The Prodigal Son

March 21, 2004 (Fourth Sunday in Lent)

by The Rev. Bruce Hall, Deacon

- Joshua 4:19-24; 5:9-12
- Psalm 34 or 34:1-8
- 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
- Luke 15:11-32

The readings from the lectionary for this year have brought us through the season of Lent with many parables from the Gospel of Luke. As Jesus sat with his disciples and the people who came to learn about God and humanity and the relationship between them, Jesus used these stories to illustrate our connectedness, our alienation from, and the opportunity for reconciliation with, our Creator.

To speak of the prodigal son is to use a metaphor that many of us have heard before. One needn’t even be a Christian to have heard of the prodigal son, and be familiar with the story and such a popular metaphor. It runs the danger, though, having been heard so many times, of becoming so familiar, so well-known that we may take it lightly and become too comfortable with it. In using the parable of the father and the son, our Lord is using one of the most powerful symbols available -- our relationship to those who brought us into the world, those who gave birth to and raised us. It is a parable of relationship and love.

We have the prodigal son. We have the son going to his father and asking for something which is, in fact, his to possess. It is a story of as son going to a father, an heir, asking for his portion and in turn, his father gives it to him while the eldest son, the dutiful son, continues to work “like a slave,” obeying his father, working in the fields, and, essentially, measuring up as many eldest sons feel pulled to do. The younger son, however, wants to leave, to take his portion and go. It is not uncommon for a younger child to seek to differentiate themselves from their siblings, to be something different, something other, to take a different path.

Having taken his wealth, the younger son leaves and goes not just away but to a “distant country,” a different place, a different culture, a different language, and there spends his inheritance in dissolute living and prostitutes. And after his wealth is gone, he begins to realize his true condition -- that he is away, cut off, separated from those who gave him life, and all that he had known and relied upon was far, far away. In this land of famine he had nothing and no one offered to help him for he was an alien. All lost, he decides to hire himself out as a field worker as he is no longer a rich man but poor with only his labor to sell. And so when hired, he is sent to feed pigs -- unclean animals.  To the Jewish audience to whom Jesus is teaching, that is a clear indication of just how low things had come for the youngest son. He has hit rock bottom. He then starts to reflect upon his condition. He considers the choices he has made and the consequences to himself and others. He beings the process of repentance and, reflecting upon his loss, he turns back from whence he came -- ”I’ll go back to my dad.” But not as a son any longer, to his way of thinking, for he is convinced that the most important thing he inherited -- his relationship as a son to his father -- is gone for good. He no longer feels worthy to be called a son and probably didn’t feel much like a son either. Given what he had done, this is hardly surprising.

So he returns home. And as he returns, convinced that he is no longer a son, his father who feared he was dead, rushes to meet him. Those who have had someone close to them disappear from their life, not knowing their fate, know readily such sorrow and loss. Filled with compassion the father rushes to the son long before he arrives and embraces him and kisses him. The son launches into his litany of offences and asks to be a hired hand. But the father has none of this and calls for robe to be placed on his son -- for a robe is for celebration and not for work. He calls for a ring to be put upon his finger -- for a ring is a symbol of authority and sandals for his feet -- for only slaves go barefoot, not a son.

That father never stopped loving his son. God never ceases to be our father. As we move through Lent and reflect upon our own lives and our own needs for reconciliation and drawing closer to God and one another, this metaphor becomes very powerful. God our father never ceases being a father, and the yearning -- the almost jealous love for his children -- never ceases. This is the love that reaches out across time and space for us. This is the love that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The eldest son struggles with this, however. Like the Sadducees and the Pharisees who, in the verses just prior to today’s gospel lesson are complaining about whom Christ is hanging around with, the eldest son resents his father’s reaching out to the wayward son. “We have kept the law,” said the Jewish leaders of the day. “I have been obedient to you and work as a slave,” complains the older son. He has kept the rules and asks his father how he could lavish such generosity on a son who wasted his father’s inheritance. “Everything you’ve asked me to do, I have done.” And the father responds by proclaiming his love and reminding the son that all the father has is his as well. And the father goes on to try and explain that indeed the son has done all these things but that it was not the son’s obedience but the fact that he was his son that was crucial. He loved him because he was his son not because his was obedient.

It is not about the rules, rituals, or routines, but about the relationship, and that relationship is built on God, not on our weak and fallible ability to abide by this or that rule. God, eternally available for our reconciliation to our Creator, this is the gospel to which we are called to be ambassadors according to St. Paul. This is the modern-day message that the children of Israel understood as they crossed the Red Sea out of Egypt and the Jordan into a promised land -- that God would be faithful in his relationship with them. It is this message for which we are called to be emissaries today. As we proclaim that there is an invitation through the good news of reconciliation with God in Christ, we are also called to be reconciled with our neighbor. That father hurt, I suspect, and there was suffering and pain in not knowing what happened to that son, but yet love was able to transcend that pain and rush out and embrace the son long before he ever reached home. We are called to emulate the same response in our own lives in reconciling with our neighbor. And this call covers the big stuff, men and women, to reconnect with those from whom we have become separated. We are called as new beings in Christ to reconnect. We are able to do this because God has reconnected Himself with us through Christ. This is the gift of grace, that being reconciled to God and in genuine repentance reaching out to Him and experiencing that glorious reunion, we are able to turn to our neighbors and be reconciled to each other in the body of Christ.