This week we are starting a new message series called “8^thGrade Faith”. For many of us, when you grew up Catholic, that meant you attended Catholic School, but if you didn’t go to Catholic school you went to CCD or Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. The church stopped using the term CCD several years ago, depending on the church it might be called “Religious Education” or “Faith Formation” now.

If we are honest with ourselves, the reason many parents then, as now send their kids to Religious Education is to get their sacraments. Once they receive first communion and confirmation, their job is done. I started CCD in 7^thgrade after attending St. Peter’s from Kindergarten thru 6^thgrade. When I think back on my CCD experience, it wasn’t all that exciting. In fact, it might be described as boring. 

For many, confirmation was graduation, graduation from church, from religion, from religious practice, from faith formation. Now, having an eighth-grade faith isn’t a bad thing…if your actually in eighth grade. But for those of us who left eighth grade long ago, it puts us at a big disadvantage. You’re not the same person you were in eighth grade anymore. You’ve changed physically, you’ve changed mentally. You’ve matured. Can you imagine trying to do your job, or managing your finances, or raising your children based on your understanding of those things from eighth grade? Well, it’s the same with your faith. As you grow, as you mature, your questions change, and your understanding of the answers probably change as well. This series is about moving on, moving on to a more useful approach to our faith. Full confession here – there was a time in the early years of my married life when church was not that important to me, when I would stay home to do some of the chores around the house while Mary took the kids to church. Now, that has obviously changed. You see, it took marrying a good Protestant to make me a better Catholic.

Today’s Gospel is one of the most memorable of Jesus’ parables, and it is only told in the Gospel of Luke. This story is of the Prodigal Son, or the two sons, or perhaps more appropriately, the story of the mercy of the father. The Pharisees were the church people and they considered anyone who didn’t follow the Law the way they did as sinners. The Pharisees were jealous of Jesus. They were jealous of his popularity. And what was worse to the Pharisee’s is that Jesus was popular with those they considered sinners. He wasn't interested in preaching to perfect people, he went looking for the imperfect, the flawed, the un-churched. The Pharisees saw this as moral compromise. They talked under their breath and behind his back and Jesus knew it. He heard their mumbling. But as is often the case, he didn't confront them directly. Instead, he tells the Pharisee’s and the sinners a story. 

Everyone in the stories that Jesus tells represent someone. In today’s Gospel, the younger son represents the sinner’s in the audience. Jesus wants them to know that it’s OK. They don’t need to clean up their act before returning to the father…God loves them anyway. He just wants them home. The older son represents the Pharisees. They follow all the rules and want what they think is owed to them. The older son has obeyed the father, but not out of love and respect, but what’s in it for him. The father in the story, of course represents God the father. He treats both son’s with love. The younger son is arrogant and irresponsible and throws away everything that has been given to him. The older son is arrogant as well. He’s rude to his father and refuses to welcome his brother home. You see, neither son really knew the father. They were both alienated from the father. Yet, the father treats each of them with love and mercy. 

Growing up, we learn a lot about right and wrong, about do's and don'ts. And that's good. God is good. His law is good for us. It reflects His goodness and grace. It reflects His mercy and justice. Any parent is the same. Without rules, kids don't learn to love. They descend into selfishness and bad behavior. Without limits and laws, kids become confirmed in their infantile assumption that the world revolves around them. If we never get beyond our eighth-grade faith, we can reduce Christianity to rules, rules that we accept or rules that we reject, but rules nonetheless. God wants more. God wants a lot more. God wants us to be looking to Him, talking to Him, honoring Him with more and more of our choices, more and more of our days, and more and more of our life, living our life in His grace, which isn't a prize for the perfect or a gift for the good. It is unmerited favor, unmerited favor that incredibly He keeps sending our way. The point isn't rules, the point was never rules; it's a relationship.