March 18, 2007 - The Fourth Sunday in Lent
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
The story of the Prodigal Son is probably one of the best-known parables in all of the New Testament. Unique to Luke, it is the kind of story that once you hear it, you have to remember it, because each of us finds our place among the characters. But what you might not remember is that Jesus told this story in the context of a family squabble – a church family squabble – about the rules of etiquette at meals, the laws that applied to what you could eat, and with whom you could eat it. Jesus, you see, had been eating with tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees and scribes were pretty unhappy with him. So he told them (and the disciples) the parable of the Prodigal, or ‘wasteful’ Son.
Any of you who have a teenage son probably know it’s coming, that inevitable day when a young man says to his Dad, “I hate you! I wish you were dead! I hate this family and I can’t wait to get out of this crummy town! And, by the way, Dad, could you lend me a few dollars?”
And that’s just what the young man did in this story. Then he went far away and wasted his inheritance until such time as the money ran out and he began to try to figure out a way that he could come back to the comforts of home.
Meanwhile, his father has been waiting for his return. Now in this culture, often the houses were on the outskirts of the town, so one way to think about this boy’s return is to imagine that he would have to walk through the village to get to his own house. Now perhaps the father was using his time trying to figure out how he could protect his son, if and when he returned home, from the town’s whispers and gossip. Sure, he had shamed and dishonored his father. But the father knew that he was the only one who could save his son from the indignity of coming back, the only one who could draw the town’s disdain away from his son. So when he hears that the son is making his way home, he runs through the village and out of town to meet him. Without even finding out if the son is sorry, he throws his own robe on the boy, places the family signet ring on his finger and walks through the town right beside him, appearing to all that he is the happiest man alive. Now the whispers and gossip will focus on him. Now the talk will be about what a fool the old man is, taking that boy back…
Perhaps the story is really about the Prodigal Father, as the second definition for prodigal is “extravagant.” The slave who gives the report to the elder son says that the father “has got him back,” and the words used sound a lot like a redemption. So the father has redeemed (for a price,) this son who may or may not be repentant, and he has received him, “safe and sound,” literally, “shalom,” and returned him to his place in the family. Now, please note that the father cannot read the son’s mind and he doesn’t know if he has repented, so this is NOT a story about withholding forgiveness or love until after we are assured that the other party is sorry.
Preacher William Loader reminds us that the basic message is: just as a parent can love that much, God loves that much – and we are asked to love that much as well.
Now many of us might find ourselves in this story as one of the two sons. And it would be easy to take the position of the younger one and say, “I was LOST, but now I’m FOUND,” and be done with it. But the second son - responsible, proud, hard-working, righteous - is probably more like us (and I place myself in the group here with you.) And by stating this, we are drawn into a much subtler sin - the “unfair” factor. Oh, we love to put on our “righteous robes” and state, “I’ve taught Sunday School forever, now it’s YOUR turn.” Or “I have all 24 of my sermon notes completed and you have only 2!” Or, “I am a GOOD PERSON – but YOU…” It seems so unfair that the Father would take the young son back, walk him through the town as if nothing has happened and then throw him a party with a fatted calf, which by the way would feed 200 easily! It seems so unfair that it would be this son, and not the obedient, hard-working one who the father would choose to attend to!
But is the God that you worship, unfair? Is grace, unfair? We need to look VERY CLOSELY at the second son – because there is no unfairness in extravagant grace. It is the response, the end of the story that’s truly unfair: where the elder son is overwhelmed with his desire to be right, and excludes himself from the celebration of grace. What’s really lost is not the younger son, but an opportunity to seize the real power of forgiveness, which is lost in favor of “original sin,” the choice to take power through pride and self-righteousness.
So how do we hear his parable today? Do you see how nicely this fits into Lent? As we begin to understand that Jesus taught in story, we might begin to see our story in Jesus and his words of salvation and reconciliation.
There was a debate in the Middle Ages (between Christians and Muslims that used this text to prove their positions on salvation. The Muslims said the story was proof that salvation is possible without the cross or suffering. The son returned, and the father simply received him home. Christians, however, contended that the story is not without a suffering servant. The Father himself suffers shame and humiliation to open a way for the son to come back home. And Jesus, in telling this story, must have been keenly aware that he was like the father in the story - at great cost to himself, he was opening a way home for the “prodigal” tax collectors & sinners, at the same time he was taking on himself indignities and accusations to offer the “elder son” Pharisees and scribes a chance to reconcile with other sinners and with God.
This week, consider how this parable might be the answer to the Corinthians’ question in our second lesson today: “What does it mean to be an ambassador for Christ?” What does it mean to be a disciple so that through us folks can be reconciled to God? Is being RIGHT ever helpful in reconciliation? Is determining blame part of reconciliation?
Remember, as Jesus tells the story, there is no “good son or bad son,” there is simply “a man who had two sons.” Ask yourself, “Does the Bible instruct us to steer clear of sinners, or are we just afraid to forgive?” (lest we condone the wrong-doing and somehow “get some on us?”)
As theologian Karl Barth saw, “if Jesus himself had not left the Father and traveled into the far country to share a table with sinners, we would still be there, eating those pig pods.” Shouldn’t Christ’s ambassadors also request a table in the sinners’ section? For without Christ – that is where “our table” is – but, with our loving Father receiving both the saint and sinner in us all, we have a reservation right here, at the Table of Grace. Amen.
RESOURCES USED:
A. Katherine Grieb, in The Christian Century, March 9, 2004, p.21.
"Wherever You Are," Mary Hinkle, Pilgrim Preaching: Keeping Company with Biblical Texts and the People Who Hear and Preach Them.
Jirair Tashjian and Christian Resource Institute, quoting Kenneth E. Bailey’s Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 (Concordia Publishing House, 1992), the basis of much of his comments.