Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Traditionally, I suspect the mother and father in a household used to be expected to split up judgment and mercy between them. The father was meant to be the one who punished - Just wait till your father comes home! - and the mother was meant to be the one who forgave and was merciful, protecting naughty children against their father's wrath.
Of course, in real life that doesn't always work out. In the news headlines in recent days we have been reminded that parents don't always protect their children as they should; just think of little Khyra Ishaq, starved to death by her mother. And I'm sure you could all think in your experience of family or friends of fathers who forgave and mothers who punished. But in general, popular wisdom expects a mother to forgive her child, no matter what they have done.
Maybe this is because, even now, in many families it is the mother who does most to bring children up. She feeds them, changes their nappies, oversees their first step and their first word, sings them to sleep. She sees how they play alone and with others, she knows their favourite foods and the expressions on their faces when they're trying to get away with something. Whether birth or adoptive mother, she starts off as the most important factor in her children's life. No wonder for Christians in the Middle Ages and for many Catholics now that Mary, Jesus' mother, has such an important role in their faith, as the one who intercedes for them with her son. But that very close initial relationship between mother and child may have less desirable consequences. We may need to forgive our mother for any destructive aspects of the values she has transmitted to us; and she may need to forgive us for ways in which we broke away from her in order to gain our independence.
As Christians, we believe that our God is a God both of justice and of mercy, so there can be no division in the Godhead between the one who punishes and the one who forgives.
This isn't easy for us to get our heads around, but we see the dynamic in operation in that rather odd snippet of reading we get from the Hebrew Bible in this morning's lectionary readings.
When God says to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt,' there is a story behind that comment. The Israelites are camped and resting in Gilgal for a reason: all their young men have been circumcised. The generation of male Israelites who came out of Egypt had already been circumcised in the desert; but that generation, though they came to the borders of Canaan, lost their nerve and would not enter the land, so Moses marched them back into the desert until that generation died out. Now the new generation have come into Canaan, and God is renewing with them the covenant, the agreement made with their fathers. After the punishment which saw their fathers die in the wilderness of their cowardice, God is forgiving the people, giving them a second chance, albeit a painful one, to live the way God wants.
Psalm 32 goes into the dynamic of rebellion and forgiveness on an individual level. While we pretend that we have not gone wrong, there is no helping the situation, for we are not facing up to the truth; and all our energy can go into denial and concealment of our predicament; this in itself can be punishment. But when we admit our fault, God can forgive us and help us start again, guiding us away from temptation, advising us how best to live. This may sound like a pious platitude; but I suspect that in many families and indeed many churches the question of offence and forgiveness is one we tread warily around. We can be set so firmly into old patterns of action and reaction, developed through childhood or long relationship, that it may seem impossible to change our ways. And anyway, why should we change? After all, it's the other person who needs to change. If they would only get their act together, we wouldn't have any trouble with them. It's their immaturity, their domineering ways, their bad temper, their chronic indecision that really gets our goat. We don't have any problems like that.
Relationships within the Prodigal Son's family may well have proceeded along these lines before the younger son's decision to break away. In a way, his departure and return showed up a problem between his older brother and their father which might otherwise never have been revealed: that the older brother, unsure of their father's love, had been trying all this time to earn it by good behaviour. Now the father's love for both his children has been declared out loud, both sons have the choice of changing their ways, of living together in the love of their father; or of returning to the worn-out script of good son, bad son.
Putting aside the flowers and the chocolates and the lunches out, Mothering Sunday may be an opportunity, whether we are mothers or children or both, to take a good look at this very significant relationship in our lives; to consider ways in which we may need to forgive or be forgiven, and ways in which that forgiveness could be offered. And here our reading from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians may be of aid. Paul is writing to a church which has recently received from him a stinging letter pointing out all the faults they have developed in his absence. But now he reminds them that because both he and they are related through Christ, they can no longer see each other except as people for whom Christ has died, for the very purpose of reconciling them with God.
In telling his story about the Prodigal Son, Jesus reminds us that the relationship between us and God, and between us and others, however broken it may have become by past events, can always be renewed through honesty and through forgiveness. This is no easy road; even honesty and forgiveness can be used as weapons of one-up-man-ship by people who don't really want to be reconciled, and sometimes we need to allow time for healing. But when we truly want to forgive and to be forgiven, we are not alone, but have all the power of God behind us: God who is our forgiving Father, who is our loving Mother, who is the love within all our relationships, whether with family, friends or the stranger we have not yet met.