Today’s parable is the third in a
series of stories Jesus told about being lost and being found. The parables of
the lost sheep and the lost coin are straightforward, at least for most of us.
Each of us has some memory of turning the house upside down to look for
something of value that we have misplaced. I think that one of the benefits of
being in a state of constant moving is finding things we thought were gone
forever, usually in the back of a drawer or under a piece of furniture.
But if you ask
someone to name a parable, this along with The Good Samaritan and The Sower is perhaps one of the
best-known stories from the New Testament. People of all ages recognize it as
the parable of the Prodigal Son, probably because that’s how it is labeled in
most of our bibles. And because we know it so well, when we hear it, we begin
to identify with at least one of the characters. One person might say, "I
am the youngest child, too, so I understand how this youngest child might want
to get out of the shadow of that older brother and go out on his own." Or
maybe someone who was the oldest child might think, "Yea, the baby always
gets the breaks. My parents were never that easy with me." Or maybe we
even identify with the father and really know the joy of homecoming and what it
means to have what was broken made whole again.
Reconciliation. In
the Revised Common Lectionary, this passage appears with epistle and Old
Testament passages that also speak of reconciliation – reconciliation between
members of the family of God, and reconciliation between us and God. And the
parable contains several examples which highlight those understandings.
The younger son
swallows his pride and comes home, willing to accept the shame he feels he
deserves for his irresponsible behavior. But instead of rejection, the son is
welcomed, "with opened arms,” and we experience the father's joy and
acceptance of his young son's homecoming as evidence of and a model for the
kind of forgiveness that God and Christ call for us to model in our own lives. We
even see the father building a bridge between the two sons, attempting to reach
a level of reconciliation between them so that they might all be able to
celebrate together. But this is more than a nice story about reconciliation.
There is a lot more this story has to teach us.
We call this the
parable of the prodigal son. But what does “prodigal” mean? Webster’s
Dictionary says that it spending money or
using resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant. This definition encompasses all of the negative
understandings we have about the younger son and his behavior. We look at the
younger son and especially if we are the oldest children, it brings back many
of the memories we have about our younger siblings and our perceptions about
how we grew up.
But the word
prodigal also means, having or giving
something on a lavish scale. This definition takes away the negative
feelings we have about the younger son and brings into light the amazing gift
of love that the father was sharing with both sons.
Jesus tells a story
of a younger son coming home to open arms, with the father throwing a
celebration dinner in his honor. And as expected, the older son was incensed. Can't
you just hear him grumbling, "This is not fair. Look at all the stupid
things he’s done and my father just welcomes him back... with open arms and
then throws a party as if none of it ever happened. Can you believe it?"
Whether we want to
admit it or not, we feel some of those same things. When we see ourselves as hard
workers and others as getting something for nothing, it’s hard not to get mad
or hold resentment for others in our hearts and in the way we respond to them.[1]
Today, we are called
to hear this parable with new ears. The younger son gave up the life he had to
find his way, but through wasteful spending and living, he lost everything of
value, except the hope that his father would not send him away if he came back.
The older son stayed home and took care of business, the model of appropriate
behavior, if not thought. He didn’t understand that while the younger brother
might not have a place in the family business, he would always have a place in
the father’s heart.
This is not just a story
of prodigal sons who wasted family assets and threw away family relationships.
This is also a story of a prodigal father, who loved extravagantly, welcoming
home a lost son and encouraging a faithful son to become a united family again,
no matter what happened in the past.
Philip Yancey tells
a story about a young girl from Traverse City, MI. She has an ongoing battle
with her parents about the clothes she wears and the company she keeps. She
finally runs away makes it as far as Detroit. On her second day, she meets a
man who offers her a ride, buys her lunch, and promises her a safe place to
stay. He gives her some pills to make her feel better, and you can imagine the
rest of the story. For a little more than a year, her life is pretty good,
except for the men who visit nightly. But when she gets sick, the man she has
come to depend on takes her away from her comfortable surroundings and leaves
her on the street with just the clothes on her back and without a penny to her
name.
As winter
approaches, she finds herself sleeping on the grates outside a large department
store, with one eye open to those who might want to do her harm. One morning
she wakes up and realizes that at least if she went home, someone would feel
obligated to help her out. So she leaves a message on her parent’s voicemail
that she will be arriving on the bus that night, and if no one is there to meet
her, she will just keep going to Canada.
As the bus
approaches Traverse City, Cherry Capital of the World, she is afraid. And as the
bus turned the corner, she is overwhelmed to see every relative she has - parents,
siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, wearing goofy party hats
and holding signs proclaiming, “Welcome Home” and “We’ve missed you!”
She starts to share
with her dad all the things she has been thinking of on the bus, but he just
wraps her up in his arms and says, “No time for that now – you don’t want to be
late for your party – we can’t believe you’re finally back home.”[2]
Amy-Jill Levine,
professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, reminds
us that God always goes to meet people where they are. The Jewish listeners
among Jesus’ disciples would hear this story and think of all the families in
God’s story who had two sons… and how many of them had the same problems this
father in Jesus’ parable had. In God’s world, older sons don’t always stay in
the father’s good graces and younger sons often look like they are getting an
unfair break.
And while we may
think that the father is showing favoritism to the younger son, that is not the
case. Not only does the father meet the younger son before he has even gotten
back to the front door, but he also went out to bring the older son to the
party, reminding him that he has lost nothing even as his younger brother is welcomed
back as if nothing he did in the past matters. This trio of parables tell us that
finding the lost, reclaiming children, and gaining a new understanding of what
it means to be family is not only good news for the Jews but for everyone who
hears this new, better good news about God and Jesus.[3]
The God we worship
is a generous, extravagant, prodigal God… who forgives our sins, stands with us
in our joy, and holds us up in our pain. But amid that generosity, comes this
news… that God did not just forgive my sin, or your sin, but also the sin of
those who, to us, seem unforgivable.
Our God is not an
either/or God, but is a both/and God. And even beginning to understand the scope of God's love and forgiveness
helps us to know God in a new and deeper way. And in the process, we learn a
very important lesson — that however much we may want to, we cannot draw the
lines which define how God's grace is going to operate. God will be who God
will be.
Paul talks about
this in his second letter to the Corinthians. In Christ, we are a new creation,
and we are called to make peace with those who were previously our enemies.
Love is now the pattern for our living. God doesn’t hold our sins against us,
and that is how God is calling us to live toward others (and ourselves). We are
ambassadors for Christ. We are called to appeal to others – to reconcile
ourselves to them and bring them into the family of God.
John Newton was
right. God's grace is amazing, and not only saves us from our sin but saves us
from ourselves.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
A man had two sons, one
went away and made a lot of mistakes, and one stayed home and was faithful. And
when the one who went away came home in disgrace, the father loved him and
celebrated his return. And when the one who stayed home was upset, the father
reminded him that his love is big enough to love both of them and that
homecoming is worth all the celebration in the world.
Peace, Deb
(c) Deb Luther Teagan, March 2022
[2] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, 1997, pp 50-51.
[5] https://www.christianaid.org.uk/churches/weekly-worshi
No comments:
Post a Comment