JOSHUA 4:19-24;5:9-12

PSALM 34:1-8

2 CORINTHIANS 5:17-21

LUKE 15:11-32

Sermon – March 21, 2004

The Prodigal Son’s Father and Our Father

The story could have been very different.

Today’s Gospel, usually referred to as the parable of the prodigal son, is a story Jesus told about what God is like and what is possible because of what God is like if people, like the prodigal, “come to themselves." But because this parable is familiar to a lot of people, let’s look at it from perhaps a fresh angle, and think about what the father in this story could have done, but didn’t, and what a difference that made.

The father in this story could have brainwashed his sons so thoroughly and kept them so isolated from others and under his thumb that they never would have rebelled against him. But a person with no freedom to rebel and no awareness of other choices is not really choosing to be obedient; such a person is not choosing at all, but is simply living as a human robot, a puppet. Without the freedom to say “no”, “yes” really has no meaning.

So, the first of the gifts the father in this story gave his sons was freedom: the freedom to think other thoughts than his, the freedom to say “no” as well as the freedom to say “yes”, the freedom to leave as well as the freedom to stay, and the freedom for them to determine their own attitudes as well as their own actions.

The father in this story could have rebuffed the demand of the younger son to receive his share of the property immediately. Both sons’ shares were, after all, their inheritances, and a person usually receives an inheritance when the older person dies. For the younger son to say to his father “I want my inheritance now” could very easily be interpreted as saying, “Father, I’ve given up waiting for you to die; I want to get what’s coming to me as if you were already dead.”

There are lots of responses a father could make to such an attitude and such a demand, which is the embodiment of greed and the antithesis of love. But the father in this story didn’t respond by disinheriting the son, or telling him to get back to work, or hiring someone to taste his food before he ate it in case this younger son was trying to “bump him off.” No. The story laconically says, the father “divided his property between them.”

So the second gift the father gave was extraordinary generosity, trust and respect to his son even though the son was showing none of that to him. The father didn’t even try to tie any strings to the money, futile as that might have been. And because most property in the First Century was in land (not mutual funds, stocks and bonds or bank accounts), cashing all that might not have been quick or easy.

The father could have said, “You can have your share of the farm as long as you stay here next door and farm it,” but he didn’t. So the next gift the father gave the son was he let him go.

The fourth gift the father gave is related to that: he did not go after him. The father could have followed his adult son and constantly implored him to change his attitude. The father could have served as the son’s “enabler”, trying to “manage” the son’s money so he’d have enough left for – more dissolute living, as it turns out. But rather, the father let his son “hit bottom.”

And “hit bottom” the son did. “When he came to himself”, the story says, the son realized he had been both foolish and wrong, and that he needed to go home and ask for forgiveness. He “hit bottom” while feeding pigs, which for an observant Jew was the ultimate non-kosher job, not to mention humiliating.

Only when the son turned his life around and started coming home to his father did the father in this story run out to greet him.

The father forgave him and welcomed him with compassion and enthusiasm, and with appropriate imagery – a fine robe, a ring and sandals were worn by sons of the landowners, not by field slaves – reminded him and others that his son was still his son. Repentance leads to restoration of relationship, not merely to survival.

The father also could have reacted differently to the elder son, who was so offended by the younger son’s return and warm welcome and who denied any kinship with his brother (he referred to him when speaking to his father as “this son of yours”). The elder son’s begrudging, heartless attitude is especially galling if we know that under Hebrew law (Deuteronomy 21:6), elder sons inherit two-thirds of the property anyway, so it’s not like the elder son in the story was getting cheated.

Instead, the father spoke words of grace to his mean-spirited elder son as well, assuring him of his love and generosity. What we do not hear in this story is whether or not the elder son accepted either.

This is a parable about God and us, not necessarily a “Dr. Phil” type prescription for how we are to handle such family disputes! So let’s think: what does this story tell us about God?

God could have created robots instead of human beings with free will. Instead, God gave us all freedom – freedom even to say “yes” or “no” to God, freedom to shape our own attitudes, freedom to shape our own actions.

God also gave us power over God’s creation, what The Book of Common Prayer calls “this fragile earth, our island home.” God was generous, trusting and respectful of human beings even though human beings often have responded to God’s generosity, trust and respect much as the prodigal son did to his father’s: with self-centered greed, desire for immediate gratification and without thankfulness or respect towards the giver.

God knew we human beings would rebel against God and be willful and stubborn. God let us go, and did not serve as our “enabler”, and did not always shield us from the consequences of our own misdeeds. God let us “hit bottom.”

And now God waits for us “to come to ourselves” and to “come home to God” asking for forgiveness. God scans the horizon enough so that God can see us when we are still “a long way off” but have taken the first steps towards turning our lives and our wills over to God. And when we do, God runs out to welcome us home, and to remind us that we are God’s children, not God’s slaves. And if we are the resentful child of God like the elder son and if we are angry that God forgives, God repeats his love for us, too, and invites us to change as well.

For people can be “lost” even if, like the elder son in the parable, they never leave home. We all need to realize how much we need God’s amazing grace, which is lavished on us thorough our lives – how much we need it, and how much we need to let it transform us into grace-filled people. For, as St. Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” God has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us. We are the ones God is inviting to spread the Good News of God’s grace toward all people – both “prodigal-son” types and “elder-son” types!

We are, Paul tells us, “ambassadors for Christ”. Hear that awesome job title and hear these words from God to all who truly turn to him: “You’re hired.”

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church