Last Sunday we talked about the mystery of God and of how God shows us some of who God is, but not all.  We get more of that this weekend as the Scriptures show us a most gracious God–one passionately in love with all of creation—most caring and even prodigal in that caring—loving us to excess! Most of us humans tend to love rather selfishly—we love because we have been loved, and often times, if we haven’t been loved, or been treated badly, our first reaction is certainly not to love our abusers or those who have mistreated us.

This year I have been doing a great deal of reading on the clergy sex abuse crisis probably due to the showing of the film, Spotlight documenting the investigative work of the Boston Globe in 2002.  I had previously read quite a bit on this travesty but my reading this time is to try and understand why this happened in a Church that professes to follow our brother Jesus who according to our Scriptures always treated children with the greatest of care and love. In fact, he spoke rather harshly about what should happen to those who would ever hurt or lead them astray.

The closest I can come to any kind of understanding is, as the old adage goes, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Certainly there is more to it than that—the whole clerical system that teaches these men that they are a grade above everyone else, above the law even, plays a role.  Accepting men who haven’t the maturity needed or vetted for their ability to be true servant leaders and training them not to question,but to accept and protect the institution over and above those that they are called to serve goes a long way toward giving birth to a system that not only allows abuse to happen but looks the other way when it is discovered.

What professionals who have looked into the phenomenon of clericalism and the sins that it spawns have found is a very sick institution that they say needs to be dismantled, needs to start again, needs to get back to the message of Jesus.

The clergy sex abuse crisis in all its revelations has done more to discredit the Catholic church in its hierarchy, cause it to be diminished in the eyes of the world than any other event in its long history. And against this backdrop; we hear the story of the Prodigal.  Our God is truly a prodigal lover—one who does it “over-the-top.”  Our loving God calls us to the same kind of loving.  Prodigal goodness—over-the-top may be as hard for us to accept as is prodigal selfishness—and downright prodigal evilness.

As much as we don’t want to think of pedophilia within those called to serve, those we have trusted, this fact must be faced and addressed.  The notoriety that Spotlight has received in being named, Picture of the Year, along with the organization, SNAP (Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests) has done more to heal its victims and their families than anything our Church officials have done.

When the Boston cover-up was finally exposed in 2002 which was huge in itself, but proved that the cover-up was basically worldwide, victims of these heinous crimes, and let’s be clear; we are talking about rape of little children, were further abused by Church officials who stated that they were only after the money paid out in settlements—no prodigal or even minimal charity or understanding shown here.

Victims have said time and again, they only wanted to be listened to, to receive understanding and some heartfelt sorrow for what was done to them.  Even to this day, we have yet to hear any heartfelt sorrow from Church officials, the bishop of the Winona diocese included—the most we get is, “mistakes were made!” SNAP has reported that with the first showing of Spotlight increased numbers of victims were able to address their victimization of decades ago for the first time.

A question that we need to look at in the context of the story of the Prodigal who squanders all the good of the loving parent is how our God might look on the actions of the pedophile priests and those involved in the cover-up—it is one thing to be a sick individual committing unspeakable harm to children and quite another to cover-up the crime and make it possible for the crimes to continue.  From all that has come out on this issue, one can only believe that the so-called leaders would not have done what they have to date to say, “no more” had they not been forced into it—not very prodigal, in the good sense, of these so-called leaders.

One thing that we must not lose sight of in the parable of the Prodigal Child and the Prodigal Parent is that the over-the-top love of the parent didn’t come into play—the running of the parent to embrace the child until the child had in fact decided to return to his father and all that this implies, the turning around of his life.

It would seem that the “shepherds” of this Church need to make this next step looking honestly at themselves and admit openly and publicly how they have squandered the loving gifts of our prodigal God—choosing power over love. Only then, can we move on as the Church of our brother Jesus.  And that would truly be something to celebrate!  As Jesus through the parable states and I paraphrase, these were lost and now they are found—they were dead and have come back to life!

All of our readings today speak to the over-the-top love of our God.  The first reading from Joshua recounts the end of the journey of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt as their loving God leads them into the land flowing with milk and honey. By rights they probably deserved punishment for all the times in their human, stubborn natures that they turned from God—but no, again we see the gracious goodness of God toward them.

In the second reading from Paul, he tells the Corinthians and us that we aren’t required to offer sacrifice anymore because of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection which have been to reconcile us before our loving God who has loved us in a prodigal way—always! All that the Creator asks in return is that we be reconciled with the rest of creation—that we would honestly strive to be people of peace, love, joy, mercy and justice.  To listen to one of the candidates running for the highest office in our country this year, you wouldn’t believe that this in on his mind at all.  Equally disturbing is that his message is being accepted by many!

And that is the hardest lesson about reconciliation rather than aggression.  But in seemingly hard times in our lives when we are faced with evil versus good—truth , it is good to remember the facts of the Gospel story. The returning prodigal realizes what he has done and with the realization of wrong-doing, comes the desire to make a change in his life. Until one comes to that conclusion, there is little that can be done in our Church or elsewhere in our world.

Love is hard work and there simply is no way around it—love calls us to do the right thing even when it would be so much easier to forget the wrong-doing, and take the easy way out.  We must remember that the rejoicing is over the prodigal’s return with the understanding of a need to change, not the enabling of continued bad behavior. Taking one back, giving them another chance, simply allows for the change to happen.

What Jesus is trying to teach us today is that our God loves us enough to call us to repentance—to be our best selves and when we choose that as the prodigal son did in the story today, that is reason to rejoice.  Hopefully, the men in our Church who wish to be our leaders would hear the message of Jesus when they read the story of the Prodigal this weekend. That is my prayer for them and our Church.

Our Lenten task today and this next week might be to reflect on the gracious goodness of God in our lives—of the times, but for the strength of God, we would have floundered.  We all know of God’s love through the concrete examples of love shown us by family members and friends. As we remember the gracious goodness extended to us, let us my friends, extend that goodness forward to all in our lives.

 

 

All of our readings today show us a bit different face of God and together they leave God rather mysterious.  Catechisms of the Catholic church overtime have described God as all-knowing, all-loving, all-present and so on.  Moses’ encounter with God can only be said to be awesome—from the burning bush that couldn’t be explained to the strange name, “I Am Who I Am” that God used.  Clearly God wanted to get Moses’ attention in a way he would always remember.

Exegetes who have looked at this name can’t agree on what it means.  They do agree that it is a Hebrew form of the verb “to be,” but can’t agree if it means, “I am who I am,” or I will be who I will be.”  Is God claiming to be the source of all that is, or is God saying something about the future?  It could be God’s way of telling us that as hard as we try, we can never fully understand who God is.  This is a God who lets us see, but doesn’t let us see all—perhaps because we couldn’t take it all in! I am presently reading a book by Fr. Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality and he seems to be saying that it is us humans who make God mysterious when really all God wants is for each of us to know that we are loved.

Rohr compares it to when we first fall in love.  The one loving us delights in us, enjoys us and when we are looked on with love, he says, we feel like our very best selves as we are reflected in the eyes of the lover—we can do anything and this is exciting.    God looks on each of us with love and calls us to love in return—to live our lives in a way that understands that to be loved means that we will love in return—first God and then others. Meister Eckhart says it a bit more loftily, “The eyes with which you will look back at God will be the same eyes with which God first looked at you.”

But you see friends, this gets rather messy, rather involved.  It is perhaps much easier to keep God’s love for us on our own terms—more abstract, less involved. Rohr says, “We will always resist relational, practical truth in favor of abstractions”—and I believe this truth has been played out in our Churches over time.  A God of our own making allows for more control over our lives.  When we return God’s gaze of love as did Jesus, our actions toward the rest of humanity are clear—we must move in love then, toward all.

Just as the first reading, the Gospel account from Luke is confusing as well.  It relates the story of the Galileans killed by Pilate and the people who were crushed by the wall.  This basically illustrates for us that we can’t understand why God allows bad things to happen to us—a question humankind has struggled with ever since the first covenant between God and people was made.  The one thing we do learn in this Gospel is that our loving God will always show us mercy as related in the beautiful story of the fig tree.  The owner is willing to give up on the tree—on us, whereas the vinedresser—God, wants the tree, wants us, to have a second chance.

Blessed John Duns Scotus, a 14^th Century Franciscan believed that our God is about one thing and one thing only—love.  He proclaimed, unlike our Church universal today in its more conservative branches, and especially during this holy season of Lent, God’s purpose was to have an intimate relationship with humanity, not the traditional belief that Jesus came to die on the cross so as to save us from our sins.  Scottish scholar, Sister Mary Beth Ingham, CSJ states clearly, “The Incarnation was not plan B (because something went wrong in the garden)—it was always plan A”—God became one of us out of love, to show us in no uncertain terms, how to live, how to love.

For each of us, our journey through life is a process; coming to understand this mystery of how much God loves us. Few of us get to have a “burning bush” experience in our life-times like Moses did—something that seals in our hearts and minds that God is above and around, and within and will not let anything happen to us. We have all struggled with the “whys” in life—why horrible and sad things happen to people for no apparent reason.  Much in the news of late gives us reason to ponder and wonder why seemingly innocent people are made to suffer—a case in point—all those who have lost their lives as a result of so much gun violence.

Sometimes, we realize that tragedies happen due to people’s choices; something they ate or drank, or drugs ingested.  But other times, as in school shootings, the deaths of many innocents, leaves us reeling. Our hope is that we as a nation can do what we must to make our people safer going forward—we must take the necessary steps to make this so as in demanding that our Congress move on common sense gun safety measures.  If we truly are about protecting the children and all others, perhaps we need to, as a nation give up the weapons, or at least reduce the amount that make the slaughter of the innocents all too common, all too easy.

The same can be said of clergy sex abuse in our Church.  We must as a Church be willing to do whatever it takes to stop this abuse and we must demand this of our so-called leaders.  The clerical system must be dismantled because no matter what programs are in place, the danger of continued abuse is always there in a system that is run by only half the population, and doesn’t allow for input outside of the men in power.

We are comforted in the story of the fig tree as it reminds us to always remember that our loving God is a God of mercy, who will be there to stand with us in our pain, to give us a second chance, when needed.

Our family has been called to hold on to this truth recently when our daughter and son-in-law’s second pregnancy came to an end. When all goes well in life, we are prone to very simply proclaim that we are blessed.  When things don’t go well, do we then say, “God didn’t bless us?” In my faith and belief system, I must say that God didn’t cause the loss any more that God causes the good to happen, even though I impulsively am always ready to thank God for the good. Perhaps I need to rephrase my prayer, “Thank you God for standing with us in whatever life brings.”  I have come to see the wisdom in my husband’s simple prayer, “We are blessed, may everyone be blessed,” without giving anyone credit, but simply acknowledging the blessing.

Many of us grew up with the message that God sent Jesus, our brother to die for our sins and Lent was a time to dwell on that notion. It wasn’t something we questioned as children and grew into adulthood believing.  In a black and white world such theology can, for a time, be acceptable, but when placed alongside the “gray” of what life brings, it often falls short. Ministers over time have tried to give consolation to parents who have lost a child with the fact that God understands their loss because of Jesus’ death.  That old theology said God sent or chose to have Jesus die whereas the grieving parents didn’t choose to lose their child, so there is a disconnect. We would do much better to suggest that the God who always gives second chances, who is always loving us into the goodness for which we were made, will stand with us, cry with us and be there for all our needs.

Paul’s reading today from Corinthians, basically relates the story of how God through Moses saved the people from slavery in Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land.  But this people forgot time and again the promises made to God and felt they were invincible—that they could live as they wished.  Paul reminds the Corinthians that God in Jesus asks that they live and act with justice, mercy and love toward all, just as Jesus showed them, shows us, the way.

The God whom we hopefully all believe in is one of love who wants a loving relationship with us, and thus sent us our brother, Jesus, to accomplish this. Yes, Jesus did die, but it was a direct result of how he had lived—not because of our sin. I believe a theology such as this makes sense to all of us and then allows God to bring comfort when we tell a grieving parent whose love relationship with their child ended in tragedy, or simply too soon, that just as God cried when Jesus died, God, who is all about love, cries now with you as well.

The psalmist’s prayer today can truly be ours in times of tragedy and hard times, “our God is truly kind and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in gracious ways.”  As we live our lives, I think it behooves us to have eyes and ears open to see the interventions God makes in our lives through parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, co-workers, neighbors—God is always there—we just have to have eyes to see and recognize. A wonderful example of this for me in our present loss is the memory of our son crying with his sister when she related the truth of her loss with him—God was there in those shared tears—that I believe. We must remember as in our first reading today–God told Moses—he was standing on holy ground. We must never forget the chances we have daily to share God’s love, God’s desire to be one with us in the encounters of each day.  We too are standing on holy ground!

If we are waiting for one “burning bush” experience, we may miss the gracious appearance of our loving God in all we meet and touch each and every day.  May the ordinary, through new eyes, become “burning bush” experiences for each of us!