March 27, 2022
Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 27, 2022 – Josiah 5:9A, 10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Before I proclaimed the gospel, I said that the opening paragraph and the last scene are the most important parts of the gospel and of Jesus’ story, but that the middle is more emotionally satisfying.
In order to understand Jesus’ teaching, we have to recognize who the story was told to, what they were saying to Jesus, and Jesus’ reaction to what they were saying. But when the story comes to an end, it’s a very unsatisfying conclusion, isn’t it? We’re standing outside the house with the older brother and the father in a face-off. And we never find out whether the older brother went into the party finally or not. That was very deliberate on Jesus’ part because He needs His listeners to end the story in their own minds.
I’m going to tell you a story. At one point in my priesthood, I spent a few months in a very small parish. It was a little tiny church on a lake. And the entire population of the parish was not any larger than the population of Yankee Lake or Wolf Lake. And, because it was a lake community and so small, everybody knew everybody else’s business. Back then even the smallest parish had a larger staff than we have now, so this little parish had a housekeeper. The housekeeper’s job was to cook and clean for the priests, but also, because we didn’t have a permanent secretary, to answer the phone, take messages, make out Mass cards, and all those kind of secretarial things. And so, the housekeeper was pivotal to the life of the parish. Our housekeeper was a woman in her early 60s, married, children, grandchildren, well known throughout the community, involved in lots of things. A very friendly person, lots of people liked her, she liked lots of people. But, of course, she needed to have a day off and she needed vacation time.
And so, the pastor – the pastor was just this delightful old man. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the toolbox. I don’t think he graduated anywhere near the top of his theology class, but he was the gentlest, kindest man. And so, he hired, to take her place on her days off and during her vacation, a young woman in her early 20s who had a little child. She had no husband; she just had a little child. And no one was supposed to know who the father of the child was, although probably a good number of people in the parish either knew or thought they knew. Nowadays, that wouldn’t prompt that much of a reaction, but back when this story happened, it was the scandal of the parish that the pastor hired this scarlet woman to work in the rectory. And the older woman never missed an opportunity, either to her face or behind her back, to make snide, bitter, and ugly remarks about this young woman and even about her child. And yet they continued to work side by side. Both of them pivotal to the life of the parish. Both of them working in the church rectory. Both of them attending Mass on Sunday, sometimes at the same Mass.
How would you like Jesus’ story to end? How would you like my story to end?