Posts Tagged ‘Prodigal Son’

A son who brings shame and dishonour and a father who couldn’t care less

March 29, 2025

Lent 4 – 2025

Luke 15:11-32

Marian Free

In the name of God who, on our part endures humiliation and shame in order to show love to and to welcome home the worst of us. Amen.

(You might like to watch the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane’s one minute reflection on today’s gospel.)

There are two parables (only found in Luke) that have become part of common parlance.  These are known as the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son. Unfortunately, our over familiarisation with these parables (and with parables in general) is that they have lost their capacity to shock, to pull us up short. In the first instance, Jesus’ parable about the Samaritan is not a call to do good works, but a critique of those – good Christians all– who think that in some way superior to those whom they consider as somehow lesser than themselves. In the second instance, Jesus is challenging the view of those who thought that Jesus should only eat with/associate with those who kept the law and those who observed the niceties of social expectations (Luke 15:1).

In the case of the Prodigal son, as the name suggests, the focus tends to be on the son. When we read the parable, we put ourselves in the place of the son and feel immense gratitude that God overlooks our faults when and if we repent. What we fail to see, is what the parable tells us about the Father – by implication what it tells us about God and Jesus. In fact, scholars today call the parable the forgiving father, because that more accurately represents Jesus’ meaning.

The focus in this parable is not the repentance (if it was repentance) of the son, but on the father, who, ignoring ridicule and having no regard to his position in society, not only indulges the son, but who watches day and night for the son’s return and who runs to greet him on the road. In this parable, Jesus turns the honour/shame culture of the Middle East on its head. 

At that time (and in some places today) the concept of honour/shame was central to all relationships in the Middle East. There were complex protocols governing all human behaviour because honour was a finite resource and if you wanted to increase your own honour you could only do it at the expense of someone else’s honour. In an interaction between people of differing status, there were quite specific codes to follow so that each person, whether of higher or lower status, was not in danger of threatening the honour of the other.  

A loss of honour was equally the loss of respect and status in the community. This is the reason why Herod felt that he had to honour the request of his step daughter to behead John the Baptist. To have failed to do so would have meant that he would have lost face (respect, status) before his guests.  If a person lost their honour, it was lost for good. Had Herod not fulfilled his promise, he might have been able to maintain his power by force, but not through his status in the community. (He would have become an object of ridicule, someone who could not be expected to keep his word.)

In a collective (not individualistic) society, honour was collective. A man’s honour was dependent on the behaviour of his family – so much so that homes were often open to the street to demonstrate that the head of the household had nothing to fear. In this case the actions of the son reflect badly on and diminish the father’s honour.

This is what makes Jesus’ parable of the forgiving father all the more surprising, even shocking to his audience. From beginning to end the story is about a father whose honour is challenged and diminished and about a father who doesn’t care less about honour, his dignity or the regard in which he is held by his neighbours.  He cares only for the well-being of the son.

According to the parable the younger son asks for his share of the inheritance. Not only is this son greedy, selfish and impatient he is, by asking for his inheritance, implying that wished his father dead. Jesus’ audience would have understood that the son’s request was in clear violation of the fourth commandment to honour your father and mother. Further, anyone dependent on making a living from the land would be well aware of the financial burden that paying out the son would put on the father (and the remaining brother). The son has brought shame on the family, possibly impoverished the family and has thought only of himself and his short-term pleasure.

You might say, “yes, but he did come to his senses’. But did he? Was he really repentant or was he still putting his own needs first. Peter Hawkins (among others) observes that there is something quite calculating in the son’s thought process[1]. His speech is even rehearsed: “I will say to him.” There is no mention in the account that he is sorry, only that returning home would be a solution to his state of starvation. 

If anyone has/had any doubt that God was not a God of judgement and condemnation, but a God of compassion and second chances, this parable (and the two that precede it) puts paid to any questions on that score.

The father (probably representing God) has asked nothing of the son but has freely given him what he wanted, released him from all responsibility and let him go. Then, day after day, it appears, he has kept a lookout for this lost boy – forgoing pride and any sense of social respectability (the son has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be part of the family and has brought dishonour on his family name). 

Finally, the father sees the son and, without thought for his personal dignity and paying no regard to the diminished esteem in which he will be held by his neighbours, he runs (runs not walks) to take his son in his arms before son has any opportunity to give his well-thought out and well-rehearsed speech. If that were not enough to indicate to his neighbours his lack of self-respect, he then calls for the best robe, a ring for the finger, sandals for his feet AND a feast with the fatted calf, any one of which would be shocking and incomprehensible to his community.  A member of the family who had brought them into such disrepute and brought such shame upon them, should at the very least be shunned if not severely punished.

By turning upside down the social conventions of the time, Jesus wants his audience to let go of an idea that God only welcomes those self-righteous people who keep the law and set themselves apart from the sinner and tax-collector. Just the opposite, God’s primary concern is for the sheep who has wandered from the fold, the coin that has found its way into a hidden corner, and the son or daughter who has cut themselves off from God’s love. 

God of the lost, giver of second chances – is not a God who wants to condemn and exclude, but a God whose open embrace welcomes all who would turn to him – without question, without recrimination and certainly without judgement.

[1] Christian Century. Sunday’s Coming. 25/3/25

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Loving the deserving and the undeserving

March 26, 2022

Lent 4 – 2022
Luke 15:11-32
Marian Free

May I speak in the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-giver whose love for us is beyond compare. Amen.

This week one of the disturbing stories that is making the headlines is the inquest into the shocking deaths of Hannah Clarke and her three children at the hands of her husband and their father. It is difficult to imagine how anyone who purports to love someone could be so possessive/obsessive that they would kill the one they loved rather than set them free. “Love” that comes with conditions or strings is not love at all, but something else altogether. “Love” that seeks to dominate or control is not love but a perverted idea of what “loving and being loved” might be.

In our imperfect world, there are many ways in which “love” has been corrupted or distorted. Some women stay with violent partners because they have been led to believe that they don’t deserve better. Some children act out because any attention is better than no attention. Others are overly compliant in the belief that only if they are good enough will they be loved. There are just too many examples of the ways in which love has been misunderstood or misused.

Today’s gospel, one with which we are so very familiar is all about love – giving and receiving love in its purest form – undefiled and unconditional.

Sadly, many of my generation were brought up to believe in heaven and hell, and in judgement that resulted in reward or punishment. Whether it was intended or not, the message that we received was that even though God loved us, that love came with an expectation that we were to be “good” and knowing that our “goodness” was constantly being measured against our “badness”.

In that light, the parable of the Loving Father or Prodigal Son was taught as a story of forgiveness. The bad son, the prodigal, had to recognise his sinfulness, repent, and return to his father – who then forgave him. That was easy enough to understand, but many of us struggled with the older son, the good but resentful son. This, I suspect, was because we identified with him and felt that we should not. Like the older son, our sense of fairness is offended by the father’s overreaction to the return of the prodigal. Like the older son, our notion of God’s love is predicated on its being earned. In the parable, this concept is turned upside down – the bad son who has done nothing to deserve it is rewarded – and the good son – who has done everything right – is not. “It’s not fair!” we shout, as if we were still two years old.
Our innate sense of justice wants God to be fair – at least far as we define it. We are torn between wanting to know that we (despite our inadequacies) are loved and wanting to know that God will rain down punishment on those whom we (not God) deem unworthy of God’s love. We want there to be consequences for good behaviour and for bad – otherwise (as the older son seems to feel) what is the point of being good? We fail to see the irony (as does the older son) that most of us are not driven by the threat of damnation but by the fact that we don’t actually want to be bad! It is not so much that we want to be rewarded, but we sure as heck want those who misbehave to be punished or at least reproved for their behaviour!

The meaning of the parable changes if we take as our starting point – not the behaviour of the brothers – but the actions of the father whose love towards his sons is demonstrated – not just at the home-coming but also at the leaving, not just at the going, but at the staying. Often, we are so focussed on the end of the story, that we overlook the beginning. According to the parable, the father loves his younger son enough to let him go. He understands that love that holds on to the other is not love but control and that nothing will be achieved by forcing his son to remain at home. If the younger son conforms but is seething with resentment, nothing is gained. According to the story (and we must remember that it is just a story), there are no strings attached to the son’s freedom, no instructions as to what he should do, where he should go or how he should spend his money. When the son returns, there are no questions, no recriminations – just joy that the one who is loved has returned. The father’s love is freely given – no questions, no expectations, and no conditions.

A fresh tells us something about God’s love for us. As is the father’s love for his child, God’s love for us is non-coercive and non-demanding. This was something that the younger son innately understood – he was not afraid to ask for his inheritance, not so anxious about his father’s reaction that he could not return home and not so ashamed that he held back when his father reached out to embrace him. What a contrast with the older brother who, in the story, appears not to have understood how much he is loved, that everything that was his father’s was his already. Instead of trusting his father’s love for him, he seems to have spent his life seeking approval. It is no wonder that he cannot be generous towards his brother, he has not had the confidence to be generous to himself.

If we turn this parable on its head, we will see that it has as much to tell us about accepting love, as it does about being loved. God, who is love, cannot help but love us. It is we, whose ideas about God are often misinformed or misguided, who think that we have to earn God’s love and who in turn begrudge the fact that God freely gives God’s love to all people – both the bad and the good – who have to re-frame the way that we see God and God’s love not just for some, but for all.

God’s boundless, unconditional, and unquestioning love is poured out on all God’s creation. When we claim that love for ourselves we cannot refuse it to others.

All we have to do is say: “yes – I know that I am loved.”

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Known and loved

March 30, 2019

Lent 4 – 2019

Luke 15:1-3,11b-32

Marian Free

In the name of God, whose love for us is not determined by what we do or don’t do, but is freely poured out on us all. Amen.

There is a wonderful movie based on the book The Joy Luck Club. The novel follows the lives of four Chinese women who, for quite different reasons, have fled China and found themselves in the United States. There they all marry and have children and form a strong familial bond such that their children could be cousins. We witness the children growing up and the competition between the mothers as the children excel at chess, at the piano, at school and then in the work place. On the whole, the off spring are noisy and self confident high achievers. One, June, does not fit the mould. At ‘family’ gatherings she stays in the background. June doesn’t want to compete with her cousins, she lacks their confidence and selfishness and is always putting the others before herself. At family gatherings it is June who takes the smallest portion of a choice dish and it is she who is to be found helping out with the cleaning up while the other cousins are chatting among themselves.

One evening June, who has made the choice to help her mother rather than sit with her cousins, bristles with resentment (at least as much as someone as sweet as June, can bristle). Even though she willingly helps out, on this particular evening she feels taken for granted. She complains to her mother who responds: “I see you. I see you taking the worst piece of crab when your cousins take the best. I see you looking after your aunties. I see you helping out. I see you.” “I see you.”

June had thought that her actions went unnoticed and that her mother preferred her more confident, higher achieving ‘cousins’, but all along her mother knew her and saw her. June’s quiet help had not gone unnoticed. Her gentle and unobtrusive presence was seen and valued. Knowing this is enough for June. Until now June hadn’t needed or sought reward for her behaviour, but this evening she want to know that she was not unappreciated or invisible. Her mother’s affirmation is sufficient reassurance. She knows that she doesn’t have to compete with her cousins. She understands that she is valued for who she is and that is enough.

I don’t know anyone who does not identify with the older son in today’s parable. Whether it is because we ourselves are an older sibling or whether our sense of justice is deeply offended at the father’s inexplicable generosity towards the son who squandered his inheritance we all sympathize with the older brother who is hurt and angry. After all, we think, he is the good son. He hasn’t rocked the boat. He has quietly, willingly and diligently done all that was expected of him. Why should the younger brother be rewarded and the older son ignored?

We feel this way because we fail to see is that like June, until now the older brother has not felt that he was missing out, or if he did, he had not talked it over with his father. He has simply, and presumably happily, been doing what was expected of him. He has been the dutiful son. He hasn’t sought a reward for doing what was right but, seeing the father’s generosity towards his brother, he becomes aware that he could have had more. Perhaps like June, he had always wanted some reassurance that his conforming to social norms was valued and that his work was not unseen. Or perhaps all along he has been desperate for his father to acknowledge and reward his good behaviour. He may even have been going above and beyond what was expected in a misguided attempt to earn his father’s respect. His resentment, hitherto unnamed and perhaps unrecognized comes bubbling to the surface when his brother- the one who has disgraced himself and brought shame to his family – appears to be being rewarded not for good behaviour, but for bad behaviour. He, the older brother, is the one who should have been rewarded. He is the one to whom the father should have paid some attention. His is the hard work that should have been recognized.

Sadly, like June, the older son hasn’t understood his father’s love for him. Like June he has failed to identify his need for affirmation and he is mistaken in his father’s regard for him. He has not been taken for granted. His readiness to do what was required has not been ignored. If only he knew it he already has everything that belongs to the father. If only he realised that father has not asked or expected him to make sacrifices or to go without. Quite unnecessarily, the older son has made a martyr of himself. He did not accept that his father’s love and regard were freely given and now, when he sees what he could have had, he seethes with resentment. His relationship with his father was based on the false understanding that his father’s love needed to be earned. This is why he simply cannot understand that his father could welcome back his brother without exacting some retribution or imposing some punishment. He has so misunderstood his father’s regard for him that no amount of pleading will get him to go inside to the party – further demonstrating his lack of comprehension of the nature of father’s love.

So – if you identify with the older son ask yourself this – are you doing things you would rather not do because you think you need to? Are you being a martyr in the secret hope that you will be rewarded? Do you have it in your head that you/we need to earn God’s love or approval? Is your relationship with God such that you do not yet understand that God is always reaching out to you and constantly inviting you to the party?

None of us are perfect, yet here we all are – being held and loved by God.

If we resent God’s generosity towards those we consider to be less deserving perhaps it is because we do not yet know and value God generosity towards and love for us.

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Entering into the gospel of Luke

January 9, 2016

The Baptism of our Lord – 2016

Luke 3:15-22

Marian Free

In the name of God who opens our eyes and sends us out to waken the world to its salvation. Amen.

Advent, Christmas, Epiphany – the year of Luke has crept up on us, obscured in part by our celebration of a number of festivals that are best illustrated by readings from the other gospels. Year C, the year of Luke began on the first Sunday of Advent. This means that once again we will make our way though the third gospel. As we do we will become familiar with those themes and ideas that distinguish Luke’s account from that of Matthew and Mark and we will begin to discern what the differences tell us both about the author and about those for whom it was written.

In order to fully understand Luke, we have to place the gospel in context. There is a strong consensus that the first gospel to be written was that attributed to Mark. Scholars believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basis for their own accounts but that they also had a common source. So for example, some of the parables and sayings that have been added are common to both Matthew and Luke – for example the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount are absent from Mark, but used by Matthew and Luke.

At the same time, both Matthew and Luke have material that is unique to them. Matthew alone records the parables of the ten bridesmaids and the separation of the sheep and the goats. It is only Luke who records our best-loved and most well-known parables those of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.  From this we conclude that Luke used Mark, a source that he had in common with Matthew and material that only he knew.

Among the gospel writers Luke has a further claim to our interest. He alone wrote two volumes – the gospel and the Acts of the Apostles – the life of Jesus and the history of the early church.  The author of Luke is concerned with salvation history.  He divides time into a number of periods – the era of the promises of God, the  interim time of John the Baptist and the infancy of Jesus, the time of Jesus, the interim of the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension and Pentecost and the time of the Church that will end when Jesus returns.

Like the rest of the gospel writers Luke must confront the conundrum that by and large the Jews have not embraced Jesus whereas the Gentiles.  Luke deals with this in at least three ways. He writes in such a way as to develop demonstrate the continuity of Jesus with Judaism, beginning by formally introducing John as the last of the Old Testament prophets and he frames the story with Jerusalem – the Jews most sacred space. This is to illustrate his argument that salvation in the form of Jesus came to the heart of Judaism and it was there that it was rejected before being offered to the Gentiles. In comparison to Matthew whose gospel has a Jewish focus, Luke is keen to demonstrate that Jesus has relevance for the whole world. Luke’s genealogy goes back all the way to Adam – making Jesus’ humanity (rather than his Jewishness) blatantly clear.

There are a number of other things that make Luke’s gospel distinct. For a start, the gospel is addressed to a single person Theophilus.  Whether or not Theophilus is a real person or a representative figure, it would appear that Luke writes for townspeople, people who had better education and higher incomes than the Galilean disciples of Jesus. Luke changes the setting from a poor rural environment to one that is more familiar to his intended audience. He changes villages to cities, the amounts of money are bigger and the disciples are more informed, less like peasants (they own their own boats)[1].

In Luke’s gospel, the disciples are less foolish than in Mark and more aware of who Jesus is and of their own unworthiness in his presence.  The Holy Spirit has a dominant place in this gospel (and subsequently in Acts) being mentioned 28 times in the gospel[2] and a massive 83 times in Acts. The Holy Spirit moves both Elizabeth and Zechariah, they are promised that John will be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirits overshadows Mary such that she becomes pregnant and Simeon, filled with the Holy Spirit recognises Jesus when he is brought into the Temple. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus at his baptism and Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to those who believe and warns of the sin against the Holy Spirit. (In Acts, the Holy Spirit directs the action almost entirely.)

Worship and prayer are central to the third gospel. Not only does the gospel begin and end in Jerusalem, but it begins and ends with a worshipping community. Jesus prays at all the important moments in his life (before choosing the 12, before asking who people say he is, before he predicts Peter’s denial and in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus’ disciples see Jesus praying and ask him to teach them how to pray and Jesus encourages them to pray and includes a parable on prayer. The Jesus of Luke scolds people for not giving thanks. All in all there are 20 references to people worshipping in Luke’s gospel.

Outsiders play a significant part in this gospel. Jesus says of the centurion that nowhere in Israel has he found such faith, the Good Samaritan challenges stereotypes of who is “good”, it is the Samaritan leper who gives thanks. Women also play a significant role. Though we can debate what Luke’s intention was, his gospel is more balanced – a woman as well as a man is healed on the Sabbath. The woman who anoints Jesus is identifies as an exemplar of hospitality. God is depicted as the shepherd who looks for the lost sheep and the woman who looks for the lost coin. The parables of growth feature a farmer who tosses mustard seeds and a woman who kneads yeast.

Luke is more concerned with money than the other writers, but his attitude towards wealth is ambivalent. On the one hand, he is anxious not to alienate his audience (patron) Theophilus, on the other, he appears to be convinced that those who are rich have a responsibility to use their wealth wisely.  Wealth is to be used by all. So we see that only Luke records the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and of the man who plans to build extra barns to store his surplus crops.

Unlike the other gospel writers, Luke is concerned to locate the gospel in history. This is evidenced by his reference to the census and to his naming of the various leaders (including differentiating between the different Herods).

We will be spending this year with Luke. Can I suggest that you make the time to read the gospel from beginning to end? Read it on its own or with a commentary. Become familiar with the content, make a note of the things that confuse you, notice the aspects that surprise and challenge you. Ask questions, challenge the text. Don’t be afraid to interrogate the gospel in depth.  Our scriptures are robust, they will withstand any amount of questioning and they have survived so long that they are not likely to be diminished or damaged by our weak attempts at exploration. It is more likely that they will reveal hitherto unexplored, unexposed depths.

Have conversations with the text, with each other, with Rodney, with me so that you will be better equipped to have conversations with others.

Text me, email me, talk to me, make comments on the sermon blog, write down your questions, your frustrations and at year’s end, we will all be better equipped to share the gospel with the world – or at least that small part of the world of which we are a part.

 

[1] There are a number of examples, but perhaps the best example of the way in which Luke re-frames the story is the account of the healing of the paralytic. If you recall, there is such a crowd around Jesus that when a group of friends arrive carrying their friend on a stretcher they find that they cannot get anywhere near Jesus. In order to get closer, they dig up the roof and lower their friend into the room. A city dweller would not understand that Palestinian houses have flat mud roofs, so Luke makes a slight change and has the friends remove tiles from the roof in order to lower the paralytic.
[2] Compared with 25 occurrences in the remaining gospels together.

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A scandalous God

September 14, 2013

Pentecost 17   2013

Luke 15:11-32

Marian Free 

In the name of God who cares not what we have done, only that we  trust God enough to return home. Amen.

If you were to read the Gospel of Mark (or even Matthew or John), you would look in vain for the best-loved and best known stories and parables. If we did not have the Gospel of Luke there would be no shepherds to accompany the Christmas story and no manger to adorn our Christmas cards, no accounts of Jesus’ childhood or reports of thankfulness (the ten lepers).  The parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son would be nowhere to be found. Parables which are so well-known that they are part of our cultural heritage would have been lost.

Luke’s gospel has another claim on our attention. The author, for reasons that we can only guess, likes numbers (or repetition). Where other gospels only have one story, or one character, Luke often has two. For example, in Mark’s Gospel, there is only one Gerassene demoniac; in Luke there are two. There are two parables for guests and hosts (14:7-14) and two parables about counting the cost (14:28-33). Luke also presents pairs of stories: a man is healed and a woman is healed (13:10-17, 14:1-6). (In fact, stories of men are often paired with similar stories which feature women – for eg the annunciation to Zechariah (1:5-25) and the annunciation to Mary (1:26-38)).

This pattern of repeating a story or an event is evident in the stories of the lost. The parable of the lost sheep is joined by the parables of the lost coin and the lost son both of which are unique to Luke’s gospel. Perhaps the author of the Gospel is using repetition to ensure that his readers really understand the (shocking) point that Jesus is making – that God seeks out the lost and expects those who are found (or who have never strayed) to understand that such seeking is integral to the nature of God. Despite their popular names, these parables are of course about God – not the sheep or the coin or the son. For that reason, what is popularly known as the parable of the prodigal son is better called the parable of the Forgiving Father.

Just as the parable of the lost sheep is designed to shock and confound the listeners, so too, the parable about the son is intended to shake people out of their complacency and to force them to see God, and their faith, from a different perspective. According to these parables, God does not behave in the way that God is expected to behave – rewarding the good and excluding those who stray from the straight and narrow path. In fact, to the surprise of Jesus’ listeners (and perhaps to many of us today) God behaves in exactly the opposite way.

It is not the complacent, independent, law-observing believers who are God’s primary concern. In fact such people are often so self-assured that they seem to believe that they can achieve salvation by their own efforts and who do not recognise their faults and failures. (They don’t need God to assist them). God, as depicted by the parables of the lost, is more concerned with those “outside” those, who like the younger son, become aware of their own shortcomings and throw themselves on God’s mercy.

In order to understand the scandalous behaviour of the father (God) in the story, we have to understand the cultural context. In the first instance, we have to be aware that in the culture of the time, honour was a very important value. The son has shamed the father (and himself) in multiple ways: by asking for the inheritance, by spending it unwisely and by working with the pigs. At the same time, no self-respecting man would allow a son to insist that the estate be divided, nor would he welcome back the same son after he had wasted the money in loose living.

However, contrary to expectations, the son is not cast off. In fact, it seems that the father has been hoping for, watching for his return (15:19). Not only that, the father casts aside all pride and dignity and runs down the road to meet him! He is so glad to see the son that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. For Jesus’ listeners this would be outrageous behaviour – the father doesn’t even know that the son is sorry – only that he is coming home and that is all that he needs to know.

As Jesus continually reminds us, God’s values, kingdom values are often the reverse of human/worldly values. (The poor will be blessed, those who weep will laugh. Do not only love those who can love you in return and so on.) What is more, the conventions and standards of the kingdom do not conform to the conventions and practices of the world. God can and does behave in ways that many of us would consider scandalous or unfair.

This parable has a coda. While the main action is between the father and the younger son, we are also given an insight into the reaction of the older brother – the one who remained behind. He represents all the good, law-abiding Jews, who are – not surprisingly – horrified by the father’s shocking behaviour and incensed that all their efforts to behave appropriately are not given more recognition, that they are not commended and rewarded for doing what is right.

It has been my experience that most people who hear or read this parable, identify with the older son.  They have a very human idea of fairness and justice and while they might think God is wonderful for welcoming the younger boy, they experience at the same time some disquiet that the older son receives no extra recompense for his conformity and his dutiful behaviour.

This is exactly the attitude that Jesus is trying to confront and to challenge. Jesus has identified a mind-set that is likely to cause some good, well-intentioned believers some difficulty. That is that they will find it difficult to accept that God behaves in ways that contradict their expectation, that the values of the kingdom are not the same as the values of the world and that the economy of exchange (if I do this, I receive that) does not count for anything in the world to come.

The problem is this: there is only one reward (eternal life) and only one way to receive it (faith). That means that at the end ALL those who have faith will receive the same reward – whether they come to faith only in old age after a life-time of crime or debauchery, or whether they have been faithful and well-behaved for an entire life-time. If faith is the sole criterion for inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, God will not be grading us according to any other criteria.

The sooner we grasp this concept the better. We would not want our resentment and bitterness to exclude us from a gift we have spent a lifetime longing for. We would not like to be like the older brother – so angry at God’s grace and generosity to others that despite God’s pleading we refuse to go in.

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A reason to party

March 9, 2013

Lent 4

Forgiving Father Luke 15:11-32

Marian Free

In the name of God whose love always welcomes us back. Amen.

Whenever the parable of the forgiving Father is read, more often than not I am told: “I really relate to the older brother!” This is a significant reaction and it tells us three things. One is that the sting in the parable has not been properly understood. A second is that it is very hard for most of us to let go of our egos. We are so bound up with concepts of fairness and judgement and we allow the injustices experienced in our past to dominate and determine our feelings in the present. The third is perhaps the most serious.  As the Father is clearly meant to represent God, our discomfort (resentment) at the treatment of the prodigal tells us something about our trust or lack of trust in God.

There are a number of differences between the two fictional sons. The older is sensible and responsible, willing to conform to societal and family norms and to work for his father until his father dies and passes his share of the property to him. We can imagine that, as a result, his life has had very few highs and lows. He has just gone about his business day by day secure in the knowledge that he has shelter, enough to eat and some sort of a future. He may even believe that he has all that he needs.

The younger brother is the opposite. He is reckless, irresponsible and impetuous. This son has no thought for centuries of tradition or for the respectability of his family. All he thinks about is himself. Half the property is due to him. His father can manage financially and otherwise without him. Why not take his share of the property now? Why not see the world and have adventures while he is still young enough to do so? Why submit himself to the humdrum of daily existence at home when the world has so much more to offer?

One stays and the other goes, with alarming consequences for both.  The younger son very quickly discovers that going it alone is not all that he had dreamed it would be. In a distant land, starving and condemned to feeding pigs he realises how good home really was. Having chosen adventure, he now longs for security. Aren’t his father’s servants better off than he is? What is he doing? Life as his father’s servant would be better than his present conditions. The humiliation of admitting that he was wrong, of confessing that he has squandered his inheritance and the shame of ending his days as a servant or slave are nothing compared to the degradation he is currently experiencing. He has sunk as low as it is possible to sink. Returning home cannot make him feel any worse.

The older son stays at home satisfied that he is doing the right thing. Possibly he even thinks that he is content. However, while his brother is away learning about the world, the older sibling has nothing to challenge his sense of security, nothing to force him to question whether he has made the right choice. He is relying on history and tradition to justify his position and, had his brother never come home, he might have remained smugly content, sure that he was the favoured son. After all, wasn’t he the one doing the right thing?

All the certainty of the older son is thrown into disarray when the younger son comes home. Instead of being met with censure and condemnation this wayward child is met with rejoicing! It is impossible for the older son to make sense of what is happening. His own certainly that he was doing what was right has not prepared him for something so totally unexpected. He has not learnt the lessons that his brother has been forced to learn. He has not descended to the place which has forced him to see his own short comings and to value what he does have, in particular his father’s love for him. He has based his decisions on a belief that his father needs him and has failed to realise his need for his father. His very “goodness” and his strict observance of societal norms have confirmed his sense of his own value and have ill-equipped him to understand either his brother, or his father’s reaction. His black and white view of right and wrong and his lack of self-knowledge will not allow him to move beyond conformity to compassion.

As we can see from the first few verses of chapter 15, Jesus is telling this parable against the Pharisees. Like the older son, they have relied on their observance of the Jewish tradition for their salvation. In doing so however they, like the older son, have lost sight of their dependence on God and on God’s grace. Instead of seeking a genuine relationship based on an honest view of themselves, they have developed some sort of replacement for a relationship based on formulas and rules. Their resultant self-assurance means that they have no reason to look beyond the surface of their lives to see that they are in fact self-righteous, judgemental, unforgiving and self-serving. They don’t understand that by hiding their real selves behind observance of rules and the keeping of traditions, they are not only limiting their growth, but they are also denying themselves an authentic relationship with God. At the same time, they are so used to measuring themselves against those who don’t measure up that they cannot comprehend that God might be able to have a more meaningful relationship with those who are more aware of and more readily acknowledge their imperfections. So it is with the older son.

Richard Rohr suggests that: “Sooner or later, if you are on any classic ‘spiritual schedule’, some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be, you must be, led to the edge of your own spiritual resources.”[1] Sometimes, like the younger son, we need something to shake us out of our complacency, to help us to accept the love of God in our lives and to realise that ultimately nothing less than complete dependence on God will satisfy the longing of our souls. Until that point, we remain like the older son, limited to a superficial relationship with God, reliant on sterile observance of laws. We think that we have to earn God’s love and, blind to our own flaws and imperfections, we resent God’s generosity to others because we have not fully understood the generosity of God’s love for us.

The older son was not a bad person, just as the Pharisees were not bad Jews. Their mistake was a failure to understand that God’s love could not be bought by obeying rules and by observing traditions. They could not comprehend that it was in God’s nature to love and that as God loved them despite their shortcomings, so God loved all those who did not live up to their high standards. What the Pharisees and the older son simply did not understand is God’s love just cannot be bought. It is ours for free. It is when we truly comprehend how much our flawed, imperfect selves are loved by God that we understand God’s desire and right to extend that love to others. Knowing ourselves flawed and yet loved, lost and now found, we will be incapable of resentfully standing outside. Instead we will joyously and gratefully join in the celebrations, knowing that we ourselves are a cause for the party.

[1] Rohr, Richard. Falling Upwards: Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2011, 65.

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