Offensive Love

In this season of Lent, we are invited to let go and lay down our idols and our egos to enter the strange mystery of the Easter story — where the way of the cross leads to resurrection, to reconciliation, to the salvation of all creation.
This time has been a peeling back the layers of our hearts. A time to turn inwards with perhaps more intention than other parts of the year. A time to quiet our souls despite a world full of constant noise from false-gods spewing false-promises. All so that we might catch a glimpse of the one who is offering more and the best of than we could ever possibly imagine.

And it’s in this desert place of letting go and laying down, where we might find that we are no longer lost. That we are already forgiven. That scarcity is only a mirage. And though death might surround us, there is new life budding up between the cracks of despair.

And there’s no better story, no better parable, no better metaphor that can invite us into this reality than this one — a story deeply familiar but always confronting. A story that leaves us in suspense and tension. A story we keep coming back to again and again and again despite, or perhaps because of, its un-resolution. A story where we continue to misunderstand and miscalculate just how deep, how wide, and how unrelenting God’s love is for us.

Two brothers. One father. One ancestral land. The younger brother is too hasty, too honest, and too hedonistic. He follows the passions of his flesh as he asks for his share of his father’s inheritance before he’s even in the ground — all but wishing his dad dead. A request that will demolish the legacy of this land that was passed down from generation to generation.

And the father does not hesitate to give it up. He knows to love something you have to let it go… and so he does. The father sells the land without batting an eye and gives half the proceeds from the sale over to the younger son. There is no tough love, there is no trying to reason — there is only excessive, outrageous and, frankly, offensive love poured out without question and without hesitation.
And just as quickly as the younger son receives his inheritance, he squanders it. Left with nothing, divine karma enters the situation. A severe famine falls upon the region and, to add insult to injury, the younger son hires himself out to a Gentile feeding gruel to pigs — the ultimate Jewish joke.

At some point he realizes the absurdity of his situation, and decides he’ll hire himself out to his father. And so he picks up his suitcase full of cobwebs and shame and heads home. But before he can utter a word of repentance, his father sees him in the distance, hikes up his robe and sprints towards his son — not full of rage, but full of joy, embracing him with a love he can barely begin to grasp.
As soon as the son has breath enough to catch himself, he asks for forgiveness. But the father, ignoring him completely, calls out to his workers to bring a robe — not just any robe, the best one. To bring a ring — not just any ring, the best one. To bring sandals — yes, the best ones. And to get a fatted calf — the fattest one — so they can eat and celebrate, for this son of his was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.

If the story were to stop here, this would be enough for us to chew on and digest for the rest of our lives, and we would still not be able to fathom how deep, how wide and how unrelenting the father’s love is.

Except the story doesn’t end here. Excruciatingly, the camera pans out towards the edges of the party to the older son who is tired and dirty from a hard day’s work — the good and faithful one who has been waking up before the sun every morning and returning home late into the evening, working the land day in and day out for years upon years.

Rage begins to bubble up as he discovers the return of his younger brother — but not only this, that his father has given him the best robe, the best ring, the best sandals and the fattest calf to celebrate with. The father, seeing his obstinance and outrage, pleads with him to come in and celebrate. But the older brother refuses — he can’t, or rather, won’t accept rewarding bad behavior while he, the good and faithful son, has never even gotten so much as a goat.

But it’s here, at the end of the story, that we see how both sons have been getting it wrong this whole time. What they’re meant to have with their father is not about wills or wealth, not about what’s right or what’s wrong, not about cause and effect or quid pro quos. What’s at stake, and what their real inheritance is, is relationship — not just with the Father, but with each other:

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

Notice the change in the possessive adjective from “my son” to “your brother.” A change that alters the course of the story, placing the decision in the hands of the older brother with this hanging climax: Does he join his brother’s party? Or does he refuse repentance, reconciliation, and relationship — choosing instead to hang his hat on what is right and what is wrong, following a philosophy of cause and effect, embodying a morality of punishment and reward, and practicing an economy of quid pro quo?

When I first began theological studies eight years ago, I was told to get a spiritual director. The advice then was that the road toward ministry would not be lined with roses — that our faith would be tested, that what we thought we knew about God would be upended, and that we needed a highly experienced practitioner to journey with us on the way.

Eight years later and I still have the same spiritual director who, when I’m in a crisis of faith (which happens more frequently than I’d like), still reassures me, saying, “Alisha, the longer you’re on the spiritual path, the harder it will get.” “Thanks,” I say. “Really comforting,” I say.

But the reason it gets harder is, frankly, to do with God’s excessive, outrageous, and offensive love. The call to repent — that is, to return to God’s unrelenting love and to become vessels of it ourselves — is damn hard work. It defies rationality and it defies our deeply reptilian responses to things like what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s just and what’s unjust, what’s worthy of forgiveness and what’s unforgivable
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It requires a kind of desert seeking. It requires a kind of desert walking. And it requires a kind of death — a dying to ourselves that, frankly, does not get easier with time or experience. But it’s a death that enters into the strange mystery illumined in the strangeness of the Father’s love.

For this kind of love, it turns out, does not rely on a gooey feeling but rather works on our gooey hearts — a slow chipping away of our arrogance, ideals, idols and egos in order to become vessels of repentance, reconciliation, and relationship ourselves. That is, to become a people who let go and lay down the way we think it all should work and, instead, seek relationship with the whole of God’s creation… whatever the cost.

And this is not just when we turn away from God — it is when others, that is, the younger brothers of our world, turn away from God. A kind of love that seems unnatural, as it is for the older brother, and yet is the way of the cross. It is the way of resurrection. It is the way of reconciliation. And it is the way of salvation — God’s kingdom come.

This is the kind of love that seems to be missing in our world right now, where we see harder lines being drawn in the sand of who’s right and who’s wrong and who’s in and who’s out. A world where division, dissonance, and demonization are not just the status quo in America, but are well and alive and glorified in our society, in our politics, in our algorithms, and within ourselves as well.

Now this does not mean we turn a blind eye to injustice and inhumanity, but it does mean that we seek justice and peace through the way of repentance, reconciliation, and relationship with the whole of God’s creation. I hear last week’s lectionary reading from Isaiah echoing here: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

This is a way that is in the world but not of the world. A way that leads us to becoming vessels of something more beautiful and more salvific than we could ever imagine. A way that fills us with more and the best of than we could ever understand — God’s excessive, outrageous and offensive love for one another. This is the way of true justice. This is the way of true salvation.

For this is the strange and mysterious way of Christ that we are invited to follow. Christ is not a punishment-reward system, nor a quid pro quo handshake. In fact, the only equation there is, is this one: the older brother’s salvation is bound up with the younger one’s. My salvation is bound up with yours. And our salvation is bound up with creation’s.

And so this tension, this unresolved climax at the end of our story, is not for the sinners or the tax collectors of our time, as much as we might want it to be. But, as the beginning of our scripture implies, this story is for the Pharisees and the scribes — in other words, you and me: the older sons of the world who are already with the father. Who have taken steps towards the spiritual life that is not of our own thinking and not of our own way. A spiritual life that follows the way of the desert, the way of the cross, the way of resurrection, the way of repentance, and the way of reconciliation. A spiritual life that is wrapped up with the salvation of the whole creation — for this is our ultimate inheritance.

So, in these last few weeks of Lent — how might you be invited deeper into the desert? What are you still being invited to let go of and lay down? And how might you be invited to follow the way of the Father’s strange love?

For true life and true abundance come not by society’s sense of morality, not from wills or wealth, but by becoming vessels of the excessive, outrageous, and offensive love of God to one another. For it is the only kind of love that has saved the world and ever will.