The Parable of the Prodigal Son talk 3: going home

Introduction

At the last talk, I spoke about what happens when we sin, or rather, what is really happening to us when we sin.

The younger son had left him home, where he belonged, to live a life of pleasure, thinking that in doing do he was free, whereas, in fact, he had placed himself in a position of slavery and servitude. He had chased the illusion of freedom.

Temptation is like a voice that whispers in our ear, promising us all sorts of things. But the voice of temptation is a lie: it promises all sorts of things but delivers something else. It delivers, more often than not, loneliness and isolation, and feelings of guilt and shame. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, when we sin, we want to hide in the bushes, hoping that we won’t get found out. Our instinct is to hide our sin. We lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that it doesn’t matter, often with the thought ‘I am only human’.

The problem is that so often the voice of temptation becomes the voice of accusation. The same voice that tempts us then reminds us of what we have done. It is this same voice that tells us to hide in the bushes away from God. It reminds us that we are not worthy. It reminds us that we have all made mistakes. It accuses us. The Hebrew word for the accuser is Satan. He is the adversary: the one who stands against. It is he whose mission it is to try to keep us away from God.

And yet, when we hide, like Adam we hear the voice of God calling out ‘Where are you?’ God comes to find us because God wants us to come to him. God, like the father in the parable wants us to come home.

Reading of Luke 15:11-32

Talk

He squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.

We see the younger son in the parable at his lowest point. As I said in the last talk, he had become lower than the low. He was the one feeding animals that his own people considered unclean. Perhaps he felt that he had no choice. Perhaps he realised that he had done wrong and thought that the best thing to do was stay where he was and try to make the best of things. Perhaps he thought to himself that he had made his bed and so he had better lie in it. How often do we say such things to ourselves? How often do we say them to other people? ‘You’ve made your bed: now lie in it.’

And so we stay where we are. We try to make the best of the situations we find ourselves in and do our best to carry on. We try to put the feelings of guilt or shame aside. We try to keep things hidden inside our hearts and minds. We may even think that we become quite good at doing that. We may think that we have done a good job of putting these things to one side but they have a habit of coming to the surface of our minds, often in those quiet hours where we are alone. And so we press on. We feed the pigs and we accept the lives that we have made for ourselves.

¹⁷ But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!

‘When he came to himself’ is an interesting phrase. Some English translations offer words along the lines of ‘when he came to his senses’ or ‘when he realised what he was doing’. What I like about the phrase ‘when he came to himself’ is that it is about identity. Being the son of his father was his identity, whose rightful place was in the household. Being a servant, feeding the pigs, was not his true identity.

The problem is, of course, that we so often label people because of their mistakes in life, or because of their sins. ‘He’s the pig-feeder’. ‘He’s the alcoholic’. ‘She’s the divorcee’. ‘She’s the single mother’. ‘He’s the one who cheated on his wife.’ Whatever the sin, this is what we so often find ourselves doing to other people: we label them because of the sins they have committed, the mistakes they have made, and even, sometimes, because of things that might have been beyond their control. If we don’t do it outwardly, we certainly do it inwardly. Even worse though is that we sometimes label ourselves because of our own mistakes.

But what if we started to focus not on what others or we ourselves have done but focussed instead on who we are meant to be? What if we began to say ‘that man or woman is a beautiful child of God’? What if we looked other people in the eye and said directly to them ‘you are a beautiful child of God’? I think it would transform not only our own lives but the lives of those around us because when we ‘come to ourselves’, we are no longer afraid of our sins. Put another way, we are no longer making ourselves hide in the bushes: we come out from hiding and stand as children of God.

Why is this so important? Because the enemy’s main tactic—the devil’s main tactic if you like—is to try to make us hide and keep us away from God. Whenever we stray, God is always out there searching for us, saying to us, as he said to Adam: ‘Where are you’? If we stay away from God, the devil wins. If we come out from hiding, remembering who we are, God will embrace us, and the devil loses.

¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’

Two things are happening here: firstly, we make a decision to return home. It is that moment when we realise that we are not where we are supposed to be. If the devil’s voice is the one that accuses us, God’s voice is the one that calls us home. This is crucially important because guilt and shame do not come from God, because that is not how God has created us to be. Guilt and shame come from the devil because guilt and shame tend to keep us in hiding and, as I have said, that is the devil’s main tactic. God’s tactic is to draw us out from hiding to stand in his presence.

The second thing that happens is that we admit to ourselves, to God, and to some extent to each other that we have sinned. We realise and admit that we are not worthy to be called God’s children. How many people in our Churches hide quietly at the back because they are still held captive by their sins? How many people in our Churches are afraid to take on roles in the Church because they think that they are not worthy or that they are not good enough?

We often make a very fundamental and crucial mistake: we sometimes believe that we have to somehow earn God’s love or God’s approval. When we say that we have sinned, we are not saying that we have to leave the Church. When I say that I have sinned, I am not saying that I have to leave the priesthood. What we are saying when we say that we have sinned is that we are fallen human being who have done wrong but we are no longer afraid. When we begin to say ‘I will get up and go to my father’ and that we have sinned, we do so knowing that God himself has given us the very means by which we can make that journey home: baptism, and the sacrament of reconciliation, commonly known as confession.

Last week I went to the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield to talk to my Spiritual Director and make my confession. As I have probably said before, at each junction of the M61, M60 and M62, I was tempted to turn back because a part of me was afraid, as we are all afraid, to kneel next to a priest, a monk, and tell him all the sins that had been weighing on my conscience. I wanted to hide, except for one thing, which I will come onto in a moment.

I have said that this process of writing these talks has been a labour of love, and if I am doing any good teaching in the course of writing and giving these talks, I am teaching myself in doing it. What I am saying to you I need to hear just as much for myself in my own life. The Parable of the Prodigal Son has begun to take root in my life in a very profound way.

As I was talking to my Spiritual Director before I made my confession, I said that, for one reason or another, I have felt so lost, especially with having to go through this process of applying for my post. This has affected me in many ways that I was not quite prepared for, both emotionally and spiritually. It has been very much a wilderness period for me. The problem has been that I have had to keep going and doing the normal things that need to be done and I have been struggling, not least with organising my diary! But what I kept saying to my spiritual director again and again in our conversation was ‘I want to go home’: not from the monastery, but to my home with Christ. I wanted to be the person that God has created me and called me to be: not because I deserve it. I don’t. But because that is what God has created and called me to be.

The moment we are baptised, all of our sins and mistakes are washed away and we get a wonderful chance to begin again. It is the most exciting thing, and one of the reasons I love doing baptisms so much, especially the baptisms of adults. I get to talk to people and tell them that any sins, any mistakes that they have made are washed away and they get to begin again. Time and time again when I have baptised adults, I see either eyes full of tears, or a stunned silence as the reality of what God has done for us hits home.

But when we have sinned after baptism, we find ourselves back in that place that we didn’t want to be in: away from our true home with Christ, hiding in the bushes.

Reading of John 20:19-23

Jesus breathed his Holy Spirit on the Apostles and gave them authority to forgive sins. That same authority, through the laying on of hands, and anointing with the oil of chrism has been given to bishops and priests since that time, to forgive sins in the name of the Church and in the name of Christ himself.

Jesus himself gave to his apostles the way to bring people back into relationship with God and since then the sacrament of reconciliation, when practised properly, is one of the greatest sources of healing that God has given to the Church.

Somebody told me recently that the problem with confession is that many people in the Church who have never done it before don’t know what to say. I know that fear because it is a sacrament that I have only made use of in the last 15 or so years, and used to be part of  Churches where it would have been frowned upon.  The first time I went I was so nervous and I didn’t know what to say. I am not sure that it was a very good confession: I was too vague and general. In time, I grew in understanding and experience of it.

If you come to confession, it begins with a prayer, which is printed on a card, in which I ask God to help you make a full and true confession. Then you say a prayer similar to the one we use on Sundays, in the middle of which you have an opportunity to tell me any and all of the sins that are weighing on your mind. This isn’t so that I know what you have done and I certainly would not judge anybody for their sins. This is so that you can come out from hiding, with nothing holding you back. I will most certainly not be shocked and I may not be surprised. The point of confessing your specific sins to a priest is not, actually, about the sins, per se, but about the coming out of hiding, the letting go. When sins are confessed out loud to a priest, they no longer have any hold on you. There is no more pretending, no more hiding.

If you are wondering what you would say, then simply know this. If, in your heart of hearts, you know that there are things that you have thought, said, or done, that you know to be wrong, say those things. Do not be afraid: just say them because, in saying them, they lose their power over you. If things pop in your mind from time to time that bring back unpleasant memories of mistakes or sins that you have made, just say those things, and say them without fear.

When you have done that, there is a short prayer to finish off your confession and then the priest will talk to you about some of the things you have shared: not to make you feel bad, but to help you understand what happened, and help you to find a way forward. The emphasis, at this point, is not on the past, but on the present and future. The priest, prayerfully, will try to give you some advice to help you. The priest is not there to judge you. The priest is there because the priest desires nothing more than for God’s children to come home. When I go  to confession, I sometimes have this silly fear that the priest who hears my confession will throw me out of the room we’re in and tell the Bishop everything I have done. That hasn’t happened yet, because confession is about the present and future. It is not about the places to which we have strayed, it is about finding the journey home.

When all that is done, the priest will give absolution and will say, ‘I absolve you of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’ while making the sign of the cross. At that moment they are washed away. It restores us to our rightful place as children of God and we are free. It restores to us the grace of Baptism, through which we become children of God. There is no more guilt and shame and whatever has been shared in the confession is also completely gone and can never be shared, not even discussed at a future point with the person who has made a confession. And I can assure you, if it helps, that priests who hear confession leave the sins confessed at the foot of the cross. It is then, in the priest’s mind, as though the conversation never took place.

Through baptism, and after baptism confession, we find the path to the Father’s House and we see the Father waiting for us, running towards us, no matter how bad we think we have been.

We are brought into the Father’s embrace, but more of that next week.