What do we do with the mercy of God? To be honest, I don’t really know.

Some think God isn’t merciful enough. Some think he’s too merciful. What is mercy anyway, really? It is what the Church wants us to contemplate today as we meditate upon the prodigal son and his loving Father. What does this story teach us about mercy? All I can do is ask you to contemplate with me the mercy of God—the mercy of God lavishly shed upon that prodigal sinner and son.

The context of the parable is important: Jesus, by this time, had drawn many unsavory characters into his fellowship, and the Pharisees and scribes—those very moral but spiritually blind men—thought this meant that Jesus and his teaching couldn’t possibly be of God. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they complained.[1] And so Jesus in reply tells them a series of stories. He tells them about a good shepherd that leaves ninety-nine sheep to save the one that is lost and of an old woman who turns her house upside down to find one coin even though she still has nine safely in her pocket.

And then comes the great parable: A son rudely claims his inheritance before his father is even dead. He squanders what his father had given him, and his wanton ways finally bring him to a squalid end—the swine and the mud. Then, as the story goes, he came to his “senses,” and he started to go home, hoping not to reclaim his status as son, but maybe to get on as a hired hand. Then, Jesus said, as the prodigal son was “still a long way off, his father caught sight of him and was filled with compassion.” He rushed out to meet his son, embraced him, “put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.” Kill the fattened calf, he ordered, “this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again.”[2]

This is how Jesus answered his critics, those moral men scandalized by the mere fact that Jesus welcomed into his fellowship publicans and sinners. God is compassionate; that’s the point. He seeks the lost with the same sort of fervent passion as that old woman looking for her coin and that good shepherd looking for the one lost sheep. The father sees the son while he’s still far away and goes out to meet him. So too does the Son of the Father seek the lost—the Magdalenes and the Peters, those like Zacchaeus (that greedy and petty man), all those scrupulous Pauls, and you and me.

In God is an over-willingness to forgive, a passion to forgive, it seems. Yes, it doesn’t seem to square with our strict sense of justice (at least as we may first understand it); but God needn’t answer our offended sense of reward and punishment. When Moses asked to see the glory of God, the Lord told him, “I am gracious to whomever I will, and I am merciful to whomever I will.”[3] Jesus is acting like some sort of sovereign and merciful God. And notice here the irony: humanity demands a reckoning while God simply forgives. We’ve learned something here, not just about the liberality of Jesus, but about the nature of God too—that he is love, love for you.

But there is something else to learn about the nature of forgiveness—what it is and what it isn’t. When the prodigal son finally came to his senses and turned back to his father’s house, he thought he had squandered the right be called his son. All he wanted was to be a hired hand. But his father would have none of that; he welcomed him back as a son. Here we see what forgiveness is in its essence. It is the restoration of our relationship with God as sons and daughters. We make a mistake when we think forgiveness is simply about the remission of punishment. Forgiveness and the remission of punishment are two different things (sometimes they go hand in hand and sometimes they don’t), but it’s when we confuse the two that we begin to question God’s justice. Parents know about this: when your child does wrong, when he or she gets in trouble, isn’t your first instinct just to grab him and hold him close, to be with him as quickly as you can and make sure he’s still breathing at least? When a child is in trouble, a parent’s first instinct is simply to be with his or her child. “We’ll worry about consequences later; just let me know you’re safe and sound.” This is what forgiveness is—God grabbing us, pulling us close to him, checking us over, hoping we’re still alive, like sons and like daughters.

But what does this mean for us today? How do these parables help you? Well, maybe they help you see how much God loves you and is reaching out to you. Maybe they help you see that God is not some sort of awful, hard-hearted judge waiting with bated breath to cast you into hell. Maybe you see better now that he is your loving Father reaching out to you in your conscience, reaching out to you in some kind but convicting word come from the lips of stranger, friend, or priest. Maybe you see better now that the confessional is not some sort of petty courtroom but a sacred place of the Father’s embrace—a place to hear those beautiful words, “Rise up, my sweet daughter.” “Rise up, my strong son.” I’m telling you something true about God. It echoes in your heart. Love is the secret of everything. Forgiveness is its revelation.

But there is one last thing we should note. We too must forgive like the Father. We too must be quick, lavish, and extravagant with our forgiveness, not miserly like some self-righteous moral accountant. Jesus elsewhere in the gospels was clear: our forgiveness depends on whether we forgive others—no “ifs, “ands,” or “buts.”[4] And what is more, we must forgive even without receiving an apology. Saint Maximus the Confessor, that holy sage, said once that when a person sins against you, “[p]ray sincerely to God, accept his apology, or else come up with an apology for him yourself.”[5] You might tell yourself, “I’ll forgive him just as soon as he apologizes and makes amends.” And you might think yourself rather just and magnanimous saying this, but actually you’re very far from God—very close to judgment and very far from mercy. We are all prodigal. We all have the same loving Father. Our Father is generous with his mercy. We should be generous with each other. Augustine said forgiveness is how Christians are restored to health “while on pilgrimage on this earth, as they sigh for their Heavenly Country.”[6] Let us choose this healing, divine and good. Let us find God’s healing together, embraced by him as we embrace each other. Amen.

[1] Luke 15:2

[2] Luke 15:11-24

[3] Exodus 33:19 paraphrase

[4] Luke 6:37 passim

[5] Maximus the Confessor, The Four Hundred Chapters on Love 4.22

[6] Augustine, City of God 15.6

© 2022 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield