The Prodigal Son Revisited

After the crucifixion, the disciples are gathered, huddled in a little room, terrified of the Romans, the Jewish leaders, but mostly, terrified that God will seek retribution and vengeance.  After all, they abandoned Jesus when Jesus needed them most and turned away from their calling.  Peter even denied that he knew Jesus three times.

Perhaps as they were sitting in this little room, they figured that they had two choices: either beg God for forgiveness, or figure that God had given up on them and try to melt back into the crowd and go back to their lives before they began following Jesus.

At this point, the most remarkable thing happens: they experience the presence of the risen Christ in that room.  And Jesus does not demand repentance and forgiveness from them.  Instead, Jesus renews his call to the disciples to follow him and to continue in their relationship with him.  In Jesus, God does not arrive in that moment with vengeance or even with a demand that before the relationship can continue, that the disciples ask for forgiveness.  Instead, God seeks out the disciples with no thought in mind other than the relationship continuing.  God seeks out the disciples with nothing but reconciliation.

The nature of the God revealed in the Parable of the Prodigal Son is revealed again in this story.  The disciples, like the Prodigal Son, had done what they considered, rightly, to be irreparable harm to their relationship with God.  Their mistakes were so egregious that they figured that they had two choices, like the Prodigal Son--to prostrate themselves and seek forgiveness, or to figure that the relationship was irretrievably broken.  But God, like the father in the parable, isn't interested in contrition; only in the relationship continuing.  The only thing that will sever our relationship with God is when our guilt leads us to think that our acts and omissions have severed the relationship.  They can't, no matter what we have done or not done.  God will continue to show up in the little rooms where we hide from ourselves, others, and God, with no thought but that the relationship continue.  This is Easter.  This is new life.