Barbara Brown Taylor says that the beauty of a really good parable is that it meets generations of listeners wherever they are: first century Palestine, 4th century Rome, or 21st century Kansas. She also says that the problem with a really good parable is that it can become limp from too much handling. After a while, we no longer have to struggle with it, it hardly feels alive anymore. The parable Jesus tells about the prodigal son is so well known that I bet I could get volunteers to stand up where they are and tell it. But I ask that we listen again, listen with new ears, listen for a fresh story, and hear the new word that God is speaking to us today.
The prodigal son. The story of the loving father. Whatever you call it, we all know it. I was actually joking at our staff lunch this week that I was unsure what to say – what there was left to say. This was the passage I preached my first ever sermon on and I’m sure I thought I had mined some deep, unrecognized insight. Looking back, I am also sure that I did not. We all know the story. We’re comfortable with it. That was not Jesus’ intention.
While reading this week I began to realize that part of our comfort with the prodigal is that this tale is familiar. Young man takes inheritance, goes out to seek his fortune – to find his own way. Maybe he succeeds, maybe he struggles. In any case his successes will outnumber his struggles in the Oscar nominated movie of his life! It is quintessentially American! So much so that it seems very realistic and normal – this boy could be from just down the road.
But that wasn’t the case in the context it was originally told. Relationship was everything: relationship within the family, relationship with the community, relationship with the land, relationship with God. For the characters in the parable, for many of Jesus’ audience and for farming families across the world today, Land is livelihood. It is passed down from generation to generation (barring some unfortunate events). There is the necessity to care for the land so that it can continuously produce and provide.
People were also dependent on their community, their neighbors to help with difficult tasks and to help guard boundaries and keep order. Cultivating good relationships with the neighborhood was vital to prosper. Patriarchs (and matriarchs for that matter) were held to rigid societal roles – although I can fairly say that is not much different than today. Patriarchs were commanding, demanding and in charge. They certainly did not greet guests on the road. They certainly did not cajole their children – they ordered them. And they most certainly did not run. Matriarchs were also in charge, expected to be strong, efficient, gracious, and most commonly – invisible.
Yet the thing that strikes me the most, the thing that seems the most different is that in this context individuality was not prized. An individual had no value except in relationship to family. So striking out on ones own was not expected, it was not welcome it was not even understood! Maintaining the valuable relationships with land, family, and community are not high on the younger son’s list of priorities. He shows little concern for a mother he’d leave son-less, for a father he shames, or for a brother he leaves with twice the work. This prodigal cares not for the history of his of his family land, or for the astonishment of the community. His primary concern is himself. And we know how that worked out for him. When he finally returns home relationships are not high on the priority list either. His concern is not that of his father, his brother, his mother, or the community. It’s of food in his belly and a roof over his head.
As we know, the older child has been the good child – the one living up to responsibility and shouldering the hard work. We don’t even have to imagine his anger and frustration at splitting his inheritance early and taking on more responsibility – we can clearly see it in his response to the prodigals return. His first response is to pitch a fit rather than join in the rejoicing. It doesn’t seem like the older brother has done much rejoicing. Somewhere along the way the faithful life became a duty and by the bitterness of the complaints I think it’s safe to assume an unwelcome duty. His actions shame the father further as he chooses to leave his own banquet to plead with this son. But the older child is having none of it. I guess it feels good to know who’s right and who’s wrong and which side you’re on even when it shames your family and breaks your parent’s heart. This son is just as lost, and he’s never really left. So at its very core, this father and his children are out of relationship, they are dysfunctional. Both sons treat their father with stunning disrespect and the patriarch responds in ways unexpected by society, ways that disrespect him further as he tries to bring his lost children back.
And yet in some ways we are all dysfunctional. And we need not look very far to see it. Take our nations capital as a simple example. Over the last 20 years the acrimony between the parties has reached a fevered point. It mirrors much of the attack mentality depicted by the brothers in our story: I’ve got to get mine before you get yours. Whatever side you stand on, it’s clear to see that in many cases we’ve reached a point where there is no middle ground. There are two groups – with many smaller breakdowns inside them – that feel they so firmly hold onto ‘the right’ that they are willing to firebomb those across the aisle. In his op-ed piece in the New York Times explaining why he will not run for re-election Senator Evan Bayh recognizes just this point.
“When I was a boy, members of Congress from both parties, along with their families, would routinely visit our home for dinner or the holidays. This type of social interaction hardly ever happens today and we are the poorer for it. It is much harder to demonize someone when you know his family or have visited his home. Today, members routinely campaign against each other, raise donations against each other and force votes on trivial amendments written solely to provide fodder for the next negative attack ad. It’s difficult to work with members actively plotting your demise.” Even those who have been willing to stand in the middle, to see the best intentions in their fellow congressmen and women have been demonized. Reaching ‘across the aisle” is now treated in most cases as a defection from the party and opens people up to radio, cable, and internet vitriol. Not to mention attack from their own party. Each side is guilty. Each side is missing the point.
This story isn’t really about the prodigal son; it could rightfully be called the prodigal father. The profuse, seemingly wasteful expenditure belongs to the father. It is the high cost of reconciliation, in which individual worth, identity and rightness all go down to the dust so that those as good as dead in their division may live together in peace. We are each carrying our own baggage – walls that divide and separate. The difference between the father and his children was that the father didn’t let the very real, very natural, very understandable things he must have felt get in the way of relationships. The father sacrificed the things society held in tall order to be reconciled with his sons. We can hear his frustration that either son believes they can be in relationship with him while being estranged from each other. Pride, Jealousy, anger, and self-righteousness are all the more appalling when we know that, as beneficiaries of God’s grace through our baptism, we should be engaged in the rejoicing that accompanies the return of a prodigal. On this, our journey of lent we are each mirroring the journey of the brothers. We have wandered from our home, wandered from the banquet both physically and spiritually. The journey of lent is remembering the journey of the prodigal sons – so that we might not continually take their paths. To get out of our own way and trust that we are welcome, desired, held as valuable individuals. That our concern is not about who has been invited but that we are invited to Gods banquet – to the place we truly belong.
It’s knowing that sometimes we’re called to be gracious; sometimes we’re called to be extravagant, sometimes we’re called to be remorseful. But always we’re called to be in right relationship with our brothers and sisters. Relationship that centers on the love of God rather than the desires of individuals or the baggage we carry. During Lent we are reminded that the only way to work out our relationship with God is to work out our relationships to each other. We are the younger child, we are the older child, and we are called to become the parent who loves unconditionally, who welcomes the lost. For in a story about relationships God’s perspective does not change no matter where we find ourselves depicted. God is overflowing with prodigal love, and we are recipients of a grace that can never be squandered. Thanks be to God.
