Justification/Citizenship Sunday
Joshua 5:9a, 10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
This Sunday is called _Laetare_ Sunday or Happiness Sunday. It is not because we have fasted and prayed so well for the past three weeks that call for happiness, but because of what God and Jesus Christ have done for us! Our naturalization or the celebration of our citizenship catalyzes our happiness, especially those who appreciate the history of their citizenship!
Our readings begin with the history of Israel’s identity and citizenship, and culminates with Christian identity and citizenship.
If Israel was and still is a people, their liberation from Egypt created their identity. Liberated slaves tell the history of Israel. Anti-slavery God and religion are the distinctive markers of Judaism. God’s justice is the raison d’être of Israel.
As slaves, Israelites sought liberation and the Living-God (the meaning of Yahweh) set them free. God took three steps to make Israel a people: (a) freedom from servitude, (b) free-food of Manna for their journey to the Promised-land and (c) as ambassadors of hardwork and justice for all.
Israel became an adult and received its identity at the point of responsibility: “Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you” (Joshua 5:9). This is the story: Israel was nobody, but a fetus in the womb of God, on the birth canal of the desert to parturition in the Promised-land. God repeats the creation account of Genesis in an abridged form: He created or set aside an Earth (Promised-land) to be dwelt in before Israel was born. Without God’s liberative justice and magnanimous free-food (welferism), there is no Israel! This is Israel’s identity – a creation of God’s justice and a sign of God’s mercy for all the oppressed and landless people! The “Passover” is Israel’s change of identity: “passing” from nobody “over” into somebody – citizenship.
Our second reading tells an abridged history of the origin of Christian identity – justification! Israel failed woefully in its justice mission to replicate the justice and mercy of God it experienced. The sin of oppression and segregation heightened to the point of making Israel the “exclusive” people of God. The power of sin and wrong doing became so powerful that God’s ambassador was sent upon earth – Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, heaven is the permanent home; the earth is only a battle ground for the liberation of embattled humanity at see with sin. Jesus, God’s ambassador to earth, reformulated God’s justice through his life, death and resurrection: “God *sent* his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to *save* the world through him” (John 3:17).
Instead of a liberation from an earthly tyranny (Egypt) and an award of an earthly dwelling place, Jesus makes the earth a temporary dwelling place and a Christian becomes an ambassador with fixed duration upon earth and a messenger of God’s justice against every sinful act! This new identity – JUSTIFICATION by the blood of Jesus Christ – means that a Christian has no personal life except Jesus’ – his is an ambassadorial existence as Jesus’ was!
Without Justification (the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ ), there will not be a Christian identity and a new creation: “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (1 Cor 5:17).
Today’s gospel reminds us of how we still bastardize our identity today. Though Christians, some of us turn out to either be the younger or older son of a prodigal Father, whose mercy is limitless upon earth! The younger son rebelled against his identity and parentage. Cashing in on his Father’s liberality, he took off his inheritance, traveled far from his Father and home, and wallowed in sin to the point of becoming a “pig”, eating husks with them. He bastardized his christlike identity to an animalistic creatureliness! Thanks be to God, his brain was neither compromised nor his conscience corrupted: “Coming to his senses . . . [he confessed]
‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you'”. The younger son, like ourselves, exercised his freedom to go astray and the freedom to return to the sheep fold.
The older son exemplifies some of us: the virgins, punctilious and obedient to every minutiae of Commandments, unforgiving of those who sin, who are more intelligent than the Prodigal Father and blame him for encouraging prodigality and wasteful spending on returnees prodigal children! At the bridge between these two extreme characters of children of the same Father is the power of love and compassion: “your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found”.
Justification/Identity Sunday calls us to remember the history of how we became who we are, whether as Jews or Christians. At the core of this remembrance are God’s mercy and justice. Above all, a call to become other gods upon earth working for justice by extending to others the mercy of God we have experienced in our journey of faith.
Justification/Identity Sunday teaches that neither the older nor the younger son is the model of Christian identity: it is the Prodigal Father that we must imitate! Unfortunately, the conversion of the younger brother and his grandiose return home, expelled the older brother from home and reveal that anyone can fall, if not careful! Come to think of it: how can anybody be sad because a sinner repents, jealousy and happiness that some people will go to and stay in hell?
If any message will resonate with us this Sunday, it is this: a Christian is an ambassador of Jesus Christ, he is NOT Jesus Christ! As an ambassador, we only carry out what Jesus Christ asks of us, we do not mete out our justice but dispense God mercy as liberally as Jesus Christ, the Prodigal Father forgives us and invites us to forgive others unconditionally.
Indeed, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God”.
On this_Laetare_ Sunday, we rejoice because our sins are forgiven and we have received the identity of being called God’s children. Let us not lose our Christian identity and credentials as God’s ambassadors upon earth, while awaiting our return home (to Heaven).
Assignment for the Week :
This Lent, worry about how to make heaven and NOT about who is a worse sinner than yourself.