Man, this is a great story! One of the favorite parables for sure. And I know it’s certainly a story we are very familiar with, but it’s such a good one that I think it’s worth it this morning for us to walk through it again slowly and unpack the richness Jesus layered into it.
So the reading starts with setting the scene of the telling. In Luke chapter fourteen, Jesus was invited to eat at the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees. We think of dinner parties as private affairs, but that was not so much the case in the first century. It’s more like, how many of you watched the Oscars last week? Think about what the Oscars is, it’s a glamorous party of famous wealthy people celebrating their wealth and fame, and we are not invited to the actual party, but we do get to watch it on TV. That is what dinner parties in the first century would have been like. The invited guests would recline in the center, and all around them the crowds would gather to get a glimpse of the powerful and overhear the conversation and gossip. So that’s the setting we find ourselves in this morning. Jesus was sitting with the scribes and Pharisees who invited him, and all around them, crowding in closer than would be considered appropriate, are the sinners and tax collectors. It would be as if the masses lining the red carpet last week had found their way into the theater and instead of standing quietly against the wall, had pushed closer and closer to the stage, clogging the aisles so that the invited movie professionals couldn’t see or hear. Except worse, because of course the issue here isn’t just about wealth and fame. “Sinners” included not just people who broke the moral laws, but also those who failed to keep the same religious purity practiced by the Pharisees, the “unclean.” Eating with such people would render the Pharisees also unclean, requiring them to go through the long ritual process of cleansing. The Pharisees didn’t want the effort, or the knock on their good name, so they grumbled, “this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Interesting, grumbled is the same word used to describe the Israelites response to Moses, when they were rescued from Pharaoh only to find themselves in the desert without any food. There’s a theme developing here with people being so close to salvation that they cannot see it.
And in response to their grumbling, Jesus told them a parable. “There was a man who had two sons.” This story has historically been referred to as the parable of the prodigal son, but right off the bat we see that title falls a little short. The man does not have one son, he has two. It’s also key to notice that these two are introduced not as brothers, but as sons. The word brother doesn’t even show up until verse twenty-seven. The key relationship here is not the brothers to each other, but the sons to their father.
So, there was a man who had two sons. And the younger son, right off the bat, we discover is kind of a selfish punk. He asked his father to be given his share of the inheritance. Now, there’s a couple reasons why this is both a jerk move and a dumb move. First off, it’s super disrespectful. The younger son is basically treating his father like he was dead. Also, by inheritance laws, whatever didn’t go to the younger son by default then belonged to the elder son. If the elder son also decided to leave, the father would have no recourse and would be left destitute. Now this is also a foolish move, because the younger son cut himself off from any opportunity for further profit. There is nothing to suggest that the land was not successful, and had the son waited, he would have in fact inherited more wealth than he received by cashing in early. Nevertheless, the younger son was impatient; he wanted his money now so he took his inheritance and sped off to the city. Where, scripture tells us, he “squandered his property in dissolute living.” Not a huge surprise, considering the not exactly financially sound maneuver he’d done to get the money in the first place. We are not working with a shrewd business mind here.
Penniless and alone in a foreign land, the younger son was desperate. He even sunk to the level of taking a job as a tender of pigs. Quite the fall from grace for the once-proud son of a Israelite landowner, to find himself in the employ of a gentile caring for swine, which were seen as an abomination in Israelite culture. Finally, he’s like, look. Even my father’s servants have better lives than this. So he decided to return to his father and beg to be taken back, not as a son, but as a hired hand.
And of course, we all know what happened after that. The prodigal son returned, and the father was waiting by the gate to meet him. And seeing his son, the father threw dignity to the wind and did what no self-respecting patriarch would do, he ran out to greet him. The son started his speech about repentance, but before he could finish, the father cut him off, sending his servants to get a robe, the best one, a ring for his fingers and sandals for his feet, and to kill the fatted calf in celebration, because the son who once was lost now is found.
And as shocking and boundary breaking is this story is; I think we are familiar enough with it and with God, that we believe it. We might forget it sometimes, we certainly need to be reminded again and again, but for the most part, I think we’re all pretty clear on the idea that our God is the sort of God who offers unconditional forgiveness, welcome, and grace to those who turn back and ask for forgiveness. I think we’re on board with the idea that there is nothing that God will not forgive, that God waits patiently from us to turn from our sinful ways and return to him, that God in fact is waiting by the gate, so that God can run out to greet us, divine arms outstretched, to welcome back God’s wayward children, and drape us once again in the robe, ring, and sandals of our inheritance. We certainly forget it sometimes, and maybe we don’t really internalize how overwhelming that welcome is, but I think intellectually, we are pretty familiar with the idea that God is a God of grace and love and forgiveness.
But remember, this is a story about “a man who had two sons.” So a celebration was thrown for the one son who had sinned and repented. And while everyone was partying; eat rich foods and drinking fine wines, the other son, the elder son came in from the fields. And when the elder son found out about the party being thrown in his wayward brother’s honor, he was mad! And really, legally, he had a right to be mad. And the elder son, he’d always done everything right. When his father split the estate and gave the younger son his share, the elder son kept working for his father, even though technically it all belonged to him now. This also means that this party the father threw, it was paid for with the elder son’s inheritance. The father didn’t just give the younger son all his wealth, now he was giving the elder son’s wealth away too. So the elder son refused to go in to the party.
And what did the father do in response? The father, for the second time, does something no self-respecting landowner would do. He went out and met his wayward son. He didn’t command his son to enter; he didn’t send a servant out to demand his son’s presence. No the father went outside himself, to plead for his elder son’s obedience. So much does the father love his sons, that when his wayward son comes back up the road to ask for forgiveness, the father runs to meet him and welcome him back to the family. So much does the father love his sons, that when his son turned away and refused to come in, the father went and found him and begged for the son to be rejoined to the family. The elder son’s words were full of the calculations and judgments, “all these years…,” “you never…,” “that son of yours…,” but the father did not, could not, respond to this. Instead, the father went to the heart of the matter, to the root of relationship. “Son—while the son started with “Listen,” the father begins by declaring the relationship—Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours”—notice not “my son” but “this brother of yours”—“was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found.”
Sisters and brothers, the point of this parable is that God’s love is for the tax collectors and the sinners, yes, but that is not all it is for. God’s love is also for the Pharisees and the scribes. Because Jesus didn’t just eat with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus also ate with Pharisees and scribes. That’s how the love of God works. God’s love is for when we totally screw it up, and we turn and repent. God’s love is for when we act totally right, and are still totally wrong. God’s love is for the broken and the angry, the hurt and the hurter, the seeker and the one who does not think they need to be sought. There is literally nothing you can do to get God to stop coming after you and bringing you back in with forgiveness and repentance and love. The elder brother knows, he tried. But even as he sat outside in justified and self-righteous anger with no intention of ever turning around, even then the Father came and pursued him and brought him back into the family. Our God is a God who runs out to meet us, whether we have any intention of turning around or not. Thanks be to God. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment