Lent 4 C

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Lent 4 C
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: March 22, 1998

TEXT: Luke 15:11-32 - Parable of Two Lost Sons, Parable of the Loving Father, Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Son 1 - "But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and ptu his arms around him and kissed him."

Son 2 - "Son, you are always with me, and all tht is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found."

ISSUE: This parable is an outrageous expression of the enormous love of God for his children. It is salvation by grace revealed in a dramatic way. It also reveals the eccentricity of our own human nature. We are so very foolish in our own sinfulness and then so damningly terribly self-righteous as to be obnoxious. Yet the loving Father still receives and calls to us. It is a great parable of what it is like to enter into God's Domain.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here is truly one of the most beautiful of all of Jesus's parables. It's most common title has been The Parable of the Prodigal Son, with emphasis on the lost son being restored through his repentance. Still another more modern title for this parable is The Parable of the Two Lost Sons, which emphaiszes the fact that both sons were in need of repentance. However, the more appropriate title is The Parable of the Loving Father. It is the compassionate father in the story that reaches out in great love to both of his sons. In our time, however, I think that we might be careful with the title of The Loving Father because there is an inclination to sentimentalize the parable in such away that it loses its real authentic impact. The father in the story who is a symbol for God the Father is seen as a sort of pushover. God is reduced somewhat to a nice guy, and you might like to meet him sometime. God is sort of good to his restless kids who's sort of bad.
In the time that Jesus told this parable and modern Biblical scholars believe that this parable is very very close to being authentically a parable that Jesus would have told without too much editorializing by Luke and the early church. It is important for us to understand that the Parable was outrageous in its time. The meaning behind the parable for some of the people hearing it was just another cause behind the crucifixion of Jesus. It was a shocking parable at the time and we see it as a relatively harmless rendition of how sweet and sacchrine God is. We domesticate many of the parables of Jesus and remove from them their wild outrageousness.
Let's try to get to the root of what really lies behind this parable in terms of the period in which is was told. A father has two sons and the youngest comes to him in a fit of utter rebellion and dares to ask his father to give him his share of the inheritance. To put this another way, the son tells his father to "drop dead." He is dishonoring his father and his father's home. His inheritance was about a third of the estate, and once given he would never receive nor be entitled to anymore. The first shock and outlandish aspect of the parable is that the father gives him the money and dares to turn him loose.
The boy then leaves not only his father's home and country, but goes off to a foreign country. To be without family support and survive in this period was nearly impossible. People of this time were very dependent upon close family for their very existence: marriage, education, religion, status, and work. The boy is really an incorrigible child. What might be expected to happen happens. The boy loses it all, and ends up in the pig sty, eating non-nutricious food. Pigs for Jews were unclean animals, and the boy's only saving grace was that he didn't eat one of the pigs. Jews don't eat pork. It is ritually unclean.
Coming to his senses the boy decides to return home, remembering it wasn't all that bad there, but fact of the matter is that there is no place else to go. Maybe his father will make him a hired-hand. Hired hands were less than family slaves. At least when there are crops to be picked he'd have some food. So he decides to be repentant, at least act so, and dares to go home. That was a risky move.
As he comes down the road, the father sees him and runs to him, and before he can get any words of repentance out of his mouth or anything else, embraces him and kisses him. According to the law of Deuteronomy 21:18, this is what was supposed to have happened:
"Suppose a man has a son who is stubborn and rebellious, a son who will not obey his parents, even though they punish him. His parents are to take him before the leaders of the town where he lives and make him stand trial. They are to say to them, 'Our son is stubborn and rebellious and refuses to obey us; he wastes money and is a drunkard.' Then the men of the city are to stone him to death, and so you will get rid of this evil. Everyone in Israel will hear what has happened and be afraid."
The father runs out to protect the son from the possibility of being stoned to death by an irate judgmental community. If this one gets away with this kind of behavior, every kid in the village will want to do it too, so make them afraid.
Then the son tries to get out his rehearsed speech when the father starts putting his ritual robe for special occasions on him, giving him the family signet ring so he can conduct family business, and shoes on his feet signifying he is to be nohired-hand or slave. The fatted calf is ordered to be slaughtered for a feast, one hell of a party that's going to feed over a hundred guests. This behavior was outrageous behavior on the part of the father. If the father in the story is a symbol of God the Father the concept flies in the face of the very concept of God. Even if was not a symbol of God, it was outlandish behavior of a real father in this culture.
The older son who comes home from working in the fields and hears the music and the dancing, and who learns what is going on heightens the fact that his father's behavior is outrageous. He dishonors his father by refusing to go into the party and respecting his father's wishes. He refers to his brother as his father's son -this son of yours - and perpetuates the disowning of his brother. He condmens his brother and laments that his father has never given him so much as a kid to make merry with his friends. He maintains a stance of self-righteousness. We never know if he goes into the party or not. That's a question left the listener. What would you do?
Notice the impact of the reversal in the story that really got people's attention. It's an outrageous story that is counter cultural. The father does not behave like a father would react. The prodigal son does not behave like a dutiful son should. The dutiful son, the culturally correct son, stands in sharp contrast and we don't know what he's going to do. Suddenly he seems worlds apart from what's happening to his father and younger brother.
Some have argued that this parable is about how the early church was attempting to accept the Gentiles. The parable comes across for some as Jesus showing how the pagan Gentiles are acceptable to God, and how Judaism is all caught up in its own self-righteousness. Thus the church needs to reach out to the outcast and condemn legalism. This interpretation can be seen as anti-semitic. I don't think that it holds any water and surely misses the point. Make no mistake, both sons in the parable of Jewish sons, and a Jewish father reaches out to both of them calling them to reconciliation and relationship with him.
Robert Capon, The Parables of Grace, 1995, an Episcopal Biblical Scholar, makes an interesting point about the parable. Capon notes that this is another one of Jesus' Party Parables. Interestingly enough all of the major figures in the parable die, except for one. The father dies symbolically when he turns over the inheritance to the rebellious son. The rebellious son dies once he leaves home and finds his live in the garbage dump. When he finally returns home, the fatted calf dies as a symbol of the sacrifical lamb so there can be a party. It is only in dying to our selves that we can live and enter into the Party of God, or the Domain of God. Only the older son who refuses to die to his way of life and thinking is left out of the party so far as we know. The father dies for his son; the son dies in his sins, and the fatted calf is slain so that a new party can begin and their relationships restored. The self-righteous son stands outside refusing to go in to the party of new life and reconciliation.
(It is also interesting that Jesus himself is one who left his family and went into the world to suffer significantly. He left home. He had little to live on. He associated with woman, the poor, the disenfranchised. He died, but led the way to the Father. Through his dying, he was give an extaordinary life of reconciliation.)
Whenever I read and explore the meaning of this parable and try to appreciate it for our time, I cannot help but see the two sons in all of us. People can take good lives and screw them up royally. People can be cruel, unkind, stupid, immoral, vicious. They can be manipulative, stubborn, underhanded sneaky and all the rest. Lives can be ruined and empty.
On the other hand people can be judgmental, self-righteous, condeming, all in the name of being moral, upright, honorable, dutiful, self-made, right. Yet at the same time they can be lacking in mercy, understanding, and compassion. Their lives can be a spiritually empty as the worst of sinners.
The parable tells us that all of us stand in the need of God's saving grace. All of us have to die to who we are and receive what The Father has to give. We need to renew our relationship with the God the Father of Love. Like the father in the story, Jesus calls his people and us out of the world into a radically new realm, the realm of God, the Kingdom of God, Heaven, into God's Domain to that wonderfully grand party where things are radically different and God's saving and undeserved grace abounds to the utter shock of the world. God in Christ is not merely the sweet God in heaven who sits back and loves, but who gives freedom and who himself dies that all may live and be reconciled one to another as brothers and sisters.