Sunday: Fourth Sunday in Lent C
Reading: Luke 15:11-32
Preacher: S. James Steen

There are many ancient stories and sayings that relate to the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  For instance, a Palestinian rabbinic saying goes like this: "When a son [abroad] goes barefoot [through poverty], he remembers the comfort of his father's house."  It's the sort of thing you might expect to find in a fortune cookie.  Luke's version of the story is so compelling that it was discovered to have been the source of a popular story told in Jewish circles in the second century, giving us a reversal of the usual pattern of Christianity incorporating Jewish writings.

No wonder this parable is a favorite.  It's a story that has everything: drama, sex, extreme poverty, great abundance, generosity, jealousy, a grand party, repentance, and forgiveness.  So clear and comprehensive is it's portrayal of the God whom Jesus knew that if it were possible to preserve only one story from the whole Christian biblical tradition, I believe I would have to choose this one.

And it becomes even more significant when placed within its context.  The Prodigal Son is the third parable within this section of Luke.  The first is the Lost Sheep; the second is the Lost Coin; and finally we are given the Prodigal Son.  All three are responses to Jesus' critics, the Pharisees and the scribes.  The dramatic tension is established in the very first sentence of chapter 15, when Luke tells us, "Now 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.'"  We're back to the familiar conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders over open table fellowship; and once again we are reminded that Jesus' refusal to exclude the impure from the table was viewed by many as the most radical aspect of his proclamation.  He ate with sinners!

All three parables address the question Jesus poses when he challenges his critics, "Who among you would not celebrate when you found a sheep that was lost, and who among you would not celebrate when you found lost money?"  Of course both the lost sheep and the lost coin stand for those sinners who are presumed to be outside the kingdom and lost to God; but Jesus rejects the view of the religion of his day, saying, "There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don't need to repent."  He is saying that it's more important to reach out to the lost, and to risk becoming impure by association, than to maintain one's solitary holiness, an unthinkable idea to Jesus' critics, and so subversive that it suggests a complete reordering of Jewish society, so that solidarity replaces holiness as the highest value.

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see how what has been addressed up to this point is portrayed with enormous skill in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The sinner who repents becomes the younger son.  The scribes and the Pharisees are embodied in the older son; and the God who rejoices over the found sheep, the found money, or the redeemed sinner is the Father who invites everyone, including - let us not forget - the self-righteous older son, to the heavenly banquet. 

Now I want to go beyond the broad message of the parable to explore its details, because they make even clearer the extent to which Jesus viewed his Father as a God of unimaginable hospitality. 

At the outset, the younger brother showed enormous disrespect to his father by requesting his inheritance while the father was still alive.  In essence he was saying that I have no more regard for you than for a dead man.  On his journey, he obviously lived a debauched existence; but there is more.  When the famine came, he could have sought help from the local Jewish community.  Instead, he added insult to injury by going to work for a Gentile.  He could have become a herdsman, itself a disparaged job.  Instead, he worked with pigs, regarded as utterly unclean by Jews .  He even took another step toward degradation by saying that in his hunger he would have welcomed eating the pig's food.  A Jewish parent would have regarded such a son as dead.

And yet, when he comes to himself, and having carefully rehearsed his speech of repentance, when he heads home to beg his father's forgiveness and to ask him to take him in as a mere servant, a request, which, if granted, would have been regarded as more than generous under the circumstances, what happens?  This amazing father rushes out to greet him, requiring no speech, no begging, no groveling.  Requiring absolutely nothing, he hugs the prodigal and kisses him and throws a grand party in his honor. 

What this also means is that even though the prodigal has squandered his inheritance and has no right to anything, by restoring him in this way, the father has again established the prodigal's claim to his portion of the inheritance, as if nothing had happened.  Think about that.  

Is it any wonder that the older brother was furious?  We may view him as an unappealing and pinched character; but could we rejoice if we had been faithful and responsible all along, while our sibling had been outrageously irresponsible to the point of flaunting his immoral behavior; and in the end he not only gets a fatted calf and a ring and a party, he even gets another shot at the inheritance that I've been working all this time to increase during his absence?  Damn!  Is it any wonder that the scribes and the Pharisees grumble with disapproval at the upside down values of this Jesus?

Because the older son comes later in the story, and because his role is far less dramatic than his brother's, it's easy to give the last part of the story short shrift.  But I like the suggestion that the parable is badly named, and might better be called the Parable of Two Beloved Brothers or the Parable of the Compassionate Father.  When the older brother discovers what is going on and refuses to participate in the celebration, his father might well say, "Too bad for him!  If he wants to be so petty, let him stay outside and sulk."  Instead, the father goes out the older brother, just as earlier he had gone out to the younger, and he speaks to him so tenderly: "Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours."

On a fundamental level, what we have in this parable is a story about scarcity and abundance.  The older brother cannot comprehend the father's generosity, because he feels diminished by his younger brother's good fortune.  He is unable to believe that there is enough to go around.  By contrast, the father treats one son, the undeserving one, to a lavish and costly homecoming, then, simultaneously, says to the other son, "All that I have is yours."  Logically, he has given away more than he possesses.  Yet, surely we sense that the father, far from being diminished by his generosity, is only made richer by it.

It's good that we don't know how the story ends.  Will the older son become sullied, but joyful, by choosing to forgive and embrace his sinful sibling?  Or will he remain righteous, but lonely, observing the banquet disapprovingly from the outside?  And what about us? 

Amen.