Fourth Sunday in Lent

There’s a reason the Parable of the Prodigal Son is so popular. How could it not be, when God is depicted as such an eager father, hitching up the hem of his robe to go running with outstretched arms to greet his son? It’s as if the whole time the father had been at work on the farm, he was always keeping an eye on the horizon – always hoping, waiting, watching for the son’s return. And as soon as the son emerges, the father is immediately right there – hugging him and kissing him. When the son tries to launch into his prepared repentance speech, the father won’t even let him get through it: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s enough. BRING OUT THE RING! BRING OUT THE ROBE, AND LET’S HAVE A PARTY!”

Notice how easy it is for God to forgive. Whatever difficulties we may have with forgiveness, that’s simply not true with God. With God, forgiveness is easily and quickly accomplished. All that matters is love, and as soon as the son returns, love is ready to throw a party. This should be central to any Christian’s understanding of the character of God. Indeed, it is this priority through which everything else we dare say about God should be filtered.

And I am certain, that throughout the centuries, thousands of people, daily, who have reached the bottom of the barrel, have discovered this picture of God as the most welcome news. It is the gospel for every person who’s finally ready to stop with the excuses, to stop with the justifications and the blame, and is ready to say, “I’m a mess. I’m tired and ashamed. I need help.”

But you know what’s interesting? The parable of the Prodigal Son isn’t principally about the prodigal son at all. It’s about the father and the father’s love and his relationship with the older brother – the “good son” who stayed home and followed the rules and did what he was supposed to do.

Notice how the parable begins:

All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. (That is, all the prodigal sons were coming near.) And the Pharisees and scribes (that is, the “older sons”) were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable. “There was a man who had two sons….”

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he’s been behaving like the father in this story. He’s hanging out with tax collectors and sinners – loving them, being kind and generous and forgiving. And they’ve been responding to Jesus’ love exactly like you’d expect them to – energetically, eagerly, gratefully.

But this doesn’t go over well for everyone. The upright people, the hard-working, spiritually responsible people (that is, the scribes and the Pharisees), they take offense at this love. So it is then that Jesus tells this parable – to them and about them.

The problem with the older son is that – although he stayed at home with his father and was obedient – he clearly had no conception of who his father was. His father’s principal desire is to be with his children. Presumably, while the father and older son have been working side-by-side, it is just what the father would want for their relationship – to be sharing the everyday work and rhythm of life together. The son, however, has been grumbling inside. His daydream is to go party with his friends, without his father.

And there’s one particular line in the story that I find especially compelling:

“Son,” the father tells him, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

The entire farm – the animals, the buildings, the harvest each year – it already belonged to the son. There is no stinginess with this father. There is no hoarding or private property that needs to be protected from greedy, irresponsible children. No waiting until I am dead so you can finally have it all.

That’s not how this father functions.

Just as it was so simple for him to forgive the first son because love was already in charge, it is equally simple for him to share, because love meant he never regarded the farm as his private property in the first place.

And so it is with God.

From the beginning, this world has been given to us. Which means, every breath we take – it is God’s air intended for us to breath. Every sip of water is God’s water, given eagerly for us that we may continue living. It is all God’s. And it is all ours – its worth made manifest every time it sustains us. “My blessed child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

And this concept is true at every level of our existence – not only the food and drink that sustains us – but also our relationships, our toil, our passions and hobbies. Everything in this life is God’s, and we are God’s children, working side-by-side with God, our Father, our Mother.

Our human vocation, at its deepest level, is simply that: to perceive every aspect of our lives as a participation in the ubiquitous love and provision and labor of God. We do what God does. We love what God loves. We share what God shares, in whatever little corner of the world we live.

And the opposite of this, when seen at its extreme, is exactly what we’re seeing unfold in Ukraine: violence, cruelty, selfishness, destruction, and an arrogant need to possess and control, regardless of the cost. I’ve often thought, and now more than ever, that warfare is the epitome of human depravity – our species’ utter rejection of God and God’s Kingdom.

And for most of us (understandably), we’ve felt totally powerless to do any good in the face of the Ukrainian catastrophe. How can we? So far away, so limited in resources, so removed from positions of power and influence.

Which is why I’ve been so moved this week by the example of my friend, Kirstin.

Kirstin is my age. She lives alone in an old farmhouse in the Ottawa River Valley in Ontario, Canada. She’s a George MacDonald scholar – a Scottish author in the late Victorian period who wrote fantasy stories for children. He was something of a literary father for Lewis and Tolkien, who – a generation later – would write the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

There’s nothing about Kirstin – where she lives or the nature of her work – to make one think she had anything to contribute to Ukrainian relief efforts.

But, because Kirstin is an academic in the 21st century, she has colleagues around the world. Whoever is studying MacDonald, or Lewis, or Tolkien (especially from a theological perspective), will end up interacting with Kirstin at some point.

So when Russia invaded Ukraine, Kirstin immediately began corresponding with colleagues throughout eastern Europe. She heard of all sorts of grassroots movements that were providing relief for refugees flooding across the borders to Moldova and Poland. And so Kirstin began publicizing direct links to these little impromptu shelters that needed money to keep buying food and supplies.

But then another need began to emerge: the need for stories. Throughout Ukraine, mothers and children are huddled in bomb shelters – their husbands and fathers conscripted into war. They’re frightened, alone, vulnerable and the days can be very long, with nothing but anxiety to feed on. But in many cases, they still have internet access. Which means, whatever information you can get online, you can get to them.

And this is where Kirstin’s expertise suddenly became a most valuable and unexpected commodity. She has stories – children’s stories , elemental stories – of good and evil, of hope in the midst of suffering.

“Good stories heal,” she writes. They “fortify, give spaces of rest, and can even bring peace. Many of you believe a Story changed the world,” she adds, referring to the gospel. “These tales [she’s providing] are …but part of that larger one. Who knows what small or great Good they might do.”

So Kirstin began a modest campaign to curate online resources of these children’s stories that she has loved her whole life, that have – for her – become a central way she has seen and understood the nature of God. In many cases, she couldn’t find recordings of these stories in Ukrainian or Russian, so an appeal went out for native speakers to record and upload them. Which they’re doing! “A friend of a friend of a friend,” she writes, “is a professor in Russia. She wrote that she and her students in Russia were desperate to do anything they could to help, and that reading stories in Russian was certainly something they could do.”

Which means, Kirstin’s appeal has even made it to “the enemy” who – of course – is not the enemy at all. That Russian professor and her students are fellow humans whose government is doing great evil. But this little opportunity arose. They, too, can participate in bringing stories of hope to the victims of their army, huddled in bomb shelters, not knowing if their fathers are alive or not. Not knowing if they will live. Or not.

But hope is no small commodity. It is the light that shines in the darkness.

Which is all to say, Kirstin is showing us what the older son in the parable could not understand. All that the Father has, is ours. “Work alongside me, Kirstin,” says God. “When you were a child, you found Me through these stories. And now my children in the shelters are afraid and in need of what you have.”

All that the Father has, is ours – ours to use as God uses: generously, lovingly, to bring life to this world.

A colleague of Kirstin’s, a Ukrainian academic, emailed Kirstin the night before he left his wife and children in the bomb shelter, so he could report for war. He quoted Gandalf and Frodo from the Lord of the Rings, as Frodo went fearfully off on a quest he was sure to lose:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And so it is for us, who live in these times, in these circumstances. May it be, that our religion is not like that of the older son – a duty of attending church, eating a wafer, putting a little money in the plate. May it be that we can see, each thing we hold, each word we speak, each choice we make to be our work with God, loving and sustaining this sacred and wonderful world.