The Extravagant God - Part I

I am sure that most of us have watched the Master Card commercials on TV that delineate a person’s expense activities and then concludes with the word “priceless” as we view a precious moment that is beyond all price. What if we would do that for the youngest son in our gospel today? It may look something like this . . . 

Master Card Expenses: Youngest Son

• Travel to a foreign country
• Food, shelter, entertainment and wasteful spending
• Enduring a famine
• Tending pigs as a hired hand
• Coming to one’s senses
• Return trip back Home 

Cost: A share of the inheritance

• “Welcome Home” Party
• Hall rental 
• Hired musicians 
• Purchase of new robe, ring and sandals 
• Forgiven, restored to son-ship with honor and dignity 
• Fatted-calf barbeque

Cost: Endless joy!   

• A compassionate, merciful, generous and unconditional loving embrace from the father  

Priceless!  
Our Gospel is one of the greatest stories ever told. Jesus is a genius storyteller and he tells this parable because the Pharisees and Scribes were mad at him saying, “This guy eats with sinners.” They were judging him for not being as holy as them and for violating the Mosaic cleanliness laws - but for Jesus, he always obeyed the divine law of love and compassion. 

Parables are forms of story using metaphor or simile drawn from ordinary life or nature and often used by Jesus to make a religious point. He heavily utilized metaphor and even shock to get his point across. He used his parables to make his hearers think. He challenged them to a new vision of God's reign that always radically turned up-side down the common views -- whether religious, cultural, ethnic, or social views. 

Jesus' parables encouraged his hearers not simply to think outside of the box. They declared that there is no box -- only God's unconditional compassionate, all-powerful, just and wise reign over all. In the face of the religious restrictions preached and mandated by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, priests, and scribes, Jesus was inclusive, not only in his words but in his life. 

He was willing to regularly suffer the humiliation, mean-spirited insults, and physical persecution resulting from his associating with those who were disenfranchised, repudiated, or despised by others. He ate and mingled with his critics, the rich and poor, young and old, women and men, those self-assured of their righteousness and those who in the eyes of others were living sinfully.