Weekly Message – March 14, 2010
Scripture: Luke 15:1-3,11b-32
Message: “The Prodigal Father”
Most of us grew up calling Jesus’ story about a man and his two sons the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it’s not. Jesus doesn’t begin his tale by saying, “There once was a man who had a father and an older brother…”
“There once was a man who had two sons,” Jesus says, letting us know who the story is really about – a father who deeply loved his two children and wanted them to love each other too. This story is the third of three in a row Jesus tells after the Pharisees and other religious leaders have criticized Jesus for eating with sinners. But Jesus doesn’t argue with them. He tells them stories instead: a story about a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves to go looking for one stray; a story about a woman who turned her house upside down to find one lost coin, and a story about a compassionate father who dealt graciously with his two wayward sons.
The Pharisees believe that Jesus is condoning sin with the company he keeps, but all three stories reply that God is too busy rejoicing over found sheep, found coins, and found children to worry about what they did while they were lost.
One of the important parts of worship is the Prayer of Confession and Assurance of Pardon. After having confessed our sins before God we hear these powerful words: “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.” These are powerful words that open our hearts to God, preparing us to come into the presence of God in worship, but according to this parable, no confession is necessary, no promise of better behavior in the future, no forgiveness of those who have sinned against you. According to this parable, you don’t even have to make it to church. The loving father who sees you coming from a distance and rushes out to embrace you, and kiss you, and forgive you before you can even get a word out of your mouth.
While this may be great news for those of us who like to live reckless lives, it’s also disturbing news, because forgiveness is one of those gifts of God that cuts both ways. Forgiveness is good. We all are in need of it, and when we get it, from God or from one another, we know what new life is all about. But forgiveness is forgiveness of sin, and sin is wrong. In order to be forgiven, we have to have fallen short of the glory of God. That may be as simple as failing to be nice to someone, or it may be as complicated as having killed someone. Whatever the crime, very few of us would deny the possibility of forgiveness, but most of us would insist on some repentance and consequences to pay for the wrong that has been done.
I remember there was a lawyer in my church back in Marion, who didn’t like the way I preached on this passage. I asked him why, and he admitted, “Well, I guess it’s not your sermon, I just don’t like that story.” I asked him, “Why?”
He said, “It’s not morally responsible, forgiving that boy that way.” I said, “Well, what would you have done?”
He said, “When he came home he should have been arrested.” He’s an attorney, I was thinking. I thought he was going to tell me a joke, but then I realized he was serious. I asked him, “What would you have given the younger son?” “Six years.”
But Jesus tells this story of instant forgiveness, no strings attached, and we can’t miss the point: God’s extravagant love and forgiveness both fulfills and violates our sense of what is right.
Preachers and teachers often insult this parable by turning it into a cartoon, in which a sulking, mean-spirited older brother detests the love a father shows for a reckless, fun-loving younger brother who has come back home. But that is entirely too simple. Jesus told a much darker story about a younger son who was so hungry to see the world that he wished his own father dead – at least symbolically – and asked him to settle the estate early and give both brothers their share. So that father divided the family business and said goodbye to the younger son, who went out and wasted everything, until one day he “came to himself.” That was when he decided to go back home, composing a manipulative confession as he went, one that was designed to get a roof over his head and food in his stomach even if it meant he had to live as a servant, not a son.
He came home, in other words, to live off his brother’s inheritance, because his was gone. But no sooner did his father see him coming down the road than the older brother’s prize, fatted calf was killed and the welcome-home party was on. There were no extra steps between the younger son’s return and his welcome home party, no heart-to-heart with the old man, no extra chores, no repayment schedule, no go to your room for a week and think about what you have done, just clean clothes, new shoes, and a ring for his finger. The father didn’t even wait for the older brother to get home to start the party, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now is found.” Then the older brother came home from work, heard the music and dancing, and I’m glad I’m didn’t have to tell him what was going on.
I’m the oldest of three children myself. I know what it’s like to break parents in, to step aside as they exercise their new and improved skills on younger siblings, and then take the rap for the little criminals when they mess up. I remember when I was in sixth grade at Newland Elementary School and my brother was in second grade and my sister in kindergarten. One day after school when I was supposed to be looking after them, my mom got home from work early and within minutes had me by the ear dragging me into the kitchen where my brother and sister had decided to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of each other. Did they get spanked? No. They were little and didn’t know any better. Did I get spanked? Yes. I was the older, more responsible one, and I should have kept them out of the peanut butter.
Older siblings usually get the raw end of the deal, as the older brother in this parable apparently does. My guess is that the older brother wasn’t angry at the younger brother’s return, or even the father’s forgiveness, but by the party. Let him come home by all means, but let him come home to consequences and a lesson to learn, but not a party. Where is the moral lesson in this party? What about facing consequences of your actions? What kind of world would this be if we all made a practice out of rewarding sinners while all us responsible, faithful folks are still out in the fields, working hard?
What do you have to do to get a little attention around here? The church thrives on its ministries to the poor, the broken, the sick and outcast, but what about those of us who are holding our own? What about those of us who are faithfully trying to serve God, keep the church running, and keep up with our other responsibilities, too? What about those of us who work hard to keep our jobs and stay in our relationships and take care of our health and pay our dues, but never seem to get any recognition for it, while all the downtrodden and the homeless and the addicts and the poor get all the attention? What about those of us who come to church every Sunday and pay our tithes in full and serve on whatever committee the preacher asks? What do we have to do to get a party around here? Do you have to go off and waste your inheritance or do something to end up in the Sheriff’s report in the paper before you can come home to be embraced, and kissed, and assured that you, too, belong?
“Listen,” the older son protests. “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me so much as a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” God help the older son. God help him, and God help all of us who understand his rage, who have worked so hard to belong, and who have felt so excluded when the church reaches out to someone else, especially someone who doesn’t deserve what we have. “This son of yours,” the older brother says, excluding himself from the family that includes the reckless sinners – this son of yours who is no kin to me, nor am I kin to you if you choose him over me.
But here is where the loving father earns his title. He doesn’t take a swing at the firstborn, as I would have been tempted to do. He doesn’t even lecture him on honoring his father or loving his brother. The loving father knows he has lost both sons. He has lost the younger son to a life of recklessness. He has lost the older son to a more serious fate, to a life of angry self-righteousness that takes him so far away from his father that he might as well be in a foreign country feeding pigs. He wants his father to love him as he deserves to be loved, because he has stayed put, and followed orders, and done the right thing.
He wants his father to love him for all that he has done and his father does love him, but not for what he has done any more than he loves the younger son for what he has done. He does not love either son according to what they deserve. He just loves them because of who he is and who they are, and the older brother can’t stand it. The older brother can’t stand a love that goes above right and wrong, a love that throws homecoming parties for runaway sinners and expects the hard-working to rejoice. He can’t stand it and so he stands outside – outside his father’s house and outside his father’s love, refusing the loving invitation to come in.
In the Broadway musical Godspell, this parable was a part of the play. But Godspell takes this parable farther than Jesus does. The playwright is uncomfortable with the ending as Jesus tells it and has the older brother make up with the younger brother. But Jesus leaves the story unfinished, with the older brother still standing outside the father’s house and outside the father’s love, not yet accepting the father’s invitation.
It is an invitation to the older brother to recognize his own lostness and foundness, but Jesus doesn’t tell us if he accepts the invitation. Jesus leaves it that way, I think, because it is up to each of us to finish the story for ourselves. We each have a little of the younger brother in us, but we also have a little of the older brother in us. And I suspect that spiritually, most of us can identify better with the older brother. It is up to us to finish the story for ourselves. Put yourself and no one else in this story.
It is up to each of us to decide whether we will stand outside all alone being right, or give up our rights and go inside and take our place at a table full of reckless saints and scoundrels, brothers and sisters united only by our relationship to one loving father, who refuses to give us the love we deserve, but unconditionally offers us the love we need. Will you accept the invitation and take your place at the party with all of God’s forgiven children? Will you graciously share the invitation to those seeking God’s forgiveness?
Pastor Kirk
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