Scripture: Psalm 32:1-11; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
The story about a man and his two sons, the most familiar of all
parables, has usually been called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But it's not so much
about a headstrong son who turns his life around as it is about a father who loved his
children beyond all reason and wanted them to love each other too. "There was a man
who had two sons," Jesus says, not "there was a man who had a father and an
elder brother." It could be named the Parable of the Loving Father.
The story of the loving father is one of three that Jesus tells in a row after the
Pharisees and the scribes have scolded him for eating with sinners and welcoming into his
family all sorts of outcasts and riffraff. Jesus does not argue with them. He tells them
stories instead, about a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves while
he went after one stray, about a woman who turned her house upside down in order to find
one lost coin, and about a loving father who dealt graciously with his two sons. All three
stories address the Pharisees' concern that Jesus is condoning sin and sinner by the
people he welcomes into his family, and all three 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.
Every Sunday, we go through the ritual of saying together the Corporate Prayer of
Confession, the Assurance of Pardon, and the Passing of the Peace in that order. "In
Jesus Christ, we are forgiven" we say, after confession is made, and then we can have
peace. But according to the parable, we have the order all turned around. According to the
parable, no confession is necessary, no promise of better behavior is required, no
forgiveness of those who have sinned against you in thought, word or deed. According to
the parable you don't even have to go to the temple or the church or whatever religious
shrine and run through whatever ritual has been set up to deal with these matters. The
loving father sees you coming while you are still a long way off and runs out and embraces
you and kisses you and forgives you even before you can get a word out of your mouth.
This guy Jesus hasn't heard of tough love. He isn't even close. For those of us with
our tail caught between our legs this is superb news. We've wandered. Lord knows we've
wandered and we are sick of it. In our deepest place, we just want to go home and hope
that somehow Dad and Mom will be there for us with out too much harshness and judgment.
Now we discover we're off the hook. Glory Hallelujah!
The problem is no one would ever want to construct a society on such moral laxity. It's
really bad news isn't it? Forgiveness is important to be sure, and we're all in need of
it, and when we get it, it is freeing and liberating and there's new life and new
beginnings. Everything is past and gone, but wait a minute!
Forgiveness is forgiveness of sin, right? And sin is wrong, right? In order to be
forgiven, someone has to have fallen short of the glory of God, right? It could have been
as simple as pulling on your sister's pigtail or as complicated as having pulled out a gun
in high school and killed someone, right? Whatever the crime, very few of us would deny
that the Christian faith has something very powerful to say about forgiveness. But almost
all of us would say that penance is required. It's a precondition along with a willingness
to face the consequences and make amends. You gotta pay for the wrong that was done,
right?
Along comes Jesus and his tree hugging, hasn't heard of tough love, parable of instant
forgiveness, no strings attached. It just doesn't seem right, right? But in the parable
the point it is made perfectly clear. The love of God is so thoroughly extravagant and
unconditional that God both fulfills in us our deepest longing to find our way home no
matter what we've done, and violates our sense of what is right.
Now the typical treatment of this parable is to turn the players into wooden
characters. There's the sulking, mean-spirited older brother who seethes at his father's
inexplicable love for a reckless, fun-loving younger brat who has fallen on hard times,
decided to straighten out and come home. But that's not what the parable is about. That
interpretation is too simple. Jesus tells a far darker parable. He tells a story about a
younger son so hungry to see the world that he wished his own father didn't exist. In
ancient Hebrew society, you didn't settle your inheritance before your father's death. To
do so would violate the commandment to honor your father and mother. He treats his father
like dirt - like an object.
So the father, apparently valuing his son's freedom more than his own security, divides
his source of livelihood, says goodbye to his younger son who goes off and throws it all
away. One day "he comes to himself," decides home is better than the filth he's
living in, composes a contrived confession and figures three squares and a roof over his
head as a slave in his father's house would be better than slopping with the hogs. He
comes home and starts living off his brother's inheritance, having squandered his own. No
sooner does he round the final corner to the old homestead than Pops takes his brother's
fatted calf, the one big bro' grazed and fed the past year, and roasts it on the barbeque,
rolls out the barrels and the party is on.
Jesus tells no extra steps between the return and the party: no heart-rending
confession before the old man, no woodshed whipping, no extra chores, no grounding for a
week so as to come to your senses, just a fine new robe, a new ring for the finger and new
sandals for the feet.
The party was thrown together so quickly that the older son hadn't yet gotten home from
toiling in the back forty. I'd hate to be the messenger to tell him what all the music and
the dancing was all about. The air turned blue.
I'm an older brother. I know what it's like when parents receive their training on you,
and are all uptight and cautious and then when a younger sibling is born they loosen up.
What was once criminal is now cute. You want to slap them around a little when no one is
looking, just to get them to squawk. If you get caught, you're dead.
Older siblings can get the short end of the stick as the older brother apparently does
in the parable. My hunch is that he becomes incensed not because his brother came home or
even because his father forgave him, but because the party was feasting on his calf. Let
the downtrodden come home, of course; it was his own fault, but let him come home. But
make him suffer. Make him face the consequences of his poor choices. Give him moral
instruction. Post the Ten Commandments. Have him reap what he sowed. Require penance, not
a party. What kind of world would it be if we made a practice of throwing parties for
every sinner while the God-fearing, law-abiding folk are still stuck out in the field
weeding beans and in the barn shoveling?
How about those of us who are keeping our relationships in decent order, holding down
our jobs and trying to educate our children in this wacko world? Do we get a party? Well,
do we? Or do we have to go off and squander the farm in order to hit bottom and come home
in order to be embraced and kissed and loved and assured that we belong?
"Listen," the older son complains. "For all these years I have been
working like a slave for you. 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 on prostitutes, you killed the
fatted calf that I raised, and fed it to him."
God help the older son. Lord help all of us who understand his rage, who have felt so
excluded and so hurt and so under-appreciated, that we have cut ourselves off from the
very ones we most long to have love us and accept us.
"This son of yours," the older brother says, excluding himself from the
family. "This son of yours who is not my brother. Nor are you my father, if you are
going to choose him over me."
This is where the loving father reveals who he really is. He earns his stripes. Dad
does not swing his fist at his first born, nor does he remind him to honor his father or
that he is his brother's keeper.
Dad knows that he has lost both of his sons. He has lost one son to recklessness and
the other son to angry, seething, self-righteous hatred. This older son is so lost he
might as well be feeding pigs in some distant country. He wants his father to love him
because he's worked hard, done the right thing, followed the rules and stayed put. He
wants his father to love him for all of that and his father does love him, but not for any
of that, any more than he loves the younger for what he has done or not done. He does not
love according to what they deserve. He just loves them, because of who he is rather than
because of who they are. The older brother can't stand for it. He cannot stand for a love
that transcends right and wrong, a love that throws parties for homecoming sinners and
expects the hard working righteous to lighten up and have a blast. The older son cannot
stand it so he stands outside the gate to his father's house, outside his father's love
refusing to come inside, to come home.
But Dad never seems to give up. Dad never seems to tire of giving love away.
"Son," he says. "You are always with me, and all that is mine is
yours." Dad's love for the reckless son does not preclude his love for the righteous
older son. They are family. They belong to one another. A party for one is a party for
all. "We had to celebrate and rejoice," he says to his first born, "because
this brother of yours" not my son, but your brother-was dead and has come back to
life. He was lost and has been found."
The parable ends before we know how it all turns out. The party goes on. The older
brother stands at the gate with his father. Jesus leaves us there, because it is up to
each one of us to finish the story about how we will make it home. It is up to each of us
to decide whether we will stand outside all alone being right, or give up our hurt and our
anger and take our place at the table of God's family a table full of the reckless and the
righteous, saints and scoundrels, brothers and sisters united only by our relationship to
a loving God, who refuses to give us the love we think we deserve, but who provides us all
the love we need. The choice is yours. Let's go in. Amen.
WHEN WE GET HOME
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Mark K. Smutny ¥ March 25, 2001
Scripture: Psalm 32: 1-11 ¥ Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32
The story about a man and his two sons, the most familiar of all parables, has usually
been called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But it's not so much about a headstrong son
who turns his life around as it is about a father who loved his children beyond all reason
and wanted them to love each other too. "There was a man who had two sons,"
Jesus says, not "there was a man who had a father and an elder brother." It
could be named the Parable of the Loving Father.
The story of the loving father is one of three that Jesus tells in a row after the
Pharisees and the scribes have scolded him for eating with sinners and welcoming into his
family all sorts of outcasts and riffraff. Jesus does not argue with them. He tells them
stories instead, about a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves while
he went after one stray, about a woman who turned her house upside down in order to find
one lost coin, and about a loving father who dealt graciously with his two sons. All three
stories address the Pharisees' concern that Jesus is condoning sin and sinner by the
people he welcomes into his family, and all three 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.
Every Sunday, we go through the ritual of saying together the Corporate Prayer of
Confession, the Assurance of Pardon, and the Passing of the Peace in that order. "In
Jesus Christ, we are forgiven" we say, after confession is made, and then we can have
peace. But according to the parable, we have the order all turned around. According to the
parable, no confession is necessary, no promise of better behavior is required, no
forgiveness of those who have sinned against you in thought, word or deed. According to
the parable you don't even have to go to the temple or the church or whatever religious
shrine and run through whatever ritual has been set up to deal with these matters. The
loving father sees you coming while you are still a long way off and runs out and embraces
you and kisses you and forgives you even before you can get a word out of your mouth.
This guy Jesus hasn't heard of tough love. He isn't even close. For those of us with
our tail caught between our legs this is superb news. We've wandered. Lord knows we've
wandered and we are sick of it. In our deepest place, we just want to go home and hope
that somehow Dad and Mom will be there for us with out too much harshness and judgment.
Now we discover we're off the hook. Glory Hallelujah!
The problem is no one would ever want to construct a society on such moral laxity. It's
really bad news isn't it? Forgiveness is important to be sure, and we're all in need of
it, and when we get it, it is freeing and liberating and there's new life and new
beginnings. Everything is past and gone, but wait a minute!
Forgiveness is forgiveness of sin, right? And sin is wrong, right? In order to be
forgiven, someone has to have fallen short of the glory of God, right? It could have been
as simple as pulling on your sister's pigtail or as complicated as having pulled out a gun
in high school and killed someone, right? Whatever the crime, very few of us would deny
that the Christian faith has something very powerful to say about forgiveness. But almost
all of us would say that penance is required. It's a precondition along with a willingness
to face the consequences and make amends. You gotta pay for the wrong that was done,
right?
Along comes Jesus and his tree hugging, hasn't heard of tough love, parable of instant
forgiveness, no strings attached. It just doesn't seem right, right? But in the parable
the point it is made perfectly clear. The love of God is so thoroughly extravagant and
unconditional that God both fulfills in us our deepest longing to find our way home no
matter what we've done, and violates our sense of what is right.
Now the typical treatment of this parable is to turn the players into wooden
characters. There's the sulking, mean-spirited older brother who seethes at his father's
inexplicable love for a reckless, fun-loving younger brat who has fallen on hard times,
decided to straighten out and come home. But that's not what the parable is about. That
interpretation is too simple. Jesus tells a far darker parable. He tells a story about a
younger son so hungry to see the world that he wished his own father didn't exist. In
ancient Hebrew society, you didn't settle your inheritance before your father's death. To
do so would violate the commandment to honor your father and mother. He treats his father
like dirt - like an object.
So the father, apparently valuing his son's freedom more than his own security, divides
his source of livelihood, says goodbye to his younger son who goes off and throws it all
away. One day "he comes to himself," decides home is better than the filth he's
living in, composes a contrived confession and figures three squares and a roof over his
head as a slave in his father's house would be better than slopping with the hogs. He
comes home and starts living off his brother's inheritance, having squandered his own. No
sooner does he round the final corner to the old homestead than Pops takes his brother's
fatted calf, the one big bro' grazed and fed the past year, and roasts it on the barbeque,
rolls out the barrels and the party is on.
Jesus tells no extra steps between the return and the party: no heart-rending
confession before the old man, no woodshed whipping, no extra chores, no grounding for a
week so as to come to your senses, just a fine new robe, a new ring for the finger and new
sandals for the feet.
The party was thrown together so quickly that the older son hadn't yet gotten home from
toiling in the back forty. I'd hate to be the messenger to tell him what all the music and
the dancing was all about. The air turned blue.
I'm an older brother. I know what it's like when parents receive their training on you,
and are all uptight and cautious and then when a younger sibling is born they loosen up.
What was once criminal is now cute. You want to slap them around a little when no one is
looking, just to get them to squawk. If you get caught, you're dead.
Older siblings can get the short end of the stick as the older brother apparently does
in the parable. My hunch is that he becomes incensed not because his brother came home or
even because his father forgave him, but because the party was feasting on his calf. Let
the downtrodden come home, of course; it was his own fault, but let him come home. But
make him suffer. Make him face the consequences of his poor choices. Give him moral
instruction. Post the Ten Commandments. Have him reap what he sowed. Require penance, not
a party. What kind of world would it be if we made a practice of throwing parties for
every sinner while the God-fearing, law-abiding folk are still stuck out in the field
weeding beans and in the barn shoveling?
How about those of us who are keeping our relationships in decent order, holding down
our jobs and trying to educate our children in this wacko world? Do we get a party? Well,
do we? Or do we have to go off and squander the farm in order to hit bottom and come home
in order to be embraced and kissed and loved and assured that we belong?
"Listen," the older son complains. "For all these years I have been
working like a slave for you. 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 on prostitutes, you killed the
fatted calf that I raised, and fed it to him."
God help the older son. Lord help all of us who understand his rage, who have felt so
excluded and so hurt and so under-appreciated, that we have cut ourselves off from the
very ones we most long to have love us and accept us.
"This son of yours," the older brother says, excluding himself from the
family. "This son of yours who is not my brother. Nor are you my father, if you are
going to choose him over me."
This is where the loving father reveals who he really is. He earns his stripes. Dad
does not swing his fist at his first born, nor does he remind him to honor his father or
that he is his brother's keeper.
Dad knows that he has lost both of his sons. He has lost one son to recklessness and
the other son to angry, seething, self-righteous hatred. This older son is so lost he
might as well be feeding pigs in some distant country. He wants his father to love him
because he's worked hard, done the right thing, followed the rules and stayed put. He
wants his father to love him for all of that and his father does love him, but not for any
of that, any more than he loves the younger for what he has done or not done. He does not
love according to what they deserve. He just loves them, because of who he is rather than
because of who they are. The older brother can't stand for it. He cannot stand for a love
that transcends right and wrong, a love that throws parties for homecoming sinners and
expects the hard working righteous to lighten up and have a blast. The older son cannot
stand it so he stands outside the gate to his father's house, outside his father's love
refusing to come inside, to come home.
But Dad never seems to give up. Dad never seems to tire of giving love away.
"Son," he says. "You are always with me, and all that is mine is
yours." Dad's love for the reckless son does not preclude his love for the righteous
older son. They are family. They belong to one another. A party for one is a party for
all. "We had to celebrate and rejoice," he says to his first born, "because
this brother of yours" not my son, but your brother-was dead and has come back to
life. He was lost and has been found."
The parable ends before we know how it all turns out. The party goes on. The older
brother stands at the gate with his father. Jesus leaves us there, because it is up to
each one of us to finish the story about how we will make it home. It is up to each of us
to decide whether we will stand outside all alone being right, or give up our hurt and our
anger and take our place at the table of God's family a table full of the reckless and the
righteous, saints and scoundrels, brothers and sisters united only by our relationship to
a loving God, who refuses to give us the love we think we deserve, but who provides us all
the love we need. The choice is yours. Let's go in.
Amen.
