Scripture Lessons – The Fourth Sunday of Lent (RCL-C)
Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32
Today’s Gospel is one of the most familiar parables of Jesus. It is an encouraging and refreshing story…but if we hear it as Jesus intended, it will shock us…as it shocked and angered the people who first heard Jesus tell the story.
Notice the situation that led Jesus to tell this parable. Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling about Jesus welcoming sinners and eating with them. We might feel a bit self-righteous thinking about those bad Pharisees…but let’s stop a minute. Pharisees were among the most devout and committed Jews of Jesus time. They attended worship regularly and prayed constantly. They knew the bible well and they tried to put the bible’s teaching into practice. They fasted regularly. They gave, not only a tithe of their income to the synagogue, but they also tithed their spices, the various things they grew and used at home.
You and I might be considered the “Pharisees” of our day because we are here in church worshipping this morning. We try to live what we read in the bible. People who know us might comment on how religious we are. We might be a lot like the Pharisees of Jesus day.
In the gospel, the Pharisees were very upset that Jesus spent so much time with the outcasts, the unclean, and the unreligious sinners, like Jews who agreed to be tax collectors for the Roman Government and like prostitutes. Everyone knows that religious people should not associate with scandalous, unholy people, right? So they were critical of Jesus for hanging around sinners all the time.
If Jesus lived in Whitinsville today, would you and I be critical of Jesus if we saw him spending most of his time with people who don’t go to church and don’t act like good Christians?
When your next priest comes…would you and I be critical if he or she spent a good deal of time with people in the town bars?
Well, that’s the background. Jesus told this parable in response to the Pharisees criticism of him. There are only three characters in the story, and each character has an important message for us.
The first character is the younger brother who told his father that he wanted his inheritance immediately. Adult children know that we don’t get our parents inheritance until they die. What an outrageous, self-centered request the younger son made! According to Jewish law, a younger son was entitled to one third of the estate and the older brother got two-thirds of the estate. If the inheritance was given while the father was alive, the sons had the responsibility to care for the property and care for the father as long as the father was alive.
But in this case, the younger son wanted his rights without also accepting responsibility for his father and the property. He wanted freedom without relationships, freedom to do what he wanted without commitment to the relationship with his father or his older brother. In Jesus’ time, it was a scandal both culturally and religiously, if young people abandoned their parents. But the son left. He wanted his future without having to wait. He wanted tomorrow, today. He could not wait for time and life to take its normal course.
But before we get too critical of the outrageous younger son, let’s look at the equally outrageous response of the father. The father chose to surrender his rights. He could have said, I won’t give you your share of the property unless you promise to farm the land and care for me until I die. But the father surrendered his rights without making any deals. The father chose relationship with his son over his freedom to insist on keeping his property. The father risked his future by being generous with his son. Would the son care for him in his old age or would the son abandon his father?
The parable almost forces us to ask a question: Who was the most foolish? The younger son with his outrageous request…or the father’s outrageous generosity in granting the younger son’s request?
Well, the younger son cashed in the property and left. Soon he has spent all he had and was bankrupt. Then a famine came upon the land. To survive he took a job with gentiles, with non-Jews, feeding pigs, which was absolutely forbidden work for a Jewish boy. In doing this he turned his back on both family heritage and on God. Look what happened…the younger son insisted on his rights, his freedom, and his future. But he soon lost his rights, his freedom and his future. He hit bottom. There was no hope. Life could not get any worse.
Then, Jesus says, the younger son “came to himself”. He faced honestly where he had come from, where he was now and how he got there. Remembering that his father’s hired servants were well fed made him think that returning to his father as a servant was his best hope. Was he really sincere in his repentance? Was he just trying to get more from a too generous father? Perhaps none of us ever have totally pure motives.
Obviously the father had been watching and waiting for the son to return. Perhaps the father knew that the people in the village would humiliate the son if they saw the son returning home. They would have taunted him for the way he had treated his father…against all the values of his religion and community. But to spare the son from that humiliation…the father humbled himself and ran out to embrace the son. No Middle Eastern father would run to meet a son…the father always waited for the son to arrive and honor the father. This fathers extraordinary decision to run to meet his son, to embrace and kiss his son were public signs of reconciliation…even before the son got to give his speech of being sorry for what he had done to his father.
Then the son speaks, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am not longer worthy to be called your son.” That’s all he could get out because what mattered to the father was that his son was back. The relationship of father and son was restored by the grace of the father, not by any bargaining by the son.
Then the signs of the restored relationship were presented: The father’s best robe and the signet ring were signs of restored authority and responsibility. The shoes were a sign that he was son, because a servant would not have worn shoes. The killing of the calf was a sign that the whole community was invited to celebrate this restored relationship between father and son. “Let us eat and celebrate: for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
The story comes back to the beginning where the Pharisees were criticizing Jesus for “welcoming sinners and eating with them.” In Christ’s example, we see that God loves to celebrate the restoration of relationships. God rejoices when the dead come to life and the lost are found.
But Jesus does not end the story with that celebration. Jesus expands the story to include the older brother who returned home and heard the music and dancing. When he heard that the father was giving a party for the younger son who had returned home, the elder brother was furious. He refused to come to the party.
It might have been one thing to allow the younger son to return home. But it was not right or fair to throw a party! Why would the father reward the younger brother for stealing and irresponsibly squandering one third of the family inheritance? The older brother insists in his rights, his entitlement, because he had been “working like a slave” all those years. He refuses to welcome his younger brother home.
At first, the younger brother wanted freedom from any relationship with the father and brother. Now the older brother did not want any relationship with his younger brother or his overgenerous father.
The father who welcomed the younger son back into relationship, showed the same welcoming grace to the older brother by coming to meet him and invite him back into the joyous relationship with both the father and the younger son. Aren’t we blessed to have a God, a Heavenly Father, who is like the father in the story!
The father offered love, welcome and grace to both sons. But the story ends without us knowing how the older son would respond. Was he able to accept the love and grace of his father and be restored to a loving, reconciling relationship with both his brother and his father…or did the older son stay angry and resentful, judgmental and distant from his father and brother? Did the older brother still think he alone was right, he alone knew the rules, and he alone needed to hold the younger son accountable for his inappropriate behavior?
Jesus leaves the story unfinished…inviting the Pharisees to finish the story for themselves. Would they continue to criticize Jesus for his association with the wrong kind of people, the sinners, and the people who lived unacceptable lives? Or would they join Jesus in welcoming the sinners, the outsiders, the unacceptable people into their circle of friends?
I wonder what Jesus wants to say to each of us this morning through this familiar parable?
Are we more like the Pharisees and the older brother who were critical, judgmental and kept their distance from people who were unacceptable sinners?
Or are we known as people who show patience and grace with unacceptable people who do unacceptable things…developing relationships with them, like the father in the story, like Jesus in the gospels?
I wonder…is there a person you know, who is as unacceptable, as irresponsible, as self-centered, and ultimately as destitute and needy as the younger brother? Do you know a self-righteous, judgmental older brother type person who refuses to practice God’s generosity and grace? Is there a person in need that God is calling you to pray for, reach out to with God’s welcoming love and grace?
Let us close our eyes…and in the silence…listen for what Jesus might want to say to us right now through this parable ...