The Preacher’s Study
Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C
D. Jay Koyle
Joshua 5.9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5.16-21
Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32
I have heard many fine scholars and preachers lament that the
Gospel passage for this Sunday, a picture so radical that it once provoked both
wide-eyed astonishment and gasping indignation, has become so familiar and domesticated
that it no longer serves as anything but a launch pad for moralistic platitudes
in most pulpits and bible studies.
I think there is much truth to that. However, I suspect that it is not overfamiliarity
alone that numbs us to the thrust of this tale, but also limited imagination. Like
two-dimensional beings trying to perceive this three-dimensional world, we can scarcely
begin to fathom the properties of God’s mercy. So despite its rich and varied
topography, we flaten the parable to make it easier to negotiate.
If limited imagination is our
problem, it’s one shared by two of the characters we encounter as we wander through
the story.
The younger boy writes off dear ol’ dad as dead twice over: once by asking
for his inheritance before the old man’s demise, and a second time by flying to
an exotic locale where, in short order, he squanders the livelihood upon which
his father depended. Before long, it comes to pass that the rascal hits rock
bottom, losing his inheritance to Gentiles, no less. Between his poor choices with
finances and friends on the one hand, and an economy that takes a nose dive overnight
on the other, this Jewish boy soon finds himself lower in the pecking order
than pigs, drooling over the barnyard slop he serves them for breakfast.
Then, it strikes him: “Father is a man of mercy, willing to risk both
dignity and honor for the sake of his boys. He’s already done the unthinkable, cashing
out my inheritance without so much as a grumble. If I head home and confess the
error of my ways, who knows? Maybe the big-hearted guy will take me on as a day
laborer.”
The only way this boy should expect any kind of welcome is if he returns
with more riches than those with which he left, able to buy back the real
estate and livestock cashed in for him and thus restore the security of his
family and diginity of his Dad. Lacking that, the boy should expect nothing but
rejection from the father, family and friends he left behind; backs turned on
the back once turned on them. Indeed, that is just what is required and is sure
to happen if the villagers intercept him before he gets to his father. But
there’s a certain kind of risk-taking sparked by a belly’s incessant rumbling,
and so this lad sets his compass for home.
It may be that there is little repentance, if any, going on here. This
appears to be remorse rooted in hunger rather than conviction, after all. No matter!
The boy’s reasoning is common enough, even for folk who have not quite reached
their wit’s end. When people seek good from those to whom they have delivered
ill, they feel compelled to explain themselves. It is like we figure doing that
adequately enough creates the conditions for at least grudingly-given forgiveness,
just like the son who mused: If I head home and plead my case, father might
make me a hired hand. Seems pretty imaginative…
Only surprise! It turns out the father exceeds all this son can ask or
imagine. While he is still far off, the father, peering through his binoculars
on the upstairs balcony, spots the boy, hops over the rail, lands in the
bushes, and hightails it down the road to meet him. Casting aside his honor and
dignity once again, he runs the four-minute mile to the boy who pronounced him dead. Before
penitential knees can hit the dust and stammer out a well-crafted confession, the
father is pronouncing the absolution, pulling out the festal vestments and singing
the sursum corda.
The younger son in the parable imagines a carefully
rehearsed plea will yield a daily slice of toast and a bunk in the barn. Instead,
he finds himself welcomed as an heir with streamers, platters of food, and the
joyous embrace of a father who restlessly yearned for his return before a
confession was ever composed. The younger son imagines mercy as a morsel that
will satiate personal hunger. He discovers it is a sacrificial gift of the
father’s self that results in relationship restored.
Of course, there is another character in the parable with
limited imagination. He strolls in from the fields after a hard day’s work. The
wafting scent of beef gravy causes his mouth to water. The sounds of festivity
peak his curiosity.
“What’s going on?” he questions a servant. When the answer
comes, he turns his back on not just brother, but also father. He parks himself
on the patio and refuses to come in. So, once more, father becomes sprinter, this
time racing out to the elder boy.
Unlike the previous son, however, this son manages to
deliver a speech: “For
all these years I’ve slogged like a slave for you,” he barks, “never disobeying
your command; yet you’ve never thrown even a few burgers on the grill so I
might party with my friends. But when this son of yours comes back after
devouring your property with prostitutes you throw him the mother of all
banquets!”
At first blush it appears he simply cannot fathom how his rogue brother can
be showered with such generous love. As the lecture unfolds, however, it’s
clear his discontent runs deeper than that: he can’t even see himself receiving such love.
We may “know” better when we state our theological opinions, but in the
living of our lives, for all sorts of reasons, many of us act like love – especially
God’s love – is an elusive and limited commodity that must be earned and
re-earned. Of course, once you approach love like that you never can be sure
you have done enough to deserve it. There is little joy in trying to make
yourself acceptable and never being sure if you have pulled it off. In the older son, this joy-starved
disposition emerges as the rage and hurt belonging to all who have cut themselves
off from the very ones whose embrace they so desperately need. So now it is the
elder boy who dishonors his father for all to see, refusing to come in.
Yet once again, the boundaries of imagination are burst! Now we can see the true prodigal
of the story; it is the father who is recklessly extravagant with his love, to
the point of soaking up the hurt and shame foisted on him by both his boys. It seems there is no end
to the lengths to which he will go to restore and reconcile. There is no moralizing directed
toward this other lost son, no tweaking of guilt, no reminders of duty. Rather, as he embraced the son
lost to the careless life, he now reaches out to the one lost in an angry,
self-righteousness life; standing just outside the door yet as “far off” as his little
brother had been.
“Son,” he
says, “you’re always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” This boy has worked for
something that was already his. So his father begs him to step into the love
and acceptance that have been there all along.
Then turning
toward the party, he adds, “We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this
brother of yours – not just my son, but also your brother – he was dead, but
now lives, was lost, but now is found.”
It seems to
me there are two strategies that preachers tend to engage when partnering with
this text. The first is to treat this parable as if it primarily is about our
individual relationship with God. However, there is a web of relationships that
include those of the boys to one another, to their family, household and
village, too. This is not just a tale about receiving forgiveness or being open
to God’s mercy to us as individuals. It is about reconciliation, and the
liberation and transformation into which we are invited to make that
reconciliation a reality. The sermon this Sunday must have an eye to that.
The second strategy is to help listeners relate to one or both boys of the
story. No doubt, this is a reasonable strategy, but I am not sure it is enough.
If we are to receive what it is that God offers as depicted in this tale, we
will need to renounce a faith that is primarily based on either how it meets my
needs, or a faith based upon following the rules and being right while noticing
how others are not. Therefore, the preacher needs to help listeners identify
with a third son.
In the parable, there is a character whose imagination seems to know no
limit; the One whose mercy is not dependent on either recognition of need or
rule-following righteousness.
There is One who imagines that those who are lost in a life they swore
they’d never live, those who try to hide that shame or hurt they fear can never
be understood, those at the point where they cannot even accept themselves,
will come to know they are His beloved children and take their place at the Table.
There is One who imagines that those who have lived their lives trying to
earn his love and resenting others who receive it without merit, will come to
know they are His beloved children and take their place at the Table.
There is One who imaginatively sets that Table for anyone who will permit their name to
appear on the lost and found list.
If you want your listeners to know, to exhibit something of the imagination
of this One, then no matter which of the two sons they have tended to relate to
before now, invite them to identify with another Son:
- the Son who left his Father’s home not to squander a perishable inheritance,
but to secure for us an imperishable one;
- the Son who was obedient to his Father, even unto death, not out of
resentful duty, but out of humble love;
- the Son who is the spitting image of His Father.
If we can begin to imagine ourselves in that way, I bet that before long we
not only will dance with abandon in the celebration of God’s love, we also will
act in a way that uncorks the imaginations of others as they see us watch and
wait and run out to anyone who might revel with us at the banquet of our God.
Jay Koyle is president
of The Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission. He is a presbyter serving
as Congregational Development Officer of the Diocese of Algoma (Anglican), and
a member of the Liturgy Task Force of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Photo of D. Jay Koyle, by Jesse Dymond.
Rembrandt, The Return of
the Prodigal Son, 1662–1669 (Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg)
'Prodigal Son' by Oleg
Korolev.
The Return Of The
Prodigal Son by Miki De Goodaboom
This reflection is based
upon a sermon published previously by Jay Koyle in Preaching: Word and
Witness (Feb-March 2010).
