How dramatic and alluring is Micah’s statement that “God, who delights in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, will tread underfoot all of our guilt, and will cast into the depths of the sea all of our sins.” What kind of experience of God allowed a peasant prophet to say such things on his own authority and eight centuries before Jesus said much the same? You have got to know this is quite amazing and game-changing. Which leads to the pièce de résistance of all of Jesus’ teaching, today’s Gospel: the story that is strangely called “The Prodigal Son,” even though it is much more about “The Prodigious Father” who is seemingly loving to excess! All scholars seem to agree that this story most perfectly represents Jesus’ active and operative image of his personal experience of God.
