How do you celebrate God’s forgiveness?
How do you celebrate salvation?
To be aware of God’s saving action in our lives is definitely cause for celebration. Led by Joshua, the people of Israel celebrated the Passover while encamped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho. All that they had suffered in the land of Egypt is behind them, God has reconciled with them, and the promised land lies before them, already tilled, with crops producing all they need to survive, as God had promised. They have already erected twelve stones as a memorial to the fulfillment of God’s promise and can now, as Psalm 34 suggests, Taste and see the goodness of the Lord, rejoicing in the great mercy of the Lord who has saved them from their distress. The people have been reconciled with their God.
Jesus does no less for the tax collectors and sinners who gather to listen to him teach. In Luke’s Gospel, the Pharisees and scribes are shocked by the presence of these wayward souls, and so Jesus recounts the parable of the prodigal son, who squandered his inheritance through a dissolute life. Yet when the son returns to the family home, confessing, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, his father forgives him as well as his older son whose resentment of his younger brother is patently evident. The father’s words of acceptance are an invitation: let us celebrate with a feast, he proclaims, seeking reconciliation as he loves past their sins and forgives them both. The Pharisees and scribes would do well to take heed.
As Paul tells the Corinthians, God has reconciled us to himself through Christ, through the forgiveness that is ours thanks to Jesus’ death and resurrection. Whoever is in Christ is a new creation, Paul states: now that God has been revealed to us through baptism, our sins are forgiven; reconciliation is at the core of that new creation. This is salvation: that God reconciles the world to himself; Jesus died that we might be reconciled to God, and rejoice in that reconciliation. Our ongoing journey is precisely to be the forgiveness of God, ever entering more and more profoundly into our relationship with our God who makes all things new, that we might reveal his forgiveness to the world. Could there possibly be a better reason to celebrate?
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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