The Son, the Father, and the Brother

Tonight's gospel story that we traditionally call the story of the Prodigal Son is like so many familiar Bible stories - it washes right over us because of its very familiarity and because we have assumed from an early age that its title conveys its whole meaning.

It turns out, however, that a close look at this story reveals that being prodigal was the least of this younger son's transgressions. The word prodigal, after all, is defined as "wasteful with money; tending to spend large amounts without thinking of the future." It also turns out that this story is as much about the father and the older brother as it is about the younger son. Indeed, Jesus' opening words tell us this when he says "There was a man who had two sons."

Let's begin with the younger son. To say that he is prodigal is to let him off the hook too lightly. He may have been wasteful of his inheritance with not much thought of the future, but to focus only on that would be the same as thinking of ourselves as sinful if we were to make bad choices in the stock market or if we had a bad weekend at Las Vegas. Bad, maybe, but not terrible and probably not the kind of thing to rate a whole parable!

If, however, we think of those seven dispositions that the church's tradition have considered the main ways that block the action of God in our lives and that, in the words of Evelyn Underhill, "...are hostile to the Holy; which twist our souls out of shape," (The Mount of Purification), then, in baseball terminology, this guy is batting a thousand. There is a sense in which in his motivation and his behavior he embraces all seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust. He'd be in the Hall of Fame if he only got three - but he got all seven!

But the most damaging and debilitating of his sins is in the act of demanding his inheritance. This is a feature of this story that I think we sometimes overlook. If he is demanding his inheritance from his father he is in effect saying to his father, "I wish you were dead." He is saying that his father's life is standing in his way - in the way of fulfilling all his selfish appetites. "If the old man would just die and get out of my way, then I could get on with things, have things my way, do what I want." This rejection of the "other" in favor of the self seems to be a sort of "summary sin" in the same way that Jesus gives us the summary of the Law: love God and love others as yourself.

This young man is so focused on what he wants to satisfy his appetites that he is able to wish that his father were dead. He has turned away from his father and rejected him not only by leaving his household, but by wishing, in effect, for the ultimate and irrevocable rejection - death. This is pretty strong stuff - and I'll bet you never talked about that in your sixth grade Sunday school class!

The young man has rejected his father and turned away from who he is deep within him. We know this because Jesus tells us that when he finally hit bottom in his squalid existence among the pigs, "he came to himself." In these few words there is the hint of redemption, that all is not lost. "He came to himself."

And now the story turns to the waiting father. Immediately we run into a potential problem with the image of father. That's because, sadly, not everybody has a father like this father. There are fathers who abuse their children, who reject when they are rejected, who are unable to love unconditionally. But this father is none of that. He is the very model of a loving father, and an ideal not only for fathers - and mothers too - but for everyone in any kind of a relationship. His love guarantees that he will never give up on his child; it guarantees forgiveness, no matter what. The father's centrality in this story reminds us of what fatherhood can be and urges us not to abandon the imagery and words related to this kind of ideal love in our religious discourse, even as we acknowledge that this ideal fatherhood is sometimes not achieved.

This is, in case you missed it, the very image of God - ceaselessly gazing down the road, patiently waiting for his child's return, running to embrace and kiss the returning child without recrimination. The kiss is a sign of forgiveness and this is the essence of God as loving father who never gives up on us, no matter what. Unmerited, unconditional, never-ending love.

The son begins his prepared speech of contrition, but the father interrupts him to call for a celebration. Can you imagine how the son must have felt? He had perhaps been rehearsing what he would say all the way home. And when he saw his father running toward him and when he was embraced and kissed, he must have been bursting with emotion, brimming over with so much to say. What do you think this emotion was all about? Do you think it was guilt or shame? Do you think it was embarrassment? Well, I think it was gratitude. Once he grasped the extent of his father's unconditional love and the complete forgiveness that implied, I think he was just overwhelmed with gratitude.

And now the point of view of the story shifts again, this time to the elder brother who hears the celebration going on as he returns from the fields and inquires what all the commotion is about. The way he addresses his father is very interesting. Unlike the wayward younger brother who always addresses him as "Father," the elder brother never does. Indeed, he addresses his father rudely, beginning his complaint about the unfairness of the his treatment with the stern word, "Listen..."

What role does this older brother's reaction to his father's forgiveness play in this narrative? I believe it is a rebuke to the Pharisees who hear this parable - and a rebuke to us who behave as they do. They have created distinctions of insiders and outsiders, of "them and us", of the saved and the unsaved. They have decided that they somehow know the mind of God and that they are favored while others are not. Jesus seems to be telling them "You have no idea how broad and how deep God's love is. You have no idea who is in and who is out, who is saved and who is not." Jesus is saying to them, in the words of our final hymn tonight (Hymn 469; words by Frederick William Faber):

So there you have it. But there is something missing in this parable, something that would make it more true to life. What is missing is repetition of the sins. Do you remember the movie Groundhog Day? For those of you who haven't seen it, this 1993 film follows a weather man (played by Bill Murray) who is sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day antics in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. This is his fourth year covering this story and he hates it. On awaking the day after the celebrations he discovers that it's Groundhog Day all over again. And the following day is Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. At first he enjoys the repetition, but then he comes to realize that he is doomed to doing the same hated thing day after day for eternity. He is trapped in a miserable cycle.

Life is a bit like that, especially the ways that we sin and distance ourselves from God. We mean to do better, and sometimes we succeed, but somehow we tend to slip back to our old ways. The words from our communion hymn (Hymn 140) based on the poem A Hymne to God the Father by John Donne capture this reality poignantly. Listen for the poet's frustration at sinning the same sin over and over and listen for the puns on John Donne's own name and on the word sun/son:

This beautiful penitential poem ends where tonight's parable ends - with God's forgiveness that is based on God's unconditional love for us, a love available to everyone.

It would be easy hearing this to believe that we have nothing to do but to sheepishly tell God we're sorry and then be free to start all over again. But the church's observance of Lent tells us something different. It tells us that our response to this amazing love ought to be that we fall on our knees and weep and pledge ourselves to turn our lives around, to come to ourselves, to center our lives in God and to do everything we can never to waver. God's love for us demands this response. It is too awesome and incredible to be taken for granted as if it were a light thing, just part of the course of ordinary life.

There is nothing ordinary about this kind of love and there must be nothing ordinary about our response to it. This is the meaning of this parable of the son, the father, and the brother, and it is the meaning - and the challenge - of this holy season of Lent.

Amen.