In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
With
all due respect to Shakespeare, a rose by any other name would not be as sweet.
Names matter. The passage from Luke that I just read often goes by the name “The
Parable of the Prodigal Son.” Notice that that word, “prodigal,” is found
nowhere in the passage itself; but, nevertheless, that is the name by which
this story is known. And that name influences how we hear the parable and what
we take from it. The name changes our perspective. What if we called it “The
Parable of the Fatted Calf”? How about “The Parable of the Gullible Father”? Or
perhaps, “The Parable of the Self-Righteous Older Brother”? Just by changing
the name of the parable, which isn’t actually in the Bible, we can change the
entire meaning of Jesus’ words.
What
then, might we call this narrative? A bit of context helps. You’ll notice that
our reading this morning skipped over some verses; we read verses 1-3 and then
11-32. In verses 4-10, there are two other short parables, known as the “Lost
Sheep” and the “Lost Coin,” both of which are parables about someone rejoicing
after they found something that has been lost. Given that, and the likely
deepest meaning of this parable, perhaps a more fitting title would be “The
Parable of the Lost Son.”
It’s
a story as old as time: “a man had two sons.” Any Jew hearing this story would
have immediately recognized the introduction – Adam had two sons, Cain and
Abel; Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac; Isaac had two sons, Esau and
Jacob. The Jewish nature of this story is an important one to keep in mind, as
many “traditional” readings of this parable are not only anti-Semitic, but they
also miss the point. You may have heard this told as a parable about how Jesus
was introducing his disciples to a loving God and not a vengeful one. Or
perhaps you’ve heard that the oldest son was Israel, and the younger son is
Christianity who is redeemed by forgiveness. These are bad readings of the
parable.
The problem with
parables, especially ones that are this well-known, is that we’ve all heard a
lot of commentary on the passage which colors our interpretation of it. But
often, those interpretations aren’t actually supported by the text. Of course,
the historical context of the parable is important, but parables are timeless
stories. This parable could, and does, happen all the time. And that is the
whole point behind the parables – they speak to truths that are bigger than
geography, culture, or time. That’s why it’s so easy for us to see ourselves in
the parable.
And so as this one
starts, we find that a certain father had two sons. The older is joyless,
petty, and self-serving; the younger, to put it bluntly, is a foolish,
entitled, jerk. The younger gets his share of the inheritance and goes out and
squanders it; the older stays at home and resents it. Eventually, the younger son
realizes that even the slaves back at his father’s house have it better than he
does, so he returns home. The father is overcome with joy as his son returns
home, and he throws a party. Meanwhile, the older son throws a pity party.
So why does Jesus tell
this parable? Is it to get us to be more forgiving or more repentant? Maybe, I
haven’t yet had the chance to talk with Jesus about it. But the way that I read
this parable (and I’m not out on an island on this, I stand on the shoulders of
Biblical commentators) is that Jesus is telling us to “party on!” The main character
in this parable isn’t the “prodigal son” it is the “rejoicing father.” We have no
idea what was going on in the younger son’s mind. Why did he leave his father’s
house in the first place? Did he need a change of scenery? Did he have a call
to go work with the needy, and then got distracted with “fun”? Was he just a
spoiled and unthankful brat? We don’t know. And when he decided to return, did
he actually feel sorry? Did he actually intend to work as slave in his father’s
house? Did he know that his father was a sucker for love who would take him
back? Or was he just so hungry that he didn’t know what else to do? Again, we
don’t know anything about his motivations.
Notice though, that the
text never says that the younger son ever asks for forgiveness. One
commentator said that the son’s plan was “to go back to Daddy and sound
religious.” Again, we don’t know this son’s motivation, but if Jesus wanted
this to be a parable about a God who is always eager to forgive, he would have.
Jesus could have made it clear that the younger son apologized and that the
father forgave him. But that isn’t what happened. The father doesn’t even let
the son finish his speech before he’s interrupting him to kiss him and say “Save
your speeches for another day. If you thought you had a good time in that
distant land, wait until you see the party I’m going to throw.”
Chapter eleven of Luke is
all about finding that which was lost and rejoicing. The Parable of the Lost
Coin, which is found right before today’s narrative, is about a woman who loses
a coin, and when she finds it, she invites all of her friends over the
celebrate the discovery. This is a parable about having a lavish and joyful party
when we find that which has been lost.
But it’s also a rather
ridiculous and offensive parable. Most of us probably think that the older
brother has a good point – you want to forgive that son of yours, fine, but he
doesn’t deserve a bigger party than I’ve ever had. None of you will be
surprised to know that I’m an oldest son, and as such, I’ve always done the “right”
things. I think that we all want there to be some sort of Divine Ledger, where
God keeps track of our good deeds and rewards us appropriately. Even the most
socially liberal of us have to scratch our heads with the logic of this father giving
to the squandering son that which he doesn’t deserve. It isn’t fair, and that’s
the whole point. It’s not about fairness, it’s about wholeness. This is a
parable about being found and reunited, and the great rejoicing that follows.
Remember the introduction
that Luke gives to Jesus’ parable: “All the tax collectors and sinners were coming
near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and
saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So Jesus told them
this parable.” Tax collectors and sinners weren’t a part of the community. Tax
collectors worked for the occupying Roman Empire. They and this group of
sinners had removed themselves by their actions from the common life of the
people. But here they are, coming to Jesus. And so Jesus tells a parable that
proclaims that great joy that comes when reconciliation and wholeness come out
of brokenness.
The alternative title “The
Lost Son,” is so much better of a name for this parable because it forces us to
ask the question “which son is lost?”. At first, the younger son is lost in a
distant land, but by the end of the story, he has been found. Meanwhile, it is
the older son who has become lost. As the reaction of the older brother shows
us, this joyous celebration doesn’t make sense; it is too much. Thomas Merton once
said that “the love that unites us will bring suffering by our very contact
with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken
bones.” It’s painful to have broken bones reset; reconciliation is hard work. The
hymn “There is a Wideness is God’s Mercy,” is fairly well known. It was written
by Frederick Faber, and he wrote the words as a poem, which was then turned
into a hymn for the church. But in that process, some verses were cut out of
the hymn. One of those was: “But we make God’s love too narrow / By false
limits of our own; / And we magnify his strictness / With a zeal he will not
own.”
We so often forget that God’s
love and blessings are infinite. God has enough love for you and for me. God
can bless people over there, and that doesn’t at all limit how much God can bless
you with. And the same is true for us. You can love your family, and your
friends, and yourself, and your enemies, and you still won’t be anywhere close
to running out of love. That’s the thing about love, it begets more love. This
is a parable about God’s economy, and the point is that there is always enough.
This parable tells us
that God is a partier. At the church I served in DC, one of our Sunday services
was in Spanish, and one of the things that I miss most about celebrating the
Eucharist in Spanish is what is said when the communion bread is broken. In English,
after the priest says “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,” the
congregation responds “Therefore let us keep the feast.” In Spanish, that
response is “Celebremos la fiesta.” I love imaging the Eucharist as a fiesta. It’s
a fiesta because we come together to gather around God’s Table.
In the parable, the father
throws the party because his lost son has been found. It is a celebration of
restoration and of wholeness. That is why the father, at the end of the
parable, invites the resentful older son to join the party. The celebration
will be even richer if he were to join in. I want to acknowledge that some of you
might feel like the older brother here. In The Episcopal Church, we celebrate
all those who are a part of the Body – Republicans and Democrats, gay and
straight, rich and poor, black and white, former Roman Catholics and former
Southern Baptists, those with Ph.D.s and those without a high school diploma. Maybe
you think that some of those people shouldn’t be celebrated in this church. But
if you’re here to hear me, then I want you to know how much you are respected
for staying a part of this Body. Just as there is an abundance in God, there is
always room for all at this Altar. And if you ever stray and need to go off on
your own for a bit, know that when you come back, we’re going to party. No
graveling, no shaming, no apologies expected, no debating who was right and who
was wrong. Just a party.
Today’s parable of the
Lost Son tells us to seek reunion and party when we find it. Don’t wait for an
apology, it may never come. Don’t wait until you can forgive someone who
wronged you, you may never muster that up. Don’t stew on the past, nothing can
be done to change that. Instead, eat the fatted calf, sing the songs of
celebration, party like there’s no tomorrow. For that which was lost has been
found. This is what the world needs from the church today. The world doesn’t
need our moral compass, it doesn’t need our judgment, it doesn’t need our salvation.
No, this is a place for the lonely, the broken, the frightened, those yearning
for fellowship, for those who were lost. This is a place for those people to be
healed, fed, restored, found. Let’s have a fiesta.
