Fourth Sunday of Lent Yr C 2025

Title

Know Who You Are

Outline

“So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”

People often do not know who they are

“Be yourself” is a slogan, but first you need to “find yourself.” And sometimes whom you think yourself to be is not who you are.

We are not told why the prodigal felt a need to be himself. Was his older brother always dominating him? Did he feel lost in the busy household, for it was obviously a right household. We do know he left to be himself independent of his father and away from his older brother. That sets up psychological red flags, for you can never really leave your family of origin, but need to come to terms with it.

Well, he tried, but his “freedom” took over and prudence fled and he crashed and then he was nobody. Out in a field, feeding swine, and hungry himself.

So we go back to our roots, our origins

He went back to his father, but knew he had burned his bridges, so hoped to restore a shred of the old relationship by being a hired servant (misthos) rather than even a slave who would be part of the family.

That might be the best one could get, that might be even grace, with a human family, but his father acts like God. The son repents and receives rebirth as he is clothed as the firstborn with the ring on his finger and enjoys a banquet that might celebrate such a birth.

But the physically firstborn also does not know whom he is

He knows he is part of the family but see himself as a slave (doulos) not as a son, not worth a goat for his independent celebration. He is incensed that, not his brother, but “your son” was received not as a hired servant, not even as slave as he saw himself, the lowest rung of the family, but as a reborn son, the highest position, the position he had not emotionally grasped that he had.

So we are left with the unrepentant firstborn outside the house sulking as a wronged slave, while the repentant worse-than-a-hired servant son is reveling in his father’s love inside the house not wallowing in the guilt of whom he had been, but enjoying knowing whom the father had reborn him to be.

This parable is for us

We are new creations, reborn; new things have come.

Are we still living in a far country? Probably not, but we may feel like we are hired servants outside the house. And we may be responsible daughters and sons who feel they are slaves in the house and resent others who know they are reborn daughters and son and whom we think should be outside with even that being too good for them. Our Father is calling us inside, into the banquet, into our identity with him, into his arms and the intimacy of knowing whom we are in his love.