Who is listening to the Parable of the Prodigal Son? First, the tax collectors and sinners who are ‘outside’ the law. Second, the scribes and Pharisees who are ‘inside’ the law. And here they all are, gathered at the feet of Jesus. What will he teach them?
The Pharisees and scribes are described as ‘grumblers’. They are very confused that Jesus is welcoming and accepting people whose bad behaviour has put them outside the law. Is He approving and sanctioning their behaviour? But Jesus doesn’t see the world the way they see it. He shares a meal with the lost daughters and sons, and has conversations with other lost daughters and sons. Whatever He is doing He is seeking out the lost. In today’s Parable, a father welcomes two lost sons. The youngest, symbol of the ‘sinners’, the eldest, symbol of the Pharisees. Jesus has diagnosed the same sickness in all of them – their failure to rejoice. The story that unfolds is an invitation to a celebration that just has to happen.
This Parable is so rich it is hard to know where to mine it first. Should we gaze upon an unusual father who keeps nothing for himself, who behaves rather oddly throughout the story? What will he do with a younger son who is lost in sin and an older son who is lost in self-righteousness? How will he change their mindset to party mode? Or should we focus on the son who went away? Who severs his connection to family and community. Who squanders resources he never worked for. Who becomes a pig. Who, like so many others, takes the gifts of God but does not deepen their connection with the Giver? Who end up running on empty and alone? Who live like slaves in exile instead of the life of a beloved child at home? Who resign themselves to being treated as a hired hand? Who talk themselves into the loss of love? Or should we focus on the Son who stayed in the fields? The hard worker whose foot never taps to the sound of music? Who is suspicious and angry and refuses, even though he did take his own half of the dough, to accept the invitation to dance? Who stayed at home, not as a Beloved Son but with the calculating mind of a slave? Who lives with smouldering resentment which erupts in a tirade against his father about how unfair he has been?
The lost son makes the first move and it is all that he needs to do. The father has been waiting for this moment and his compassion covers the distance between them instantly. Arriving, this same compassion erupts in kisses and embraces. It is a tsunami of tenderness. It is a picture of overwhelming love and reconciliation. People have to turn back to God but they don’t have to crawl back. Compassion meets them more than halfway and tears up the script of unworthiness. What happens when a broken sinner meets a wildly joyous father?
The other lost son has chosen the identity of a hired hand, with all the dullness that enforced employment brings. If he had chosen to live in the house and as a free and vibrant worker in the vineyard, he would now be singing and dancing to the music the father has written. What would his life had been if he had not turned it into drudgery? What if he had rested in the joy the Father always brings? Celebration is the natural overflow of divine love. If only he would take his cup and drink.
I can never pray this Parable without being moved to tears of joy by it. I know in this I am not alone. Tears flow on the border between time and eternity, the Sacred and the profane. And this story is truly one with the power to make tears because it shows what God is like in conversation. It is a story of how we can so easily separate ourselves from the love that does not fail. It is the story of how we obsess about the mistakes we have made and cling ever more tightly to our brokenness, even though God is not doing that at all. It is a story of the tragedy of those who sit just outside the gates of God’s heart like beggars waiting for a reward, while God is saying, come in and have it all.
For the Father, and for His Beloved Son, Grace is Grace is Grace is Grace.
When the punishment and reward mindset meets the indiscriminate host it shouts, ‘Not Fair’. Perhaps we all have an instinctive understanding of the older brother because he is so much like us. The Gospel is an invitation to Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice! But we can only be joyful when we have let go of the mindset that keeps us imprisoned in misery. When we break free of our attachment to old sins (our own and those of others) and when we can break free from the belief that we are working for rewards, will we hear the music, the chink of the glasses and know that we are home!
