Luke 15 is one of those scripture passages that is intertwined with my imagination. The grace found in the parable of the forgiving father is so integral to how I understand faith that I keep taking it apart and looking at the pieces. It is amazing how many ways you can look at a story that only has three main characters.
I read the parable recently and I imagined that it was this cyclical story in which the son that stayed was the son that left. The older son was the prodigal. He ran. He squandered. He returned penniless. And his father lavished love on him.
But as time went on, he forgot. He returned home, obeyed all the rules, and he forgot who he was. He forgot his father’s love. He bought into the lie that he was always the son that stayed. So when the story repeats itself, he if full of bitterness. Not remembering his own folly. Not remembering the grace that saved him.
And I wonder sometimes how often we are the younger-turned-older sons and daughters who simply forget. We think that we have always been the ones that kept the rules, when we need grace just like the one that shatters every rule ever conceived. I think that is what happens when Christians belittle those outside the church or look down at those crawling and struggling to find God. It’s an amnesia of the soul.
God help us to remember.
I believe that most of us experience an internal tug-of-war between the past and the future. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ titular demon supervisor advises his underling Wormwood that one of best ways to keep a human from doing good is to keep them ping-ponging between those two times that are not the present. One keeps trying to recapture or reach towards moments that are mist. It can keep a person from doing something.
The quote above resonates with me because it harnesses the past and unfinished future into a catalyst that animates our present. We remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus because it means something today and compels us to presently work for the Good that is already here, but also not yet. We remember the hope and pain of the past to do something that help us take some sort of step each and every day. We realize that the hope which exists within the gospel story is not yet fully realized. Many people are still being left behind and forgotten. The realization, as the theologian Metz states, puts pressure and questions on the present.