Reconciling with the Prodigal Son

Lent IV sermon delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY

Text:

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Early on in my relationship with my wife, we lived off of her pay for being a teaching assistant at IU. It covered the rent of a small apartment, the phone, and food, but not much else. At one point, we had an unexpected expense and we were going to be short of money for the month. I had just graduated and had not yet found a job, and had not put effort into finding one that reflected my commitment to us as a team. I reluctantly called my grandparents, who had very conservative ideas about personal finance and personal responsibility, having survived the Great Depression as young adults with two children. I got a lecture from them about my responsibility and financial decisions, instead of compassion and help. My father called me a little while later, gently offering to send money and saying that he understood the difficulties we were facing as a couple. I realized that I couldn’t have called him first because shame from my failure was too much for me to admit to him, and I hoped that I could avoid looking less in his eyes from the failure my grandparents had underscored. As a result of that experience, I understood the situation, and emotions, and decisions of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel reading because I was in his place, but I didn’t understand why the father in the story, or my father, responded the way that they did.

Henri Nouwen wrote a book called The Return of The Prodigal Son and I read it while on a retreat late last September. The book starts as his reflection on the painting of the Prodigal Son and his father by Rembrandt and continues as a reflection of his own life as a prodigal son. It ends with the realization that the father is who we are ultimately called to become, whether we are the repentant son or the resentful son. Reading this book had a significant impact on me and how I now read the Bible passage and view my life. There are many levels of meaning in the story, some more easily seen than others, and the less visible meaning and message in the story is what Nouwen writes about.

It is clear that the Prodigal Son knows he made poor decisions, and is repentant of them, and knows it’s his fault he is where he is as he approaches the home he grew up in. What is not as easily seen is that he has a paradoxical freedom, where he is free because he has nothing left that would keep him from seeking forgiveness and reconciliation: selfishness, pride, and arrogance. All of that was lost when he was at the bottom, slopping the pigs, and with those attitudes out of the way, he could face his father with his failure. Whatever self-loathing he had was replaced with unconditional love from his father. The older son is filled with selfishness and pride; selfishness from fear of losing his father’s attention, and pride from being faithful and having done the right things, and made the right decisions, compared to his brother. He equated his righteousness with duty, fulfilling obligations, following the rules. All of this made him better than his brother in his own eyes, yet it did not win his father’s affection the way his brother had. It wasn’t fair, and he felt that he was owed something from his father for his faithfulness. The father is most like God in the story. He loves both of his sons unconditionally, equally, but each according to who they are. He is not so much concerned about where they have been or what they have been doing, but concerned with where they are now, what they are doing now.

The reason why this story resonates so much for us is because we see and experience both sons in our world today, particularly the attitude of the older son. As much as I would like to say that the older son’s negativity we’ve seen in our time is a result of the last two years, it has been present for much longer than that. This negativity seems to be resentment from not receiving something that one feels is owed to them, perhaps from a contractual or covenantal relationship with God. I am rewarded by God for my faith, so I should be rewarded by the community, or the nation, for my faith in it. Good things happen when we follow God’s laws and rules, and make an effort to be righteous, but that reward doesn’t come from God. It comes from the relationships we build with other people from God’s love, and service to them, but that leaves us hungry for more affirmation from God that we’re doing the right things. The older brother can't bring himself to see that he is no better than his brother, because he sees that his own piety, his own righteousness makes him better than his brother. He’s looking for affirmation from his father, and it isn’t coming, and he’s resentful.

We hear this a lot, complaints about why others get the benefits, the preferred treatment, the favor that they never got that they were more deserving of. Whether by race, or social status, or certain political views, or living in a certain part of town, there’s an attitude of entitlement that says that they should get the attention before those others. It’s a feeling of having been cheated, or jealousy that comes from not having an expectation filled, from missing out on what I feel I am due. We are angry because we didn’t get what was clearly owed to us, yet at the same time we are surrounded by the reward of our own efforts. We can have our sights set so much on what we see other people getting that we miss what we are being given. But, God’s love is not based on how closely I can be like someone else, or have what they have, but rather on who I am. And there lies the problem when we are jealous of others or feel cheated: we define our preciousness to God in terms of our jealousy, or in terms that justifiy the anger that comes from feeling cheated, rather than in God’s terms of us being part of God’s creation that is good.

God’s love and favor is not the same as money or material things. It is the opposite and becomes available to us when we let go of the idea of being right, or righteous, or better than. We cannot earn God’s love, or favor, or forgiveness because they have nothing to do with following the rules, or believing the right things, or doing everything the right way. We cannot win someone else’s love or acceptance by saying or doing things that they approve of, because that turns us away from God. We cannot look for things to show those “others” that we are better than they are, when they were the ones who looked down on us. The father does not love the returning son because he repented, but because he came home again. The father does not love the older son because he works hard, but because he is home, too. The common thing is the love of the father for both sons, and he celebrates them for who they are, not what they have done. Our righteousness comes from loving our neighbors as Jesus loved them, and we celebrate our prodigal neighbor because God celebrates them. The jealous and self-righteous attitudes of the older son are what we really need to fast from, starting in Lent and never stopping.

As we walk the path of Lent, we must admit our sins as the Prodigal Son did, but we must not take the path of self-loathing of the Prodigal, or the resentment of the oldest son when forgiveness is pronounced. The path to take is the father’s love for both, finding unity between the wayward and the steadfast, the repentant and the faithful. In that unity is reconciliation, not with others, but with ourselves as we confess our faults or jealousy from seeing someone we feel is wrong being welcomed into the community.  Each son is a reminder that we all are always loved and forgiven, equally, regardless of when we follow the straight and narrow path, or when we fall off of it. Can we put away our fear, insecurity, arrogance, and self-righteousness to accept that? Can we become the father?