Sunday of the Prodigal Son; Pre-feast of the Encounter of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ; The Holy Martyr Tryphon.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20; Luke 15:11-32.
Read Luke 15:11-32
“Keep your eye on the ball.” That saying from baseball, reminding us to maintain focus on the main thing, is well-known.
The main thing in life is relationships. As we enter life and depart from it, we experience that profoundly. In between, it gets complicated. Relationships are difficult. Like everything in this world, they are mediated through material goods. Parents express love to a child through providing the very necessities of life. There is always some intermediary thing that goes between the lover and the beloved to make love actual. “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20)
But the material stuff of life is enticing. We all like how good things make us feel. We can value what we get more than who we get it from. We can be diverted within ourselves from the end to the means, from the giver to the gift.
Both sons in this parable fell into that. The prodigal son was focused on having his father’s property and how squandering it made him feel. The faithful son was just as focused on his father’s property, but on how not having it made him feel. Both were out of sync with their father’s heart.
For the father, a life of relationship with his sons was the essential thing. His property was only in service of that. His prodigal son wasn’t “alive” or “dead” to him because of having or not having property but by relationship, or not, with his father. The faithful son was present with his father and his property but was still missing out on the life of relationship with him. Our heavenly Father has given us his heart. He wants ours to be in sync with His.