Admitting We're Wrong

Fourth Sunday of Lent

This is one of those parables that we’ve heard a thousand times.  If you think it’s hard to listen to it in the pews, imagine trying to preach on it from the ambo!  What can I say that has not already been said?  And yet, the Word of God cannot be exhausted.  If we think we know everything about this parable, then we are missing something.  There’s always a perspective or insight we have missed, even if what I’m preaching on may not be something that you missed.

But what I want to focus on today is the reaction of the Prodigal (which means wasteful) Son after his life goes down the toilet.  His reaction is that life is better with his father, even though it means returning to the father no longer as a son, but as a hired worker.  And so he starts back, and we hear about the mercy that the father wastes on his son (some have also called this the parable of the Prodigal Father).

The first step to receiving mercy is to recognize how we have wandered away from our heavenly Father’s house, how we have used our inheritance of reason and free will and wasted it on bad choices.  This is only possible by God’s grace, so God, even in our recognition of our guilt, is already at work at us to show us mercy.  But we have to cooperate with God’s mercy to recognize in truth where we have strayed.  

That’s no easy thing; especially in our culture.  No one is guilty of anything these days.  There was always a reason a person did something that eliminates all culpability for one’s actions and the consequences.  And while certainly circumstances can lessen our culpability for freely chosen actions, at the end of the day we need to return to being a people who can admit when we have done wrong; not because our upbringing was too hard or too soft; not because we suffer from affluenza; not because this group or that is out to get us; but because we chose with our free will to do something wrong.  

That sounds pretty tough.  And it doesn’t sound exciting or merciful.  But mercy can only be received by us when we realize we need mercy.  It was the Pharisees who didn’t think they needed mercy.  The adulterers, the sinners, the cheats, they all knew they needed Jesus to show them mercy.  They did not hide from their deeds.  Instead, they saw in Jesus that the recognition of their bad choices and decisions made them the exact people that Jesus came to save.  

As we examine our conscience, God helps us to know that we are sinners.  He doesn’t do this to beat us up, but to open us up to be saved by His mercy.  I often tell people that going to confession is like going to the doctor.  If we don’t tell the doctor our symptoms, he cannot cure us.  Now, God already knows what we have done, but by admitting to it, by vocalizing the sins we have committed, especially the grave sins, we let God in with His mercy, which He will not force upon us.  Think about it: who is in more danger: the person with chest pains and shortness of breath who figures he can deal with it on his own and it’s probably nothing, or the person with the same symptoms who knows something is not right and it needs to be addressed?  

Admitting that I am wrong seems to make us weak.  We have the right to remain silent, which has good legal effects, but which, if it creeps into our spiritual life, leads to certain imprisonment.  The one who admits his faults is the one who is free; the one who denies that they even exist is trapped by them.  Mercy is for the strong.  Only the weak person will say, “I did nothing wrong; it wasn’t my fault.”  The strong person can admit that he has done wrong, knowing that, in admitting his guilt, the Father runs to meet him to bestow every good gift upon him.  

St. Paul reminds us that all of us have been given the mission of being ambassadors of God’s mercy.  We do this by sharing with others the mercy we first received from God.  Think about someone who has hurt you, and pray for God’s mercy to come upon them.  Maybe they won’t come to apologize, but maybe they will.  In either case, as we pray for mercy for others, we participate in God reconciling the world.  And that is a great way to apply this parable to our own lives, and live in this Jubilee Year of Mercy.