Luke 15:11-32
Lent 4
March 31, 2019
William G. Carter
Of all the stories Jesus told, this is
one of our favorites. We call it the parable of the prodigal son. It makes the
top ten list of memorable Bible stories. Children learn it in Vacation Bible
School. Older adults nod their heads in recognition whenever they hear it. Young
adults who wander off in their twenties and thirties hope the story is still
true.
It’s certainly one of my favorites. I checked
my files, and I have six different sermons on this story; this is number seven.
Many of us have heard it many times. We are well acquainted with the details.
We think we know it pretty well, and perhaps we do.
But for all the familiarity, for all the
times I’ve taught it and preach it, I still have some nagging questions about
the story. They have been nagging me so much that I’m going to toss them into
the air and let them nag you as well. Ready?
Here’s
the first one: why did he do it? Why did the son leave everything?
Jesus never reveals the boy’s motive. He
simply describes what the boy said and did. The son goes to the father and
says, essentially, “Dad, I wish you were dead.” That’s the underlying
assumption when he demands his share of the inheritance: “Let’s speed this up a
little bit, Old Man. Give me what the lawyers will distribute after your
demise. Don’t make me wait. I want it now.” What kind of kid says this to the
parent?
I mean, according to 2019 tax law, a living
parent can give each of the children and their spouses up to $15,000 as gift
without any tax implications. They can do that far in advance of probating the
will. It is one way to beat the rules about inheritance taxes. But what child
says, “Dad, give me $15,000 now,” to say nothing of, “Dad, give me all of my
inheritance now?” And Dad still works the farm; he hasn’t yet bought the farm.
What kind of child says that?
We can find the words rather easily. He’s
greedy. He’s selfish. He’s callous. He’s indifferent. He has no regard for his
father. In the words of my own mother, “He’s a brat.” Does he deserve the
money? No. But he’s part of the family, and legally entitled, so he makes his
demand: “Give me the money.”
Remind me of when Old Jim died in my first
church. Old Jim was our congregation’s resident multimillionaire. His attorney,
Tom Weaver, knocked on my door one morning, and said, “Put on your Sunday suit
and your best power tie.” Then we got in his Cadillac and drove to Old Jim’s
mansion. Old Jim had died in the middle of the night and he was worth 37
million dollars.
All his children flew in, not to see him
before he passed away, you understand, but for the reading of the will. All
three of Old Jim’s wives were there, too, the two ex-s and the current one from
whom he was estranged. Attorney Weaver was there as the referee, and I was
there to plan the funeral. My job was easy: they wanted the 23rd
Psalm and a short prayer at the graveside. Then they wanted Tom to read the
will, so they could get back on their planes and return to Las Vegas, or the
Cayman Islands, or the south of France, or wherever it was they had slithered
in from.
They were greedy. Didn’t care a bit
about their old man. Just wanted his money. How does somebody get like that? What
went wrong?
Maybe it’s a character flaw. I mean, he’s
the younger of two children, after all. “The man had two sons.” It could be
that the older brother got all the notice, got all the good breaks, got all the
preferential treatment. And rather than respect his older brother (can you tell
I’m an older brother?), the younger son began to resent it. It could be. This
happens in some families. Even worse happens in some families.
Certainly the kid exhibited some poor
judgment. He demands the money, he receives the money, and then he blows all
the money. He goes through it all. Doesn’t invest for his own future, doesn’t save
a nickel of it. He throws it all away. Was it because it was a gift and he was
not required to work for any of it? Could be.
Or maybe he was feeling confined on the
family farm and wanted the bright lights of the big city? They didn’t have
lights back then, but you know what I’m saying. Jesus says he squandered
everything thing he had in “dissolute living.” That’s a nose-wrinkling kind of
word. Dissolute means decadent, self-indulgent, licentious, rakish. And he lost
everything. He would have been happy to climb into a dumpster and lick the inside
walls.
Why did he do this? What’s wrong with
him? Jesus doesn’t say. He dangles this
description in the air. Once we get over the shock of it, once we move beyond
the finger-wagging accusation, maybe this guy in the parable begins to look
familiar. Maybe he looks all too familiar. Apparently it’s possible to be a
beloved child and a brat, all at the same time.
Why did he do it? The same reason
anybody else would do it. He had been living at home – and he was homesick –
all at the same time. It is this fundamental homesickness, this longing for
love and acceptance and restoration that can twist us out of shape. Within each
of us there is an empty place, a hole within the soul. We try to fill that hole
with any number of the world’s delights, and we often dig the hole even deeper.
So
here’s my second question: why does he do it? Why does the father take him back?
Not only take him back, but sees him from a far way off, runs to embrace him,
interrupts the well-rehearsed repentance speech, and throws him a party… why
does the father do this?
Jesus says, “He was filled with
compassion.” Well, that sounds pleasant enough. Every wayward child wants a
parent to be filled with compassion. But what’s compassion? From the Latin: com + passio: passio, to suffer,
and com, with. Compassion is to “suffer
with.”
As somebody once put it, “Compassion is
the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody
else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and
joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”[1]
The father understands the brokenness of the boy. He knows first-hand how that
feels and what it compels us to do. He understands the wandering intentions of
the soul, and the all-too-human temptation to self-destruction. And he refuses
to let those unchecked desires to rule any longer.
This is an uncommon father. You’ve been
to the Bible studies. You remember that no Middle Eastern father ever runs to
his children; he waits for the children to come to him. He is the center of
power and authority. Yet that is exactly what he gives up in order to win back
his son. It sounds kind of like a Jesus story, a story of Jesus, who had the
power and authority of God, but gave it up in order to win us back.
The father in our story does this with
extravagance. “Put a ring on his finger. Dress him in the finest robe. Put his
cracked bare feet in sandals. Butcher our finest calf and fire up the barbecue
pit. Hire the musicians and invite the neighbors. My child was dead, but now he
is raises from the dead.”
This is unrestrained generosity, from a
father who handed over a share of the inheritance to his formerly indifferent
son. It is also inflammatory generosity, provoking an angry reaction from the
boy’s older brother who never did anything wrong and never wandered off on his
own. But the father insists, even to the point of going out, once again, to
implore the good older brother to join in the family reunion. The father wants everything
restored to the way it was originally created to be. That’s why he does what he
does.
That
pushes us to the third question that I have about this story: what does this
mean for you and me?
I think it could mean any number of
things, especially if we resonate with one of the characters in the story. If
we wandered off like the younger son, it could mean one thing. If we are
resentful that the wanderers are welcomed back and forgiven, it could mean another
thing. And if, like the father, we long for the healing of relationships, no
matter the cost, I think it means something else. In fact, I think the story
invites us to become like the father: to love both, to love all, to do what we
can to restore all that has been broken.
John Philip Newell has been part of the
Iona Community of Glasgow, working for the reconciliation of heaven and earth,
city and country, rich and poor. In one of his writings, he reminds us that the
Celtic Christian tradition points all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There
is an original goodness to God’s creation. In each of us, there is a recurring
memory of when everything was one. Here is what he writes about it:
Meister
Eckhart says that “all creatures… seek the One.” This longing is deep within
the stuff of our nature. It is deep within the body of the cosmos. We seek the
One by seeking oneness with each other, by seeking to be in relationship with
the rest of life, by living in relation to everything that has being. The tragedy
of our reality is that we have fallen out of touch with this holy natural
longing. Divisions that have multiplied divisions, and fears that have fed upon
fears drive us further and further apart. Grace (says Teilhard de Chardin) is
the “seed of resurrection” sown in our nature. And the greatest of graces,
love, is what reawakens the deep longings for our being, the hunger for
oneness, the desire for unity. How do we bring this greatest of graces to the
relationships of our lives – our relationship with the earth, our relationship
as nations, our relationship as wisdom traditions?[2]
So what does this mean for you and me? A
boy runs away and squanders what he has, comes to his senses, and is welcomed
home. That is a salvation story, not just for the boy, not just for the father and
the family, but a sign of what God desires of the entire creation. It is the
memory of the Garden of Eden, when all things fit together and flourished in
peace. And it’s the great hope of what the Spirit of Christ wishes to create
among us and calls us to pursue: peace, harmony, forgiveness, reconciliation,
with love ruling over all.
When we scrape away everything else –
all the posturing, all the self-righteousness, all the fake virtues - this (say
the Celtic Christians) is our deepest longing: for everything to return to the
way it was created to be. That is what we want most of all. That is the shape
of Christ’s greatest work, and our work too: the restoration of what has been
broken. The restoration of whoever has been broken.
When you get right down to it, it’s just
like going home.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (San Francisco: Harper
and Row, 1981)
[2] John Philip Newell, A New Harmony: The Spirit, The Earth, and
the Human Soul (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2011) 143.
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