The passage of the Gospel we have heard this morning is considered as one of the most beautiful stories Jesus has ever told. One of the most beautiful if not the most beautiful one. It is known as the “Parable of the Prodigal Son”. “Prodigal”, of course, should not be confounded with “prodigy”, because it is an adjective we use to describe someone who spends all they have recklessly, and it’s often considered as something you do when you’re actually not that smart. And yet, some people have observed that the real prodigal in the story may not be the younger son, but maybe it points towards the father who gives without measure, materially, giving away half of his estate, but also emotionally, with the welcome, the forgiveness, the embrace. It’s quite the poignant picture to imagine the old man waiting for his son, staring at the road with dim eyes, and then as soon as he believes he recognized him, running down towards him as fast as he could on his feeble legs.
You know how there are passages in songs or movies that no matter how many times you’ve heard them or seen them, they still make you cry no matter what? As I was thinking of our Gospel for today, I kept having in mind this scene from “Gone with the Wind”: Melanie and Scarlet are on the stairs of their property and they feed all the wounded soldiers who stop on their way as they come back from the war, and then a man appears far away at the gate and Scarlet starts complaining that they don’t need another mouth to feed, but Melanie raises her eyes and as she does that, she immediately drops her serving spoon or whatever she is doing and she starts running towards the man because under the rags, she has recognized her husband Ashley, leaping on the alley. That’s when we understand that although she kept herself busy, she has been waiting all along, although she did not say much, her heart has been keeping watch, and although, since the “library scene”, Scarlet has been claiming from the beginning that she should be with Ashley because he is the true love of her life, that’s also the moment we understand her love is probably no much more than a fantasy because she cannot recognize her hero when he is vulnerable, wounded and needy. But Melanie does. She does recognize him, and she embraces him no matter how filthy he looks and, probably, how terrible he smells. That’s to me an image of pure love, of coming back home to pure love indeed. At some point in the Gospel (Mark 9: 44-47), Jesus tells us that some of us will have to enter the Kingdom of God crippled or lame because of the brutality of the spiritual warfare, but now Jesus mentions how welcome we will be when we get there. He describes God’s embrace and kiss of pure love, no matter how wounded, no matter how filthy. The young son has been keeping company with the swines, hasn’t he?
But we could spend much time talking about the emotional aspect of the story, and the way it describes the love of the Father. It is certainly a deep spiritual message, and yet I think Jesus told the story for other reasons as well: There are lessons to be learned, and not only for the prodigal one, the obviously lost one, but also for the one who stays at home and does everything well, seemingly, but whose heart is far from his father too. For this reason, some have thought that we also should call this story “The parable of the two lost sons”.
But let’s have a closer at it.
1. The first and most obvious message of the parable is for sinners, for those who have run away from the Father’s house, those who have hurt God and/or the people who loved them.
Well, we spent some time since the beginning of Lent to talk about repentance, but I don’t think we spent much time talking about what repentance looks like. Jesus, using the example of the prodigal son going back home, speaks to all of us who have gone so far in destroying our faith or our relationship with others, whether spouse, sibling, friend, that we don’t know how to come back. As much as we want to come back, we don’t know how to do it or we’re afraid of doing it for the wrong reasons. Well, I love it to realize that in Jesus’s words, the youngest son does not know how to come back either, but he knows he just has to. If you think about it, he basically comes back because he is hungry, not because he misses home so much. He misses it for what it provided, but it does not say he loved the father. Yet he remembers him and he remembers the father’s love for him and he trusts the father will take him back, even on a half baked apology.
And you know I think it goes for us as well. I think Jesus is saying to all of those who haven’t prayed for ages, just sit down and say a prayer. To all those who haven’t talked to their parents for year, just pick up the phone. And Apologize if must, it’s probably a good idea, but it’s not what matters ultimately, you just need to turn back and that’s how repentance looks like. What the youngest son does is what everybody learn when they do the 12 steps in AA: He acknowledges he has no power over his own life. I hate to use this word in a sermon but I don’t see a better way to say it: The young son comes back to his father basically because he is screwed. He cannot make it on his own. But it’s true for all of us. We cannot make it on our own. Without God and without each other we are not only lost, but dead as the end of the story puts it. And that’s why we have to keep returning, forgiving, starting all over again all the time and it’s exhausting yes, but it’s what it’s all about. Our culture makes us believe that life is all about ourselves, yet it is everything but.
Repentance will be messy, our apologies will be half baked, our return a bit suspicious to start with (what does he really need?) but we cannot love each other or love God is we aren’t in a relationship. The hope of the Father is, as the son returns, that he will receive his love and learn to love again. A famous French philosopher named Pascal, who was also a great mathematician, said that it was good math to believe in God. He said “If you believe in God and God exists, you have won everything, but then if you believe in God and God does not exist, well you would not have lost anything anyway”. Is it cynical? Maybe. But I think it’s an invitation to realize that we cannot make it on our own and that we need to turn towards what really matters in the end. The parable isn’t about wasting money. The original Greek of the text of our Gospel does not speak about money or even propriety or goods, it says that when the father shares his estate, he gives his living to the son, his own being. Jesus warns people to not waste their lives. We hear again the message we heard last week: What is life for?And the response is unchanged: Life is for repentance.
2. Now what about those who don’t need to repent, to come home, what about the first son?
If we consider the beginning of the parable, we will understand exactly in which context Jesus told the story of the lost son, and it is interesting to realize that the story wasn’t first told for the lost, the sinners, but for the righteous, the Pharisees and the scribes. So the story is maybe not so much about the prodigal son, it’s probably more about the elder son who has been working for the father all along. And now he is hurt the father welcome so lavishly the one who hurt him and has “devoured [his] property“. Now, in case you missed it, there is barely not a Sunday where we aren’t reminded that scribes and pharisees were religious smug. And there is still some religious self righteousness in our churches, and we don’t like that, but I think Jesus’s criticism goes beyond that. If you notice, the elder brother does not talk about religion, he says he is hard working and dutiful, and that’s why he despises his Father’s generosity towards his lazy brother. And isn’t it something we hear all from good people, dutiful and hard-working? Don’t we grow resentful wondering why unemployed people should be handed “free money” by the government? Don’t we wonder why people who went to jail should be given a second chance, when we had to fight hard to make our own? Don’t we get angry when students are forgiven their debts, while we are still paying ours? I don’t mean to express a political opinion about these problems and their possible solutions, what I am saying is this how the elder son might be showing up in today. Is it self righteous? Probably. Is it untrue tough? Is it wrong to say that it’s kind of unfair? I don’t know. But to me what’s extraordinary concerning God’s dealings with sinners is that Jesus may very well have been saying: You’re right, it is unfair indeed.
Let’s think about it for a moment. Who is the elder son? The dutiful? It may have been the zealous and religious Pharisees, but I think that more deeply, Jesus is talking about himself. Who, ultimately, is the one who has been working like slave (“taking the form of a slave” Philippians 2:7)? Jesus. Who is the one who has never disobeyed a commandment (“yet without sin” Hebrews 4:15)? Jesus. Who is the one who has never been given even a young goat (“The Son of Man has no place to lay his head” Luke 9:58)? Jesus. And it’s like Jesus is saying to the Pharisees: If God’s mercy towards sinners seem unfair to you, how much more should it seem unfair to me, I who have never done anything wrong when you’ve all been in the mud of sin. Is it unfair? You bet it is. And yet, is there another way around? Probably not. We often speak about God’s justice, but in many ways Jesus also spoke about God’sunfairness and how it is only through God’s “unfairness“ that we are saved, because God does not keep scores. What we see as God’s unfairness could very well be the other name for his grace and forgiveness towards all of us.
And so, to all the righteous, the parable may well be saying that surely repentance could be about turning from our sins but it’s also turning away from our own idea of justice. To leave behind the way we keep track of the hurts and the wrongs and our misfortunes, to leave behind the pouting and complaining and self pity, and just keep giving and forgiving and also rejoicing in the party God is giving and that all may be able to enjoy it. Being a religious person is not just about striving to be a good person, it is to learn how to love like God loves, it is to understand the character of God and imitate him, it is indeed to share in God’s being. In our parable, the father says: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours“. This is what matters ultimately: not that God gives us what is fair but that we can choose to be always with him and possess everything with him, as Jesus did.