God feeds us for joy – Luke 15:1-3. 11-32

Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C; Holy Infant Parish.

Did you know that baby flamingoes are born with grey feathers?  They only become pink because their diet is rich in a natural pink dye called canthaxanthin, which is found both in brine shrimp and, somewhat paradoxically in blue-green algae.  Zoo flamingoes used to lose their acquired pinkness until zookeepers realized that they had to provide them with artificial sources of canthaxanthin.  As with flamingoes, so with us: we are what we eat.

Or, maybe for us it’s a bit more complex, because we’re looking to be formed into something more vibrant than just pinkness: we’re looking to be formed into the image of Christ, readied to take our place, saints among saints in the halls of heaven.  So, we can’t flourish on a diet of artificial sources of canthaxanthin.  We need the real deal.  What we eat, how we eat, with whom we eat: all of that matters in a deep way for our journey together towards holiness.

We see this theme of how and what we eat running like a thread through the beautiful parable which is generally called in English the prodigal son (but could just as well be called the “Lost Sons” or the “Prodigal Father”).  The younger son doesn’t realize how starved he is of everything that really matters until he literally has nothing to eat.  He’s hungry.  And, out of desperation, he desires to eat swine food.  It’s at this rock bottom moment he realizes the gravity of his situation: the obvious wrongness of this unclean food is what finally makes him realize that he has not been living in the way that, in the depths of his heart, he longs to live.  So, he resolves to return, confess his sin and offer a deal as a way to get back to better food.

But, his father doesn’t let him.  As soon as he sees him, he runs; he makes haste like Mary going to Elizabeth, to perform mercy out of love. As the son is beginning his pre-planned speech to his father, the father interrupts him, re-clothes him and calls him to the meal that will make him whole again, that will restore him to sonship and form him, allow him flourish, equip him to know true joy.

And the father keeps on acting in loving mercy, now to his other son, who like his brother is not yet formed to know true joy.  This is the son who had never hit rock-bottom, but had slowly faded away from the table, the son who accuses his brother of things the narrator never ascribed to him, the son who wants to take food, and feast with his friends, not share in the father’s banquet, not feast side by side with his brother.

We may find ourselves going back and forth between identifying with these different brothers.  Maybe we can look to our pasts and see a time when fed on swine food, and it made us as grey as a captive flamingo.  I know my challenge at times is to resist thinking that because I’ve left certain swine foods of my past behind, that means I’ve fully responded to God’s lavish invitation to the feast.

Maybe we find ourselves like the older brother, desiring the right food, but not the right company: for we will only be formed for the heavenly banquet, to stand saints among saints, if we truly desire that each and every one of our sisters and brothers feast with us.  Holiness is not like the pinkness of a flamingo; it’s more vibrant.  It doesn’t just require a certain ingredient, it requires company, and it entails a desire to welcome others into that company, even those whose conversion (incomplete as all of ours are) most irritate us.

Because we do not feast on brine shrimp or blue-green algae, but on the fatted calf.  There is no feast in our parable if an innocent is not slain.  There is no feast if the father does not throw his propriety to the wind and sacrifice some of his honor and run.  There is no conversion, no welcome, no embrace, no feast, no holiness without our God’s extravagant gift of self.  It is that on which we feast.  It is that that we are formed to show forth as ambassadors.  Christ, our Passover has been sacrificed, therefore let us keep the feast!

The poet Péguy once said that “one would have to have a heart of stone to hear this story without crying.”  The most beautiful expression of this invitation I’ve ever read outside of the Bible is from George Herbert, in my favorite poem.  I’ll close with his words:

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning	5
If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'	10
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'	15
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.