"The Prodigal Father" (Luke 15:11-32)

"The Prodigal Father" (Luke 15:11-32)

Preached by Sam Locke on 3/31/19 at St. Peter's United Church of Christ (Carmel, IN) and 4/3/19 at Christian Theological Seminary (Indianapolis, IN)

Audio File (St. Peter's United Church of Christ)
YouTube Link (Christian Theological Seminary)

The Parable of the Prodigal and His Brother

11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 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. 13 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. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 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. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 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! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20 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. 21 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.’ 22 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. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

25 “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 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. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 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.’”

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This is one of those passages. If you went for a walk on the Monon later and asked 100 people to name as many Biblical stories as they can, this one might be on 100 of those lists. And why not? It is a great story.

A nameless child of a well-to-do family wants to strike it out on his own, his father relents, giving him his share of the inheritance which he proceeds to squander in epic fashion. When the young man falls on hard times, he comes back home, embarrassed that he has no place left to turn. The experience has humbled the son so much he offers to be treated as a servant. Before the can even get the words of apology out, his father, so overwhelmed with emotion, welcomes him home with a celebration, presumably forgiving any past transgressions. This is all well and good, but we are told the other son has a tinge of resentment - the father attempts to soothe his angst to but we are left with the impression that there are still some unresolved rivalries within this ancient family.

One of the reasons we love this story so much is that it is so easy to identify with both of the children in the story. How does your story mimic that of the prodigal? How does it mimic that of the older brother? Take a few seconds, I bet something comes to mind fairly quickly.

Were you able to place yourself in the story from both vantage points?

For me, it goes a little something like this…First, as the prodigal:

I had dreams and ambitions and a plan to get them. And I was good at executing that plan ...until it failed. Angry and depressed, I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to be. Everything became a cause to me, everything was a matter of justice. Except that is wasn’t, and the facade eventually fell apart. I didn’t think it would take me until I was 30 years old to recognize who I was on the inside. I didn’t think I’d be starting a second career at 37. But here I am. I have reclaimed my voice. A genuine voice. Some opportunities may have been squandered, but the present feels pretty sweet.

Second, as the older child and ...let’s be real … this one was easier, right?

I have worked so hard. I’ve done everything asked of me. Never even complained. And you buy her the nice car? That other guy got the promotion? Wow.

We can place ourselves at both places in the story, but we idolize the prodigal. We idolize the story that is harder to place ourselves in. We idolize this perspective because we want to believe we are lost AND found, not simply lost. We need to resolution. We idolize resolution and finality.

We love stories of transformed lives. They give us that warm fuzzy feeling. The coming of Spring outside reminds us that there is nothing better than being witness to death and rebirth. We get to see someone’s life be turned around while also celebrating the hope that our life and the lives of the people we love might also be transformed in the same way when needed. This hope is intoxicating. We idolize this transformation from prodigal to saint so much it is addictive. In many ways, the story of the prodigal has become THE American story. Dare I say, this has become THE Christian story.

It’s in our music … I once was lost, but now I’m found.

It’s in our cliches … It’s amazing how well they were able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps to change their circumstances.

It’s in our sports nicknames … who remembers the Comeback Kid?

It is the essential theme in many works of literature, it is the storyline we look forward to on the evening news. We can hear this addictive refrain everywhere.

Still don’t believe me? Take a look at our last four Presidents … Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. At first glance these men are nothing alike. Clinton and Obama came from nothing, Bush and Trump have never wanted. One was a country lawyer, another a guy from Queens. One an oil baron, another a community organizer. A few were young, a few were old. One was black, three were white. I suspect that if you found any of these men in a moment of pure candor, they would each vehemently argue that they are the unique one and rattle off a list of reasons why. Despite their differences, there is this similarity: they all embraced and sold the narrative of the prodigal, the comeback kid, the life transformed. The story of the prodigal is so addictive it is what we have elected in our last four leaders, despite all of their other differences.

Bill Clinton: The product of a broken family and destined for poverty, he find the means to get a world-class education, coming home to lead before taking his skills to the national stage.

George W. Bush: The poster child for the problems of privilege, he leads a life of excess with drunk driving charges and more until he finds God and begins to focus on the things important to him leading to the continuation of the family brand name.

Barack Obama: A community organizer was so fed up with the system, he was about to throw his entire career away, retiring from politics as a low-ranking State Senator. A positive force in his life encouraged him to take one more step, running for the United States Senate, and the rest - as they say - is history.

Donald Trump: Lest we think people of wealth don’t have their own problems, the President grew up with a chip on his shoulder, never good enough for the more elite Manhattanite real estate barons. Relentless in the face of obstacles, he becomes the avatar for true little guys struggling to find their places in a new society.

We love the lost and found. We love overcoming obstacles. Celebrating the lost and found is our American and Christian traditions. We are addicted to the prodigal. Except we have the definition all wrong.

If you ask those same 100 people on the Monon what prodigal means, they would probably say something like rebellious or runaway, or maybe even romanticize it a little more with an adjective like maverick. But that isn’t what prodigal means. A prodigal is someone who is lavish and frivolous and wasteful without regard for standard conventions.

The real prodigal in this story isn’t the son who has returned, but the father … sure, the son is a prodigal in the sense that he wasted away his inheritance on frivolous things, but the father’s character more fully fits the definition - the father in this story is someone who is simply uninterested in following your rules. Simply uninterested in following society’s rules. He marches to the beat of his own drummer and he spends his wealth the way he pleases and doesn’t care what you or his family thinks about it.

Framed like this, it is easy to dislike the father’s mindset - this lavishness doesn’t fit into our traditional Christian narrative.

In this context, it was unheard of to give someone their share of an inheritance before one died. So what says this parent. He gives his son his half, likely knowing he would just run off and squander it. We are told later in the story that protections had been placed on the other son’s inheritance, also unheard of in this ancient context. The father is taking care of his family, no matter what, even when it is countercultural.

You would never see the patriarch of a prominent family running down the road to meet anyone, much less someone down on his luck and coming to grovel. I suspect the father wasn’t thinking about those standards, filled with the lavish joy of seeing his loved one as he joyfully ran toward him.

Meat was rarely eaten, so we know this is indeed going to be a celebration. The festive clothes are in waiting, perhaps indicative that the father in this story had the divine knowledge that this homecoming was going to be the outcome all along.

The final line of the story stands out vividly to me. The father says, “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.” We HAD to celebrate. Not a choice. This sequence of welcome, forgiveness, and celebration … this lavishness … this wastefulness, wasn’t just possible, it was required. It is likely no accident that Jesus is teaching us how to celebrate such a resurrection during this season of Lent, when we know the events - good and bad - that lie before us in just a few short weeks.

We don’t romanticize this image as much, do we? Who does this father think he is? Ignoring rules. Giving stuff away. Indulging people who don’t deserve it. Doesn’t he know that his resources can be spent better elsewhere - we surely know better than he about how best to spend his wealth. We are down with the life transformed, we are less excited about the constant, lavish love of this father. For all of the lavishness, it is all pretty normal. It is what we expect, we might even say it is boring.

The irony is that the father in this story doesn’t fit our Christian narrative well, but almost certainly the father in this story is meant by Luke to be a personification of God in our lives. A figure that bestows lavish love on us all, without discriminating between the deserving and undeserving. God, like the father in this story, doesn’t just hope for forgiveness and celebration, God requires it. Grace and mercy abound. For everyone. God, like this character, is simply uninterested in the senseless rules of order  we have created for ourselves and each other. God knows better, God does better, and God encourages us to do better also.

With this image of God fresh in our minds, imagine a world with more prodigal fathers and fewer prodigal sons. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, because it is the world God created. It is the world Jesus will redeem. It is the world we are blessed with the responsibility of taking care of. Far be it from the gay guy to ask this question, but what if were a little more lavish, a little more wasteful? What if we liberated ourselves - even if only just every once in awhile - from the crippling expectations that society has deemed so important? What if we found some time to not just enjoy the things around us but to create joy in this things that are around us?

What if we asked our politicians less about where they’ve been and more about where they want to go?

What if we cared more about the smile on face of the person picking up the cake, than whose wedding it is going to be served at.

What if we had a family dinner and we used the good dishes just because we had them and not because it was a special occasion?

What if we looked at forgiveness, grace and mercy not as lofty things we might never attain but things we were required to do - not for the forgiven, but for our own sakes?

What if we stopped trying to keep up with our neighbors and friends and what they tell us to be and allow ourselves to march to the beat of that drummer we told to shut up a few decades ago.

Imagine the possibilities.

So here is your challenge … I want you to be like the prodigal father with someone this week … be frivolous. Not toward yourself, but to someone else. They are the recipient in this exercise, but they aren’t the target. Don’t pay much attention to how this person responds to your lavishness. I want you to take stock of how you feel after you do it. Does it feel dangerous? A little giddy? Fulfilling? I encourage you to ask each other about it this week.

We often associate lavishness with spending money, but it doesn’t have to be an expensive gift. Send someone a note for no reason. Intentionally forgive the person you have been denying forgiveness, even if it is only acknowledged in your head. Say I love you to the person you think knows already, they might not after all. Take stock of your feelings as you succumb to this version of mercy God teaches us in a story we’ve heard a thousand times, but never fully taken in.

I’m not asking you to throw caution to the wind or to turn your backs on all of society’s expectations. I am, however, asking you to consider the times when the rules get in the way of what God is calling us to do. I’m asking you to consider how often we conveniently cite rules or put obstacles in our own way, so we can blame someone else for not taking action - whether that be the government, another person, our church, or even God.

Take a moment and stop celebrating the Comeback Kid and start celebrating the God that has never gone away. The God that is here in this moment. The God that inspires us with lavishness and without regard for all the baggage we carry around. Take a moment to celebrate the God who has never stopped loving us... and never will. Amen.