The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation for Lent
The season of Lent disrupts the liturgical year and the lectionary in many ways. Click here for more information on the season and its readings.
Overview and Connections
Today is Laetare Sunday, a day of celebration that signals the halfway point of Lent. We are halfway to resurrection! Hang in there!!
The name Laetare comes from the antiphon in the Latin Mass, “Laetare Jerusalem” — “Rejoice, O Jerusalem” from Isaiah 66:10. Ancient customs around this Sunday provided a relaxing of the Lenten fast. It’s a way of acknowledging that we are made for JOY and abundance, and that we cannot sustain, by our own human efforts, a life of fasting and penance. It is God who does the work within us. And that sometimes calls for celebration.
Today’s readings will continue the theme of metanoia, of allowing God to work within and change us. The Joshua reading lets us glimpse a bit of feasting in the promised land and reminds us of all the good things to come. Paul speaks of reconciliation and unity. And then Luke gives us the beloved story of the prodigal father, who welcomes the wayward son home with JOY and feasting, but also grieves for the son who has it all but rejects it all.
Joshua 5:9a, 10-12
Today’s passage recounts the first Passover celebration in the Promised Land.
We begin with God speaking to Joshua, Moses’ successor and the one who has brought the Israelites out of the desert into the promised land. They are camping outside Jericho. The land is not yet theirs but they are celebrating anyway, as they remember their deliverance from Egypt. Egypt was about slavery, and slavery in that world was an insult, or a “reproach” as v9 calls it. God reminds them that he has taken away the reproach. Now they are free and they celebrate that freedom by, first and foremost, remembering God’s deliverance. The Hebrew word Gilgal sounds similar to the word for I have removed. The name Gilgal would remind them always of the burden of slavery that God has removed.
In v10 they celebrate the Passover. God gave them instructions for it in the desert but they are finally able to actually observe it. On the day after Passover, they eat of the produce of the land.
Keep in mind that this is produce they did not cultivate. They are in the promised land and these former slaves are enjoying the fruit of someone else’s labor: this is another way of saying that God has reversed their fortunes. They used to make bricks for Pharoah’s buildings. Now they get to enjoy the fruit of someone else’s labor.
You might want to revisit Exodus 16, which is the story of how God provided manna, the Hebrew word meaning what is it?! This manna has sustained them in their wandering, but it now ceases at this feast. In the same way, the Eucharist now sustains us but will cease at the banquet at the end of time. Remember this is REJOICING Sunday – we’re looking forward to the full joy of the resurrection when we won’t need manna or Eucharist to sustain us because we will be in God’s presence.
Consider planning a little celebration for Laetare Sunday. Relax your Lenten fast and let loose a little. Recall all the ways in which God has blessed your journey. Remember God’s promises. Then feast and celebrate the God who has led you this far and will continue to do so.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Today Paul is talking about reconciliation. The Greek word is katallaso and it was used of money: to change from one currency to another; to settle the differences so that two sides balance.
Paul says there are two sides to this: first, we are reconciled to God. The differences between us and God – call that sin – have been settled so that we can come together. And then we are to be reconciled with each other – eliminating what separates us, settling those differences, and then coming together. This unity does not mean uniformity. As we are reconciled with each other, we each remain who we are, the authentic selves that God created. Just as, when we are reconciled with God, we remain our authentic self and God remains who God is. There is room for a wide range of diversity in our unity.
Reconciliation is both message and ministry. Our message is that everyone can be reconciled to God. And we live that out by reconciling with each other; that is our ministry.
Paul also talks about two “ages.” There was an age of sin and death and alienation from God. That’s the equivalent of living in slavery in Egypt. Then there is an age of life and reunion with God. By being “in Christ” we have passed into this new age while still physically living in the old one. If some days you feel like you’re being torn in two by a great tension, this is why.
Christ has reconciled us into this new age. And we are called to a total and profound reconciliation, both with God and with others.
The passage begins by speaking of a radical change that takes place through the lived acceptance of the standards set by Christ. It is a metanoia that is gradual but radical. I think of Isaiah 43:19:
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
We have undergone this radical change (and continue to undergo it our whole lives). And it is God’s work. God has reconciled us to himself, or we could also say in accounting terms “settled the relationship.” God has settled the relationship between us and him, and then calls us to do the same in our relationships with each other. That’s our ministry.
In v19 Paul clarifies what he means by how God reconciles the world to himself: God forgives the sin that creates the barrier between us and God. And then he reminds us yet again that this is both our message and ministry. We have been named ambassadors. In that culture, an ambassador brought a message, but, more importantly, he was viewed as speaking in persona of the sender. If the ambassador made a commitment, it was as binding as if the sender himself made the commitment. We are Christ’s ambassadors. That’s a heavy call indeed.
Consider your relationship with God and the ways in which God has reconciled you to himself.
Now consider the relationships in your life. Which relationships evidence the unity of reconciliation? Begin by celebrating those with gratitude. Then ask God to reveal to you just one relationship that does not bear the mark of unity and reconciliation. What is God asking of you in regard to this relationship? Remember, it is God’s work. How is God inviting you to cooperate with that work?
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
The first Sunday of Lent is always the story of the testing of Jesus, followed by the Transfiguration story on the second Sunday. The remaining three Sundays in Lent depend on the year. Year C features stories from John’s gospel: the parable of the fig tree not bearing fruit, the prodigal father, and the woman caught in adultery. These stories speak to us of sin and its effect on our relationships. But, perhaps more importantly, they speak of God’s ever-present love for us, always at work within us.
Today’s reading is Lukan story-telling at its finest! This story is God’s merciful reconciliation illustrated: God’s mercy breaks through all human restrictions of how God should act towards us sinners.
The point of this story is that metanoia is at least as much (if not more) about allowing ourselves to be found by a searching God as it is about any change of behavior on our part. It’s about the joy of finding oneself found by a searching God.
Jesus offers us a new image of God: one who grants complete freedom, but patiently waits for us to exercise it in the right way. One who welcomes us back the moment we initiate a return. A God who longs to be reconciled with us even more than we long to be reconciled with God. One who welcomes even those of us who might want to cut ourselves off from his love. There is no limit to his love – it’s crazy wasteful how abundant, how prodigal it is.
This chapter contains several parables but the lectionary focuses on only one of them today. We will encounter this passage again on the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, which covers all the parables.
The passage begins by illustrating division, which would have made Paul shudder. The tax collectors and sinners are off on one side of the room, while the Pharisees and other religious professionals are on the other side. And these folks are doing what church folks often excel at: finding fault. Today’s gripe is that Jesus has the audacity to consort with sinners. He welcomes them and even goes so far as to engage in table fellowship with them. The latter was something you only did with people you approved of.
This sets us up with two main groups that are represented in the parable. The tax collectors and sinners represent the younger brother who leaves the family home and goes off in search of something better. The Pharisees and scribes are the older brother who has never left, who has patiently obeyed all the rules. But he is just as cut off at the end from the father as the younger brother is at the start.
Jesus sets the parable on an estate, something Luke’s listeners would have been familiar with. The word estate is the Greek word ousia meaning substance, portion of goods, and property. This is what the younger son in v12 asks for half of – the property and the material goods. But the father divides between them the bios, a word meaning life or manner of life; his livelihood. The father gave of his very life.
By asking the father to divide the property, the younger son had said, in essence, I wish you were dead so I could get what’s coming to me.
When he gets his money, the younger son packs up and sets off to predictably squander it all on a life of dissipation. Literally, in the Greek, “he wasted the estate living prodigally.” The Greek word translated prodigal is asótós meaning reckless or wasteful. The root word means to save or to preserve and the “a” negates it: to not save or preserve, to live opposite of that, to live without control. This is, by the way, pretty much what any rule-abiding Pharisee would expect of any “sinner,” any person who lives outside their rules.
So the son is living prodigally and then, of course, disaster strikes. A famine hits the land and he finds himself utterly without resources. The best he can do is find a job feeding pigs, a ritually unclean, Gentile job – this was as low as a Jewish person could go. V16 has always fascinated me. I think perhaps this son had a bit of integrity because he doesn’t eat the pig slop. If I were that hungry, I don’t think I would be able to resist dipping into that bucket. But he doesn’t. He is waiting for someone to tell him it’s okay to eat the pig slop.
We don’t know how long the son spent in the pig stye. But eventually, he comes to his senses, literally “coming to himself.” He recalls that his father employs servants and those servants have more than enough to eat, there is an abundance. Luke is playing on the idea of prodigal in many senses.
The son begins to picture the possibility of going home. In v18 he starts to practice what he will say. We remember that he has already said to his father, I wish you were dead. I suspect he spends a long time there in the pig stye practicing this important speech.
Meanwhile, back on the farm… Here’s the image of the father that I hold from this story: I imagine a man who watched his beloved son walk off into the distance. This father could see in so many ways what awaited the younger man. Every single day since then, this father has followed a routine without fail. He gets up before the sun and gets dressed. He makes himself a huge cup of coffee, maybe a Stanley-sized mug. And then he takes it and walks down the driveway. And he stands there, looking in the direction that his son left. And he waits and watches. For hours. He does this each and every day without fail. Sometimes all day. He waits for the son. He wants to be the first to catch sight of the son, and he wants to be the first thing his son sees when he returns home. This is the image of God I hold.
There’s an activeness about the father’s waiting. And finally, one day, he is rewarded. He catches sight of his son a long way off and is moved in his inward parts. This is a deep movement of the heart. And then he runs to his son. A Jewish patriarch was the most dignified of people. People came to him, especially someone who had done what the younger son did. This father’s actions are extremely undignified. But he doesn’t seem to care. He runs.
In v21 the son begins his speech. If you look back at vv18-19, you’ll see that he doesn’t get all the way through it. Some manuscripts added the rest of what he prepared because the scribe probably thought that part got lost here. But it’s deliberate on Luke’s part – metanoia is coming to one’s senses and taking action. It’s not necessarily about what is said. The reconciliation has already happened at this point – the sin is forgiven. Or, perhaps more accurately, the sin was already forgiven and it’s at this point that the son accepts the father’s forgiveness.
The son envisioned becoming a servant for his father and that’s what he asks. But the father calls for sandals, something only free people wore, and a ring, something only the family would wear. And then the father calls for a celebration, which evokes the messianic banquet at the end of time which we all look forward to. We can participate in this now because we are already reconciled to God!
This is a picture of what happens with tax collectors and sinners – they have the sure hope of being reconciled to God.
What about the “religious” people – the ones who scrupulously obey all the rules? Some people grow up in church and never stray – they are always faithful to what they know of God. This older son is about them. This is a picture of people who, I think, obey the rules for the wrong reasons. They think that obeying and enforcing a discrete set of rules is what sets them right with God. That’s the approach that Jesus is contrasting beginning with v25.
The older son has always obeyed all the rules, but for all the wrong reasons. Now he is seeing someone else get completely and totally, prodigally, forgiven while skirting those rules and he gets angry. So angry he cuts himself off from the father. He wants to define who can be in and who can’t. The younger son would definitely be someone outside the realm of God’s mercy if most of us were in control.
But, in v28, the father pleads with the recalcitrant older son. Even now, the father acts in an undignified manner. The son tries to put the attention on his adherence to the rules. This represents a certain religious ideal of some: I do this = God does that. It’s a transactional relationship. He does not recognize the true relationship any more than the younger one did at the beginning. What the older son failed to realize was that he was always in the father’s presence. He was always in the realm of God’s love and mercy, but he chose to cut himself off from that.
The parable ends with a plea to recognize the true relationship between the older brother and the father, as well as the older brother and the younger brother. The father says my heart is big enough for the both of you.
This is a very open ending. In part, this parable represents the Pharisee’s refusal to accept repentant sinners into the kingdom. On another level, it also represents some in the Christian community who refused to recognize the Gentile Christians.
Here’s the question at stake: are some people outside the limits of God’s mercy? The younger son ultimately was not, because he chose to come home – he came back within the circle of mercy. The older son might be, so long as he refuses to enter the circle of God’s mercy.
The point is it’s not God who sets the limits, but us. Much depends on how we respond.
God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy.
Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudiuum (Joy of the Gospel) no. 3
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© 2025 Kelly Sollinger