In Luke's Gospel Jesus told stories about lost sheep, lost coins and lost sons in quick succession. The message Jesus gave was that God values the lost and loves them. God longs for the lost to come to their senses and for wanderers to come home. The parable of the prodigal son is about being lost and becoming found. It is about hope and redemption. This parable is about profligate love and abundant grace. But the context of this story is the challenge that these notions present to Pharisees in all times and places.

"A man had two sons…" It would be easy to see this parable as a cautionary story about a good son and a bad son. But who is more in need of accepting his father's love - the son who has fallen from grace, plummeting into a pigsty before being jarred back to his senses, or the resolutely self-righteous son who imagines that his own strenuous efforts have manufactured the grace-filled life he possesses? The parable of the Prodigal son is about two sons, both of whom have to come to their senses in order to be whole.

Both sons had turned a blind eye to the true nature of their relationship with their father. The younger son imagined he could make it on his own. He left the land and the laws of his father. He took the money and ran. It was all down hill from there. Mud, hunger, dishonor and defilement dwelt inside a simple fence built to hold pigs. There was room in the muck for the youngest son, and he fell in among pigs.

But the older son also imagined he could make it on his own. He stayed on the land, worked hard, determined to follow the rules if it killed him. He was the "good son". But his vision of what that required of him had turned him into a resentful slave. There was no joy, only duty. There was no gratitude, only grit. The resentment under the surface rose to the fore when the young reprobate came home. A party was thrown and all were invited but the older son would not come. The older son cut off his father in his anger. The older son chose to remain separated from is father and to avoid being reconciled with his brother.

This parable is not about fixed ideas of justice and retribution. No one gets exactly what they deserve. If we look at our own lives, I believe we can agree that is probably a good thing. Mercy and love are freely available to those that turn and seek it. The focus of the parable is on celebrating a return to relationship not the condemnation of previous missteps.

The debris of the distant pigsty is washed away and forgotten in a torrent of fatherly grace and love. The younger son has decided to return to his father and to seek reconciliation. The father meets him with open arms.

The dust of working the family fields could also be left behind, if the older son would allow it. But he would not. Come to the party, the father said, his arms open wide to his other beloved son. But no, the older son wanted to wallow in his anger and chew the indigestible pods of righteous indignation.

The sons have traded places. The younger wears his fathers' robe and ring. This one who had squandered his father's substance now holds the symbols of an heir. The sandals on his feet proclaim him as a son, not a slave. But the older son chooses to remains outside the house, with soiled feet, like servant not fit to eat at his master's table. He has refused his father's hospitality, excluded himself from the feast, and he imagines, all this for righteousness' sake. This parable, like all parables, is a place of shifting ground - a story of reversal.

The truth of the matter is that neither son earned his relationship with the father. Sons and daughters are members of a family because their parents brought them into their household. We did not make ourselves. We do not save ourselves. Nor can we insist on following only our own will or we will be hungry and alone. Both sons had this experience. Ignoring all the rules or resentfully following all them were two sides of the same coin. In each case the focus was on self, not on relationship with others. There can be no feast without the presence of others. The father waits, not to mete out retribution, but to embrace his sons when they come to their senses.

It has been said that there are two kinds of sinners: those who know that they are sinners and those who don't We should thank God that there is mercy for sinners and hope for the lost because we fit in both categories more often than we realize.

In his book, THE WORD ENGAGED: Meditations on the Sunday Scriptures, John Kavanaugh tells a story about a seven day retreat during which he wrestled with the relationship between sin and mercy:

I found myself resisting the whole notion of sin. What's the point of such negativity? Sin. Sin. Sin. God seems to exact from us a degrading admission that we are dirt, junk. The more I thought about sin, the more it nauseated me. The more I reflected on God's mercy, the more I was turned off by it.

At this point I started to worry about my resistance. To be honest, I began to wonder whether I really believed in God in the first place. Well, rather than face that abyss, I concentrated on an old prayer which hitherto had always calmed me down. "O God, you know me and you love me." That would do the trick.

But it didn't. I got more resentful at God. And more worried that I might not even have faith in God. After an hour of fret called meditation, a little variation on my prayer came to mind. Say: "O God, you know me and you love me; and it's not because of anything I have ever done or accomplished."

Now, dear reader, I do not know where that idea came from. But I hated it. Every time I approached uttering the final clause, I gagged. "It's not because of anything I have ever done or accomplished . . ." I just could not say it. It seemed as if everything would fall apart if I did.

My efforts don't count? Then why not have an affair, abandon my vows? Why not kill somebody? Didn't sacrifices count? Didn't my hard work matter? Then why on earth have I been trying so hard? If what I've done or accomplished doesn't earn God's love and salvation, then why have I been trying to do the right thing? "I've slaved for you .. . . . "

The story of the prodigal son invaded my memory. That second son. The son who slaved. The son who resented the father's forgiveness for an ingrate brother who botched everything. The son who would not join the party. The son whose father pleaded. The son who complained…

I thought if I would ever say a prayer like, "You know me and you love me, and it's not because of anything I have ever done or accomplished," I would surely stop working.

As it turned out, the next year I worked harder than I ever had before. But that year, it was less from fear and more from joy.

Luke reminds us that the parable of the prodigal was told to Pharisees who complained about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. Now, in relief, I thank God for such a banquet.

The purpose of all the things we have given up or taken on in Lent is to help us come to the realization that God, our Father has already set the table and laid out a feast. Righteousness waits, like robe, to be put on our shoulders as a gift. We are heirs of the kingdom through hope. The family ring is in the father's hand. He is simply waiting for us to get close enough that he can put it on our finger.

We do not have to wallow in the mire of past decisions. We do not have to fume in the fields worrying about some one else's righteousness or lack thereof. All we have to do is come to our senses, recognize the reality our own existence and come to the table. At the end of the day, at the end of our life, it is our relationships that matter. All of us have reconciliation to seek and relationships to rebuild. Whether we must travel from a far land or come in from the family fields, God wants us at the banquet. Come and eat.