“Mine” was the first word my younger brother ever learned, thanks to the anxieties of his big brother, who had to draw limits on what toys he would share and what he would keep. That was a harsh lesson but not the ungracious (to be generous) response of the older brother to the return of his prodigal sibling, who, after all, had not starved to death or been lost in a foreign country.
They had probably given up hope, at least hope is what his parents had in their hearts, as they had experienced a death before death from their younger child.
We don’t know how the mother reacted but the father was overjoyed. His son had given him up for dead, prematurely, by asking for his inheritance up front; which he then spent recklessly (on booze and women or cars or fine dining for fast friends) before returning in desperation and humility (apparently) to his family home.
Dad was happy, over the moon. “Kill the fatted calf” - as if the Pope was visiting or better yet the King. As if what he had saved for a burnt offering were no longer needed, now that what he would have sacrificed for - even more than he already had - was back safe and sound.
This is the background of the famous story of the prodigal son told by Jesus in the 15th chapter of the gospel of Luke. It is a reaction to the ungenerous jealous response of the self-righteous to people they disapproved of being welcomed inside the embrace of the kingdom of God that Jesus was proclaiming. ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ (Luke 15.1) They want to see justice done, man! Payback! How about it? They had it coming to them, they might say, of anyone humbly approaching the Heavenly Father as the younger son had approached his dad.
But Jesus does not see much good in retribution. Are you any less sinful than those on whom this calamity has fallen? Jesus asked, after tragedies were reported to him - a wall falling on pilgrims, or the cruel tyrannies of a brutal Roman prefect casually inflicted on others. No, he said, turn away from such vengeance-seeking, such jealousy, and see your own faults, your own sins, and turn toward God.
We are asked to do no less. We are asked, indeed, to answer such temptations with the most powerful of gifts: love.
In the words of Saint Paul so often cited on a wedding day, love “does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people.”
As Paul went on to say, “On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.” (1 Corinthians 13: 5, 6-8a. Phillips trans.)
The temptation to wish wrong on others, however ‘provoked’ we may feel, is not something we can abandon lightly. Indeed our own survival - of soul even more than body - may depend on this counter-instinct: to rise to the bait not at all but to rise above all the pain and grief we rightly - or self-righteously - may feel, and seek the grueling sacrificial path of the Christ who leads us to a glory beyond shame or resentment, hate or indifference.
That is the way, the revolutionary way, of love. And it lasts, beyond empire - as Jesus faced - or collaborator - as Jesus faced too; beyond imperial domination or invasion, beyond our own false hopes or ideals that hold us back from following the way that will lead - long and hard as the road may be - to life.
Meet the Priest
The Rev. Dr. John Leech is ordained in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement, and has served as a priest in northern California and western Washington, and now serves in southern Arizona.
https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Lent/CLent4_RCL.docx
March 27th 2022
https://hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collection/04.+engraving/1266400
A version of this essay was published by the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday March 20th 2022. https://tucson.com/lifestyles/the-way-to-life---mine-or-his/article_48d49c56-a3d6-11ec-acef-ff839595afe4.html
