Again, since I am away on vacation, I am going to continue our message series, “Attitude Adjustment,” here in my bulletin column. The attitude that we have been focusing on is the virtue of humility. It is something that all of us need to practice all the time. This week I am going to reflect on how to be humble in the face of our faults and failures. The parable that Jesus tells in this weekend’s Gospel really explains it so very well.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is so familiar to us that we run the risk of not fully appreciating just how outrageous the premise is. The younger son is telling his father, essentially, "I don't want to be around you anymore. Let's just proceed as if you were already dead. And by the way, go ahead and give me my share of your estate." Just as outrageous is how the father responds to his son’s disrespectful request. He does not back-hand him. Rather, he does just as he was asked to do; he divides his property and gives his younger son his share.
We know what happens next; a few days later the younger son packs up his belongings and moves to a distant land. He distances himself from his father, and proceeds to party it up. He could only live like a rock star for so long before he spent all his money. Then to make things worse, a famine breaks out and the son finds himself without any money and nothing to eat. His foolishness is matched by misfortune, making a bad situation worse.
How often do we find ourselves in a similar situation. You make a poor decision and then another decision beyond your control aggravates the situation. You wait until the very last minute to study for the exam. And then at the very last minute, you get another assignment handed to you too. It's just the way life seems to work sometimes.
The younger son ends up taking the most disgraceful job a Jewish man could have; taking care of pigs. Even then, he is still starving, longing to eat the slop that the pigs are dining on. He comes to a turning point, and it is summed up in the phrase, “Coming to his senses.” This is actually an idiomatic phrase in Hebrew which means, “taking responsibility for your actions.”
When we have a problem, it can take quite a lot for us to even acknowledge it, we know that. But even after we do, it can be more difficult for us to take responsibility for it. Everything in us, everything in us wants to blame somebody else. Find an excuse. "My marriage is in trouble because my wife doesn't understand what I need." My grades aren't any good because my teachers are out to get me." "My career is going nowhere because my boss is an idiot." That's certainly one way to approach your problems, for sure.
But another route is offered to us through humility. We can be humble and take responsibility for why we are where we are. "My marriage is in trouble because I haven't made it a priority." "My grades aren't what they should be because I don't study." "My career is going nowhere because I haven't developed my skills and put in the extra effort."
The prodigal son comes to his senses and decides to go back to the Father and admit his folly. Notice that he doesn't make any excuse for his behavior. He probably rehearse what he was going to say to his father a hundred times as he made his way home, but he doesn’t get a chance to say it. While still a long way off, his father sees him and runs to him, embracing him. This is interesting, another attribute of the surprising power of humility. Not only does it work, it works quickly.
The father's willing to take the son's contrition on any terms the son wants to extend it. And in that sense, it is actually the action of the father, not the son, that reveals the meaning of the story and the real heart of humility. Humility is really all about selfless love. The father in this story is obviously representing God the Father. And the story is teaching us about the incredibly humble heart of God himself.
How are you doing with all of this? Do you have...are you cultivating a habit of admitting your faults and failures or do you have a knee-jerk reaction of deflecting responsibility? Do you own your mistakes? Are you trying to do that, or are you just looking for others to blame? Do you willingly honestly regularly say you're sorry because when we do, it has this incredible ability to change and transform us more into the person that we want to be, the person that's more attractive to the people around us and the person that God wants us to be. There's a kind of amazing irony at the heart of this whole series. As we aspire to be more humble, we actually become more like God.