The Power of the Prodigal

Jesus told them this parable: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe--the best one--and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.

"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that 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.'"

--Luke 15: 11-32

Pompeo Batoni's The Return of the Prodigal Son

Is there a parable of Jesus that is more widely known than this one?  All you have to hear is the first eight words—“There was a man who had two sons.”—and immediately you know which story is about to be told.  Of all the parables of Jesus there is perhaps not a single one that captures the message of reconciliation, forgiveness, and unconditional love as the story of the Prodigal Child.  But when we let it sink in, we find that it is also a story that is completely illogical, one that does not act in accordance with our rational thinking, and one that turns the tables on the whole notion that people get what they deserve.

Let me ask you something:  if this parable were a real story—that is, if it played out right now in our own time—would you hear it differently?  If you heard the story of a teenager who burned every bridge that he could among his family and his friends, took all their money, got in trouble with the law, wallowed in debauchery, and eventually, when he burned through all of that, decided to come home, would you encourage that child’s parents to welcome him back with open arms?  And when the parent does just that, I wonder how you would respond to such treatment.  Would you think that’s actually good parenting to just forgive someone who has not only been disrespectful but has actually been unlawful?  And let’s say you knew that child’s older sibling, who has been a straight-A student, worked hard, and done right by the family.  Wouldn’t you understand that sibling’s outrage when the parent not only welcomed the delinquent child back but treated that child as good as, if not better than, the older sibling?  By all logic and rationale, the parent should not have welcomed the delinquent child back home, and all of the hard work that the older child had done would be rewarded.  That, after all, is what each child deserves. Yet, as we see time and time again with Jesus, our human logic and rationale are discarded in favor of mercy and a love that knows no limits.  

The intent of this and every parable was then and is now to get the listener to see themselves in the story.  Most of us, I suspect, have been both children:  we’ve been the prodigal one—troubled and in need of coming home—and we have been the older sibling—resentful of others who have known a forgiveness that we don’t think they deserve.  But I wonder if our goal, in addition to finding which child we identify with, is to move to the place where we can emulate the mercy and love shown by the father, whose forgiveness of the prodigal stems only from the sheer joy he gets upon seeing his child once more, and whose generosity toward the older child is so great that can embrace him in his hurt and remind him that “all I have is yours, and you are always with me.”  The father does not treat the children the way they deserve, but rather he treats them both with mercy and love. We live in a world that demands that we treat others based on what they deserve.  Our culture tells us so at every turn. A lot of folks, both religious and not, believe in the notion of Karma, that things work out for people based on their character, on what they deserve. The parable of the Prodigal Child invites us to treat others like the father in the story, based on mercy and love.  It is a tall order, and one that we may not feel we are up to, but as followers of Jesus we can do just that.  

One way in which we can do this is to pay attention to the words that Paul wrote to the faithful in Corinth, which was partnered with this parable in Sunday's lectionary:

'From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.'

--II Corinthians 5: 16-21

Paul begins this section of the second letter with the powerful phrase, "we regard no one from a human point of view."  Do we realize how radical this is?!  This statement undermines every human institution, every human system, and every human category.  All of it has become obsolete. Labels we have given to each other, including the labels of "deserving' and "undeserving", have been wiped out by the actions of Jesus on the cross. The old has passed away, and the new has come.  Every one and every thing is now a new creation, and worldly wisdom has been nailed to the cross.  Something earth-changing has occurred in this Jesus Movement, which Paul understood so well, and it still has has sweeping implications for all of humanity.  It's not just about where we will spend eternity, but also about how we are to live here and now.  It has changed how we think about each other and how we think about God. The vengeful image of God may have been common before, but in Jesus we have the good news that God the parent is not an angry deity out to get even with those children who have disobeyed.  Whatever once was broken between parent and children has been restored in Jesus, and nothing in the world will ever be the same again.  The new has come.  THAT is Paul's whole theology in a nutshell! John Chrysostem, that early doctor of the church, put it this way:  “We ought to live for Christ, not just because we belong to him, not just because he died for us, and not just because he rose again on our behalf, but because we have been made into something different.”

A bit of a jerk, but Chrysostom understood the newness of a life in Christ.

What is that something different into which we have been made?  Perhaps it is a more loving, more merciful, version of ourselves.  Perhaps the Jesus Movement in our own lives has shifted us away from the judgmental nature of that older sibling in the story and moved us closer to the generous image of the father.  God’s love for us in Jesus has made human labels and logic irrelevant and has restored us and all of creation, so should we not be agents of restoration ourselves?  Can we not, perhaps, treat others with mercy rather than judgement?  What if we let go of this heretical idea that there are some who are “deserving” and some who are not?  In a society that uses words like “illegal” to describe actual human beings—brothers and sisters in the household of God—can we not remember that Jesus has ripped away such labels and made us all a new creation, a better creation, and can we not rip away those labels ourselves and see one another as members of the same family?  Grace is the agent that rips those labels away.  Grace isn’t about what we deserve, and it’s not something we can earn.  It’s a gift freely—one might say, illogically—given to every member of the family of God.  It is grace which the father imparts to both of those children in the parable.  It is grace that God has imparted to us, and it is grace that makes all things new.

The Jesus Movement has changed everything.  We are no longer to look at the world with human eyes that are so often clouded by the scales of bitterness and judgement.  Instead, let us look at the world the way the father looks at the Prodigal Child, for that is how God looks at us, not with bitterness or judgment, but with mercy and a love that knows no limits.  The good news for us today is that not only are we know that grace and are inheritors of that love, but we can transform this world by being "ambassadors for Christ" through the grace and love that we impart to this hurting world, letting the scales fall from our eyes and helping those in positions of power do the same, so that all may see clearly.  Then all we will see is a brother and sister, and all we have in our hearts is love.