The Prodigal's Father

The Prodigal’s Father

Luke 15:11-32

I found a truly important box this week:  the box of family home videos.  These were videos that my parents took over the years of all the grandchildren as they grew up.  My mother would lug this huge camera around and narrate whatever she was seeing:  “Whose a big girl?  How big?  So big!”  The grandchild of the day would then throw their arms in the air and the camera shot would shake along with my mother’s laughter.  At the time, I wanted to just scream, “Can’t we just enjoy this moment?” Now, I have to admit, those tapes are pretty precious.  There are things that you just forget.  The videos really do prompt some memories.

Obviously, Jesus lived in a time of almost no documentation.  There were no smart phones or bulky video cameras, no tape recorders, no Polaroids.  Apparently, there wasn’t even a good sketch artist around to draw up a nice painting of this Jesus guy, just in case he turned out to be somebody.  In his world, paper was almost non-existent. The only things that were written down were usually legal transactions.  As a result, the only things that people were going to remember about Jesus were the things that they committed to memory or the things which people remembered and shared with them.  Of course, given that the authorities were actively hunting down the followers of Christ in those days, it was safer for everyone that those memories were passed by word of mouth, leaving less evidence for the authorities to find.

So, last week, when we listened to Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” we weren’t reading a transcript of a single sermon.  Scholars are convinced that we were listening to a whole set of sayings that were preserved by his earliest followers as separate bits of wisdom and then combined in the days when the Gospels were written.  These sayings are called “logia,” pithy little sayings that are easily remembered:  “Love your enemies;” “Forgive seven times seventy times;” “Be not anxious.” Rather than diminishing their meaning, the fact that people remembered these sayings and passed them from person-to-person for years makes them even more precious in my eyes.

The other thing that people remembered which may have been even more easy to remember than these “logia” were Jesus’ stories or parables.  Jesus was a master story teller which is an incredible gift when it is time to engage an audience.  He would pull people into the story, invite them to identify with the different characters and then surprise them with a twist that taught a lesson.  Of course, all stories are contextual so, for example, we don’t really understand the parable of the good Samaritan until we know how despised the Samaritans were.  We have to fill in the context.  However, it is a huge help in remembering them to have a story to tell.

That brings us to the parable of the prodigal son, our text for this morning.  I think my first encounter with this text was in confirmation class with my father as the teacher.  Dad read the parable and then asked what the class thought.  After an uncomfortable silence, I put my hand up, at which point my father, I’m pretty sure quietly groaned to himself.  I told the class that I thought the parable was about a son who dared to step out and take a risk and that was a good thing.  Although it was probably not the deepest read of the story, Dad graciously acknowledged that might be one layer of lots of layers in the story:  “Anyone else have any thoughts…”

I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent more time with this parable than any other parable that Jesus told.  I seem to be drawn into the story and focus on different characters each time.  I think this has a great deal to do with what’s going on in my life and in my world at the time.  So, what is it that is speaking to me this time? What is it that speaks to you?

The most likely character for me to focus on most times is the namesake for the parable—the prodigal son.  This son is the wild child.  He’s the impulse driven, “You Only Live Once—YOLO, don’t you know” guy.  This son has the unmitigated gall to ask his father for his inheritance early.  He cashes out.  Jesus doesn’t tell us anything about how the father felt about this request although we can imagine that this would have been pretty upsetting to Jesus’ audience. “Dad, I’d love my cash and I don’t feel like waiting” is the kind of sentiment that tore at the fabric of families.  Shockingly, thought, The father divides things up and hands over the dough.

The prodigal son earned his nickname at this point because he took that cash, moved as far away as possible, and quickly got down to the business of wasting his inheritance on “wine, women, and song” as they say in just about every country song.  (I still remember the radio in 8th grade shop class playing Freddy Fender singing, “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.”). You get the drift.  You’ve either known a prodigal son or daughter or you’ve been the prodigal son or daughter or you’ve enjoyed the benefits of some prodigal’s lavish ways until they started to fall.  Once they fell, they fall hard.  The prodigal son ends up being a hired hand, feeding pigs, and he’s jealous of the pigs because they have food to eat.

We can hear this young man’s story and get a little wistful for our foolish, younger days.  We can hear his story and get all “judgmental.”  God knows that any number of those sermons have been preached from all sorts of pulpits.  What we have to see though is that one huge dimension of being human is embodied in this character:  the part of us that is free but doesn’t know what to do with our freedom; the part of us that can be wildly short sighted and impetuous and self-destructive.  We’ve all been free to make choices.  We’ve all made some terrible choices along the way.

The second character that we often run into in life is the older brother, the non-prodigal son, the one who never cashed out, the one who never left.  He stayed by his father’s side.  He worked hard every day.  Honestly, it never even crossed his mind before his brother left that leaving was even a possibility.  Once his brother did leave and he saw the pain in his father’s eyes, this older brother just doubled down.  He worked that much harder.  He convinced himself more than even that he had no choice.  He was a martyr and there was meaning in his self-sacrifice!   If his brother was the embodiment of the irresponsible exercise of freedom, then he was the epitome of the human temptation to deny that we are free at all.  People convince themselves all the time that they have no choice but to keep doing whatever they’ve been doing.  This, of course, is a great way to burn out and turn into a human volcano of resentment.

Everything starts to catch fire when the prodigal son decides to come home.  He’s got a whole speech worked out about how he’ll work like he was one of the hired hands, how three square meals and a few shekels would be just fine, about how wrong he was and how awful he feels.  You can almost see his lips moving as he practices that speech while he is slowly making his way back home.  

Again, if we are honest, most of us can connect with this.  Most of us have had to “eat crow” as we used to say in Iowa.  Most of us have had to acknowledge that our big plans are now a big disaster.  Most of us have had moments in our lives when life knocked the pride right out of us. In the moment, we can’t make eye contact with anyone, much less look ourselves in the mirror.

Of course, if you’ve never been the prodigal then it’s likely that you’ve been the “older brother” type.  You hear about some wild child who came home with their tail between their legs, and you can feel just a little wave of self-righteousness start to rise.  Think of how much our culture loves telling the stories of “how the mighty have fallen!”  Almost everyone who has ever been put on a pedestal in our culture has been knocked off that pedestal at some point.  (Watch out Tom Hanks! Sure, everyone loves you now but you just wait!). People fail spectacularly and there is a certain public delight.  Of course, we do love a good comeback, too!

All of this leaves us with the one character that almost never draws that much focus—the father, not the sons.  What does a loving parent know?  I really believe that a loving parent knows that they have some influence but almost no control over their children.  Sure, for a few months you can lay them down in one place and they stay there.  Then, they start rolling around and crawling.  Sure, for a little while, their needs aren’t that complicated.  They’re crying.  Are they hungry, do they need a diaper change or do they want to be held?  Almost instantly, things get more and more complicated. From the moment they are born, we have some idea that they are their own unique self, not some piece of clay for us to shape.  Even knowing that we love them like we have never loved anyone before. 

If we had known how much we would love them and how little actual control over them we would have, would we have signed up for this job?  I’ve always felt kind of bad for college coaches whose job security rests in the hands of 18 to 22 year olds.  Good luck with that!  That doesn’t even compare, though, to the fate of a loving parent.  From the moment that your child enters this world, you will only be as happy as your unhappiest child.  And here’s the God’s truth—this will be true for the rest of your life.  They may do different things and go through different things but you will never, ever not worry.  When they sink, you will sink with them.

So, this father…he’s one of us.  Do you think that he didn’t know what a bad idea it was for his son to cash out and go party?  Have you ever had someone you loved who needed to do something that you were pretty sure wasn’t a great idea?  Of course, he knew!  Of course, we know, too!  We’re not blind or dim witted.  We just know that sometimes people need to do what they need to do.  People need to make their own mistakes, just like we needed to make ours.  They need to be free to grow.  Honestly, we love the part of them that wants to try.  So, like that father, we love them every day even when they are on the downward spiral.  Every day, we search the horizon for the slightest sign of their return. 

This is just how love works. Of course, what Jesus is implying here is that this is how God works, too.  Rather than being a controlling God who manipulates us like chess pieces, God so loves us that God allows us to be free, free enough to make our mistakes and learn, free enough to lick our wounds and find our way back home.  Like the prodigal, we can’t even get the speech out that we prepared for our return before we are wrapped up in God’s loving arms.  Our loving God cries out, “My child is home! The party’s on!”

With God as a loving parent, we ought to aim to not be the worst of either son.  Sometimes, we really need to make a few mistakes and actually grow.  Other times, we ought accept the responsibility that comes with our freedom without just becoming a walking, talking, ball of resentment.  We are free to really live and make some mistakes and to take responsibility for our actions, without becoming reckless or resentful.  The God who sets us free also stands ready to embrace us when we try. 

Any story that reminds us that God is our loving parent…well now, that’s a story worth remembering…