spirits. She felt she was a burden to her relatives who sometimes neglected her. She confessed that she felt less a person and expected to die soon. Then as she went on her face brightened up and she seemed to be young again as she said with great joy and convictions, ‘I believe that God will come for me soon and I know that on the days he comes we will dance!’ Veronica knew her God. And I thought of words written by Gibran the Prophet: ‘When the earth claims your limbs then you shall truly dance.’

  But not everyone loves music and dancing! We go back to Jesus and his story. When the Prodigal Son and his father and friends are celebrating in the house, Jesus tells us, ‘Now the elder son was out in the fields, and on his way back, as he drew near the house, he could hear music and dancing. Calling one of the servants he asked what it was all about. "Your brother has come", replied the servant, "and your father has killed the calf we had fattened because he has got him back safe and sound." He was angry then and refused to go in.’ (Luke 15:25-27)

  How does the father respond to this situation? He leaves the party and comes out to beg the boy to come in and celebrate for he loves this boy dearly as well. The reply of the elder son, composed by Jesus remember, reveals a sad and bitter heart and gives us a picture of how religion can go terribly wrong, and instead of bringing joy, love and strength for life’s burdens, can bring instead gloom and resentment and can itself become a great burden. The boy answered his father, ‘Look, all these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your order, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends. But, for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property – he and his women – you kill the calf we had been fattening’ ( Luke 15:28)

   These words reveal a sad, bitter and unloving heart. The boy stays at home and works hard but clearly has no joy in his work and no warmth in the relationship with his father. His young brother had moved physically very far away from his father, but in a very real sense his heart had not let his father, and when they meet he addresses him as ’Father’. The older boy had not moved physically from home, but what a distance has grown between him and his father. In the dialogue recorded he addresses his father as ‘you’ and distances himself from his young brother to whom he refers as ‘this son of yours’. What resentment is packed into that word ‘slaved’. He does not say I ‘worked’ for you, but I ‘slaved’. Fr. Donagh O’Shea OP, in his book, Go Down to the Potter’s House, observes that we only complain about work which we do not enjoy and adds, ‘No one would say, I have been singing in the bath for thirty years, what reward shall I have!’

  The elder boy sees his father more as a taskmaster than a loving parent. He has kept all the rules and he expects a reward. He has kept the rules by his own effort. He did not seem to feel he needed God’s help and now in some way God is beholden to him. In our modern speech he is saying to God, ‘You owe me.’ He has destroyed the notion of God who gives all as gift. In a sense he does not need God, except as the one who is to reward him. This false understanding of his Father is so sad because it robs the boy of all joy and love.

  And this false understanding of his father spoils not only his relationship with his father, but it flows over into his relationship with his young brother. He judges his brother from his own distorted perspective on lie and God. In his eyes his brother had failed, he had broken the laws, therefore he should be punished. He has no love, no pity for the boy, only judgment. Notice is it he and not the father who lists the boy’s sins. He cannot be moved by the compassion that stirred the father and sent him running down the road. The elder boy cannot tolerate the idea that there should be a celebration and he won’t have anything to do with it. Notice that this boy is really playing God. He is telling us what the father should have done, how God should treat human failure. He kills mercy, gift, love.

  If you kill the genuine love of God, at the same time you kill the true love of people. Love is indivisible. Our relationship with each other is intimately bound up with our relationship with God. The way we see and understand God colours the way we see and treat each other. If we expect love from God only as a reward for laws kept, then we will withhold love from each other till law is kept and our standards reached. If I expect reward for law kept, I will expect, even demand, punishment for law broken. The elder boy’s attitude to his young brother is a direct consequence of his attitude to his father. If he had had a relationship of love with his father, he would have loved his brother, he would have been running down the road with the old man to welcome his brother, he would have shared his father’s joy and would happily have entered the celebration.

  When Jesus invented this character for his story, he showed how he understood the complexity of the human heart. This elder brother is a terrible warning. Bishop Helder Camara says, ‘I pray incessantly for the conversion of the Prodigal Son’s brother. Even in my ear rings the dread warning. The one has awoken from his life of sin. When will the other awaken from his virtue?’ Virtue, which we see as our own achievement, can blind us to the most wonderful quality of God’s love, namely that it is a completely free gift which we can never merit. It can also make us intolerant of others and judgmental about human weakness and failure. Thus it frustrates the great command of Jesus that we should forgive and love each other. In some ways this elder boy is the most frightening person in all the gospel stories. At the end of the story, when all are inside celebrating he is outside in the yard by himself, sulking, alone with his bitterness. Is this not a picture of hell worse than any fiery furnace? Let us not try to play God or dictate the God the limits of mercy and love. Let us joyfully confess that God is not man, that his ways are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth. Let us rejoice that God is unpredictable! He is unpredictable in the most wonderful and consoling way, namely, all we can predict about him is that his mercy, healing and love will always be infinitely greater than we can imagine.

  Let us identify with the words of St. Paul, a former Pharisee and rigid fundamentalist. ‘How rich are the depths of God, how deep his wisdom and knowledge, and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his method. Who could even know the mind of the Lord?’ (Romans 11:33-34). There is only one who knows the mind of God, his Son, Jesus. ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ (Matthew 11:27). Let us be forever grateful that Jesus has revealed his Father to us and revealed him as the Father who is love beyond understanding. What sadness there must have been in that father’s heart as he tried to open his elder son’s eyes to the true wonder of his identity, ‘My son, you are with me always and all I have is yours’ (Luke 15:31). This is Jesus’s answer to all our fears and anxiety and longing for security; ‘Realise who you are, the child of a God who created you simply that you might always be with him and share all that he has. Live not in anxiety and fear. Let there be more music and dancing in the home of your heart. Walk more in joyful expectation and wonder and gratitude.’

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