Brief synopsis of the readings: In the first reading from Joshua we find the Israelites at the end of their journey in the wilderness. At long last they can celebrate Passover by eating “the produce of that country” and no longer needed the manna that God rained down for them. Luke’s Gospel tells the now famous parable of the Prodigal Son. Here the younger of two sons cashes out his share of his father’s estate and leaves. Believing that his fortune will care for him, he burns through his entire estate. Destitute, he gains employment feeding corn husks to unclean pigs. Recognizing he has made a mess of his life he returns to his father and begs to be employed as one of his servants. Instead his father declares a feast because his son “who was lost is now found.” The father’s older son is enraged at this and his father attempts to tell him that the prodigal son, who was once dead, is now alive.

Our readings for this week trouble me for two separate and different reasons.

Here is the first: The authors of the lectionary made a point of connecting the first reading and the Gospel. Most of the time the connection is obvious but every now and then the connection is elusive. Today it’s elusive.

Here is the second: Both readings are iconic. While many Jews and Christians may not recognize this reading from Joshua, almost everyone knows that the entry into the Promised Land marked a critical point in our history as God’s disciples. Luke’s parable of the Prodigal Son, possibly the most well known of Jesus’ parables, has become almost marginal by its repetition. We can look at it with new eyes only with great difficulty.

But I do think I can find an interesting and original thread here. Joshua speaks of how this band of ex-slaves, this band of Abraham’s children, this band of wanderers, are finally gaining some traction. When they were slaves they depended on their masters for food (life). After their Exodus they depended on their daily portion of manna for food (life). Now, as they recognize that their journey is soon to end, they can harvest “on what the land of Canaan yielded.”

I like to think that they needed to understand where the harvest originated. They could have recognized that God created the harvest or they could have believed that they grew the harvest themselves and are now independent of God.

This speaks to a critical point in our history: did God liberate the children of Abraham and bring them into the Promised Land and end God’s role in our lives, or did God liberate the children of Abraham and bring them into the Promised Land and then promise to be with them until the end of time?

This is not a simple question. Again and again we have learned that we can’t understand God’s plan for us. To quote St. Anselm, we are not called to understand so we may believe, we are called to believe so that we may understand.

Nearly all of us who read this in the second decade of the twenty first century believe that God crashed into our lives from the beginning and continues to involve himself today. We pray out of a belief that our prayers matter and our prayers affect how God acts. But these ex-slaves could easily have believed that God’s job was done once they entered the Promised Land and that they were on their own after that.

With that understanding, we can look at the Gospel with new eyes. Clearly the younger (prodigal) son is not anyone’s hero. He knows that once his father dies he will split his father’s estate with his older brother. But he doesn’t want to wait that long. He told his father he wanted his share now. I can only imagine the pain his father felt in hearing this, and his pain was compounded when his son sold half his (current) estate to the highest bidder. His father was then condemned to watch a stranger till the land he hoped his son would own. Meanwhile his son took the money and ran.

Nearly any of us could have predicted how this story went. The prodigal son took his share of his inheritance and convinced himself that he earned it, even though he didn’t. Coming as no surprise, he spent his “inheritance” on poor choices and soon burned through half his father’s estate and all he had.

And then he found himself in an untenable position: Knowing he needed to find an income stream he searched for a job. His search did not go well and he was hired to feed the animals on someone’s farm. But here was the problem: Jews were prohibited from having any contact with swine (pigs) because they were unclean and yet his employer commanded him to feed them corn husks. And so he found himself at a crossroad: Does he continue to do what he needs to do to survive or does he recognize the mess he’s made of his life? Does he stay where he is or does he swallow his pride and ask his father for forgiveness?

This parable commands our attention because the prodigal son chose the path that God and Jesus warned us against. We love this parable because it speaks to our deepest fear, and at the same time our greatest hope. We want to be known for our best choices and not our worst. But even when the prodigal son chooses the worst path, his father chooses a redemptive path. He finds good news even in our worst choices.

According to the norms of the time, the son was supposed to prostate himself in front of his father and beg forgiveness, and his father was under no obligation to forgive. Instead his father, on seeing him in the distance, raced toward him and embraced him.

And he fed him. The father commanded a feast to celebrate the return of his lost son. And his son, finally, recognized that this feast was given, not earned. This reminds me of an anecdote I read years ago in the magazine Readers’ Digest: an adult son, who recently graduated from college and moved into his own apartment, visited his mother. He complained about the difficulty of managing a budget and paying the bills. But when his mother commiserated, he replied: “But how do you know? You live at home.”

Most of us live in a place where we think we earn enough money to purchase what we need. That’s not a bad thing but at the same time we need to understand that, at the end of the day, we depend on God for all that we have. For those of us with jobs, we are employed because of gifts and talents that we were given. We may have worked at what we were given (both in school and in “on the job training”), but that doesn’t negate the fact that none of us are “self made.”

The reading from Joshua, and the parable of the prodigal son both remind us that our success calls us to gratitude and not pride. These readings remind us we are who we are, and we have who we have because God continues to crash into our lives.

We live in a time and a place where we are coached to brag about our accomplishments. But we also live in a relationship that calls us to recognize God’s role in our success. We’re nearly halfway through Lent and let’s take this time to recognize our gratitude for what we have.