Image: The Prodigal Son – Jesus Mafa series, Cameroun – Vanderbilt University Divinity Library
INTRODUCTION
Today is the 4th Sunday in Lent. In the lectionary, right since Advent last year, we’ve been on a long, exciting journey through the Gospel of Luke, which will continue throughout this year. Today we’ve hit the jackpot with the wonderful “Parable of the Prodigal Son”—but no, it’s actually the “Parable of the Prodigal Father”, because the real focus of the parable is on the father’s lavish, prodigal welcome and celebration of his son’s return home. It’s an amazing picture of God, our Divine Parent, that Jesus is presenting; and two different meanings of the word prodigal, as we’ll see in the Reflection today.
GOSPEL READING: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 [NRSVUE]
15:1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.
15:2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
15:3 So he told them this parable:
15:11b “There was a man who had two sons.
15:12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them.
15:13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living.
15:14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need.
15:15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.
15:16 He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything.
15:17 But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!
15:18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you;
15:19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”‘
15:20 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.
15:21 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.’
15:22 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.
15:23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate,
15:24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
15:25 “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.
15:26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on.
15:27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’
15:28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him.
15:29 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.
15:30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’
15:31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
15:32 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.'”
REFLECTION
Well, a wonderful, familiar story. You know, one thing Jesus is always intent on doing, right throughout his teaching and ministry, is disrupting our traditional, old-time religious thinking—especially our traditional religious understanding of God—and that’s exactly what he’s doing here, once again. Jesus is the great disrupter!
Old-time, old-school religious thinking—it’s common to religions right around the globe, including Christianity—imagines an omnipotent, creator God who fabricated the world holus-bolus, in a once-off creative act—maybe thousands of years ago, at the beginning of time, whenever that was—and who continues to Lord it over the world, a control-merchant, puppet-master God pulling the strings to this day!
We know now, however, that the universe wasn’t created in a once-off creative act, but that it is a living, evolving universe which started out from virtually nothing in the so-called Big Bang. Perhaps there is a God who, so to speak, gave birth to the universe, a sort of Divine Parent, but there certainly isn’t one who created it.
Divine Parent: in fact, that’s exactly how Jesus always presents God to us—he invariably refers to God as “my father” and describes himself as “the son”. Note: not “omnipotent creator of everything”—distant, untouchable, unpredictable, inscrutable—but “father”; loving, caring father; personal, intimate, always there for us.
Yes, “father”, masculine: part of this is the old-time religious patriarchal language of Jesus’ day; but another part of it—the true part—is God as the Divine Parent who gives birth, gives life to the universe, this living, growing, evolving universe.
Today’s parable is surely the clearest, most direct account that Jesus gives anywhere in the Gospels of God as Divine Parent. The focus is very definitely on the Father—that’s why I’ve renamed it, “The Parable of the Prodigal Father”. And yes, prodigal can refer to recklessly, wastefully spending resources—that’s the younger son—but it also means being lavishly, even recklessly generous with your resources—that’s the father.
But even though it’s the prodigality of the father that is the main focus, the parable also contains great teaching for us, ourselves, through the characters of the two sons, the younger and the older, about our relationship with our Divine Parent; and also for us as parents ourselves, human parents—or grandparents for that matter!
So, with all this in mind, let’s now look through the story in detail.
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“There was a man who had two sons”—the story begins, as we have just heard, with the younger son, who has presumably now come of age, asking for his share of inheritance from his father, to do with what he will. The father doesn’t hesitate to give the inheritance to him, there are no strings attached, it’s his son’s rightful due.
First amazing quality of the Divine Parent: God gives life to us, gives life to the universe, with no strings attached—they give it the most precious gift, grace of all: freedom! The God Jesus presents to us is not in any way a control-merchant, puppet-master, pulling all the strings, like the old creator God; rather they are hands-off, they respect and nurture our freedom, but they’re there ready and waiting to help us when we need them.
We humans, however, are world experts at squandering the freedom God gives us—that’s the younger son—or we hoard it, keep it for ourselves, out of selfishness and fear—that’s the elder son later in the story.
So, the younger son does just that: goes away and squanders it all. There’s nothing left of the inheritance, a famine arrives,
“So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.
He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything.”
It’s a disaster, he hits rock-bottom, he’s on skid-row, but in his state of complete despair he suddenly remembers, experiences, understands, perhaps for the first time, the grace and love of his father. His eyes are suddenly opened, he realizes just how selfish, how stupid he has been—there’s nothing more stupid than selfishness! He has followed the natural human selfishness he was born with to its logical conclusion—disaster! But even then, while he’s wallowing down in the pit, it still takes the father to burst into his memory, to open him up to changing, to letting go of his stupid, self-destructive selfishness. He’s ready now to go back to his father and serve him, serve others, try a little selflessness for a change!
He’s starting to undergo the Metanoia, in other words. Metanoia: the Greek word in the New Testament usually translated as repentance—see, for example, last week’s Gospel reading from Luke Chapter 13 (“unless you repent you will perish just as they did”, Jesus says twice)—but it’s a lot more than repentance—Repentance+, I call it. Metanoia is a complete inner transformation, from our natural-born state of self-centredness, to a very unnatural state of, yes, selflessness, learning to live for and care for others—brokered, facilitated by, faith in Jesus.
So, the prodigal heads for home, a new person, newly humbled, ready to serve. But it’s early days yet, in the Metanoia transformation that is occurring in him. The first thing he plans to say to his Father is, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you”—this is the strategy he thinks he needs to undertake to get his father to take him back. A strategy?—he thinks he’ll have to manipulate, to con his father into taking him back! But this is still old-time religious thinking—making a sacrifice at the temple to mollify a grumpy omnipotent deity you have “sinned against”—superficial repentance, not Metanoia, Repentance+. He’s still basically, at root, thinking mainly of himself, of saving his own skin.
The son doesn’t need a strategy, however, his father is pure grace. When he gets home kisses his father and says those words—“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you”—what does the father do? He seems to just completely ignore them, and instead immediately starts fixing to and celebrate.
“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!’”
The son doesn’t need to ask his father for forgiveness. Why?— because his father didn’t judge him in the first place! The inheritance, the life the father gave him, was the son’s to squander, there were no strings attached. When we sin, we don’t sin against God—sinful selfishness is really self-harm, against ourselves—although it does, of course, harm others—but it’s not against God.
This is the second great quality of the Divine Parent that the parable teaches us: no judgement! Judgement is what the old creator God does, constantly, not the Divine Parent Jesus presents to us. The father just spreads the love, lavishes the grace, when the son returns home, when we return home, opened up to the Metanoia. No judgement, just grace, more grace, grace in spades.
Ah but oh-oh, here comes the judgement! The elder son. This is us again, remember, selfishly hoarding our freedom, sucking up to a father, a God, that we secretly fear—being good not out of freedom, but out of an attempt to manipulate life for our own ends.
The elder son has his turn now at hitting rock bottom—he is incensed, deeply hurt, his whole life strategy has come crumbling down, he cries out in despair:
‘Listen!’, he says to his father, ‘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 assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’
How wonderfully, naturally human—Jesus is a master at depicting human stereotypes, human foibles—and there’s nothing more naturally human than judgement!
But now it’s the elder son’s turn to receive, to experience, to understand, his father’s grace, perhaps also for the first time. Beautiful words for his faithful, elder son who is hurting, in despair:
‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.’
Be free, my son—the father tells his unprodigal elder son—to serve me out of love, not obligation, not because you fear my judgement and want to try to manipulate me into approving of you. I never judge. Serve me because I love you and you love me—“all that is mine is yours”. Be free, now, to celebrate the return of your brother, my son, who “was lost, and has been found.”
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So, two amazing qualities of the true God, the Divine Parent, who Jesus presents to us in the Parable of the Prodigal Father: they give us our freedom with no strings attached, they don’t do judgement, only grace.
The creator-God of old-time religion stands in complete contrast to this; they are the parent from hell—strings attached everywhere, controlling, narcissistic, negligent. Thank God they don’t exist! The God who does exist, the one Jesus presents to us, is the best sort of parent, a model of good parenting: respectful, solicitous about giving us our freedom, aware of the danger we are to ourselves with our reckless self-centredness, always staying in touch, ready to help in our hour of need.
And what we need most urgently, always, is not help to live life purely and solely for ourselves—that’s the easy, natural thing to do, we’re very good at it already!—but to grasp, to experience the real horror of our natural, self-destructive self-centredness, repent and undergo the Metanoia, starting to develop the ability to practise a little selflessness, so we can live fruitful, creative lives, living for and serving others. We all need it, the whole human race needs it—and that is what the Divine Parent God, who Jesus presents—incarnates for us, delivers in spades.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done. Amen!
