The lectionary Gospel reading last week was on the prodigal son. It’s one of those love-it-or-hate-it readings. If you’ve ever been away from faith, it warms your heart. If you’ve always been with God, it can make you a little angry.
One of the priests at my church didn’t take the usual warm and fuzzy, “God welcomes everyone and we should too” angle in his homily. Instead, he spoke about the utter degradation of the prodigal son and how at that time, little was lower in the worldview of the scribes and Pharisees than swine… and yet this son was even worse off than the swine. In two different church-related meetings last week, I heard people rail about the homily. Some said they knew people who almost walked out.
It wasn’t this priest’s best homily, I’ll be honest. But I came away thinking:
- everyone, even priests, is entitled to an off day
- maybe it was cultural
- maybe he’d given the warm and fuzzy homily on this Gospel so many times that he thought he’d try something different
- maybe sometimes God doesn’t tell us what we expect, what we want to hear, but rather what we need to hear. Jesus certainly did that frequently with the disciples, the crowd, the scribes, and the Pharisees.
I’ve learned to let go of my reaction to what I perceive as bad homilies. I’m working on learning from them.
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