I’ve never been quite sure how you get to be an ambassador. It seems like some unlikely people get to be asked, but I rather doubt I’m on anyone’s list. However it does turn out there is a list I am on. You are too.
In our Readings today we hear, for another time, the story of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:1-3, 11-32). Despite the label, its significance lies not so much in the fact that the son is prodigal, but rather that the father is prodigal. He’s so keen to get his son back that he has not the slightest interest in his son’s well rehearsed apology. He is all about getting the party going – to the extent that his other son is understandably, if incorrectly, peeved at his father’s completely unjustified outpouring of gifts.
Paul understood this scenario as well as anyone. As he noted to his friends in both Corinth and Galatia (1 Cor 15:9, Gal 1:13), he was actively fighting against the Father, not even realizing he was completely messed up, when he got knocked over by God and suddenly understood what an idiot he was. As he explains to those Corinthians in today’s Reading (2 Cor 5:17-21) – that sense of being a new creation, reborn, the old life gone away, was incredibly strong for him. And he appreciated completely that he hadn’t done anything at all in this process – all the action came from God’s side – “God reconciled himself to us”, not the other way round. In Paul’s case it was as if the father didn’t even wait for the son to come home, he just went and grabbed him from wherever he was.
What Paul also understood was that there was a consequence from this completely unwarranted generosity on God’s part. It wasn’t just party time, he has to tell people this has happened. In today’s Reading he’s explaining to the people in Corinth that they are in the same situation. Just accept the reconciliation that God is offering, you don’t have to do anything to deserve it, Christ already did everything that is needed. Just stop being pig stubborn, and insisting on staying with the pigs! Just come back home for the party that is already waiting for you.
And then we: Paul, and the Corinthians, and all of us, are called to let people know that God has done this – this is what the Father is like. We are God’s ambassadors, “ambassadors for Christ”, we have to carry the message. Christ is no longer physically present on earth, for Paul or for us. We take on the role of Christ in the world – which is to tell others about this crazy, generous God who will do anything for us, even though, even when, we totally don’t deserve it.
And because we are caught up in this story; if we allow ourselves to be caught up in this story; we become not just message carriers, we take on the power of God. Just as an ambassador acts for her or his country, so we act for God. We take on the righteousness of God – and the righteousness of God is found not in judgement but in generosity. The message “entrusted to us is the message of reconciliation”.
OK, now maybe you don’t identify so much with the prodigal son going off and living the “good life”, spending all your inheritance, or alternatively with Paul persecuting the Church. Maybe you feel more like the other son who dutifully stays home and works the family business. In that case there are two messages Jesus particularly aimed at you. Firstly there is no good reason for us to be upset that God will accept anyone back, however much we think they don’t deserve it. Second is that God has already given us everything that he’s offering to the undeserving – there is nothing for us to be jealous of, we already have it.
Whichever son we are like, however we get there, we have the opportunity to be reconciled with our Father, deserving or not, stupid, resistant, or not. And then we go tell others. We all get to be ambassadors. It’s a weird world!