“A choice, yesterday and today.”
Karen Sloan - 27/03/2022
Readings - Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
So, I was trying to come up with a segway into this sermon, which is difficult when I’ve been in isolation for quite a few days after Patrick tested positive for Covid!
But of course, in my time at home I have been reading, and maybe the segway is story telling.
Our faith tradition is full of stories. These stories, that influence how we live and work, are seen most clearly in the parables of Jesus, his most authentic words.
He knew there is a spirit filled power in a story.
Bernard Brandon Scott, a founding member of the Jesus seminar, and a scholar of the parables, writes “the parables give us access to the way Jesus re-imagined the possibility of living, of being in the world. They are not just religious, not just about God, although they are that too… they are multifaceted reimagining’s of life, of the possibilities of life”.
So luckily for me, I have a parable to look at today, one of the most famous and maybe one of the most analysed.
Yet, as Brandon Scott would say, maybe we have over analysed things. This parable is not just religious, where people work out things about God. Today I would rather we focus on what the parable says about living with and responding to each other. In the end, maybe it’s just about a father and 2 sons.
I am going to do it in point form, bringing out some of the things Brandon Scott writes in his book, “Reimagining the world.”
So, to the story of the two sons, or as we would call it the story of the prodigal son.
Some points to consider when we think of those who first listened to it –
· Its only in the gospel of Luke and is linked with 2 other parables, the lost sheep and the lost coin, and is set in a context of Jesus welcoming tax collectors and sinners.
· It would have been presented orally, so people would not have an idea of the ending. (I wanted to do that here, but covid got in the way!)
· Ancient tales of sibling favouritism are inherent in family structures and all cultures have them. Stories like this are found everywhere in the Jewish literature.
· These stories tell us about family life, the loves and rivalries that tear us apart. Think of some real-life examples where rivalry in families is over money or love. Gosh I can think of a few!
· Parables compress things, so this story is compressed into a father and 2 sons and the family are reasonably wealthy.
· In the ancient world fathers were remote and figures of authority. They didn’t normally have a relationship of intimacy with their own children.
· Fathers owned the children and determined their fate.
So, holding those thoughts lets quickly go through the story.
· When the younger son comes and asks for a share of his inheritance – it’s seen as an attack on the father. It’s almost like he’s saying, “drop dead Dad!”
· The Fathers response would be seen as appalling to ancient ears. Fathers did not give up their inheritance before death to anyone, but even if they did the elder son would get 2/3rds of the property and the younger son or sons 1/3. ensuring poverty or near poverty for them.
· So, the father would have been regarded as a fool to the listeners of the story.
· What about the younger son?
· He leaves, but probably doesn’t go far and squanders his money on extravagant living
· Famine makes it worse, and he is left to work with foreigners and feed the pigs. This is an outrage, as pigs are seen as unclean.
· So, the younger son formulates a plan, and decides to go home and offer himself up as a hired hand.
· When the son returns, the father is watching from afar.
· As soon as the father sees the son he has compassion for him, which is the same phase used in the Good Samaritan story. Compassion in Jesus parables comes as a shock, as unexpected.
· Hearing this, the listeners would confirm that he is still a fool and has little honour.
· Because they would know, older gentlemen do not run, and they do not kiss their sons over and over again. They probably thought, “What is he doing!!!”
· The son starts his speech but is cut off by the father, who gives orders that show the full reinstatement of his son, the fatted calf, the robe and ring, the feast.
· No questions are asked, no judgement, no demands. He was dead and now alive. Lost and now found. In keeping with the other parables.
· What about the older son, who is playing a very stereotypical role of duty and responsibility, perhaps running his father’s business. Is he loved less? He thinks so.
· The child servant tells him what is going on, not the father or younger son
· So he’s angry, and refuses to go in and insults his father.
· What does the father do? He goes out and begs for him to come in. Again, the ancient hearers would be horrified, “does not this father have no honour!”
· The older son complains, lists all the things he has done, and that he has never got a fatted calf or feast! He feels he is loved less by the father. The good son, rather than the wild adventurous one!
· The ancient hearers would be expecting the father finally to defend his honour…
· The father’s response is totally unexpected!
· He addresses the older son, “as my dear child”.
· Real intimacy is displayed, love is on show. The hierarchy has been stripped away.
· And he affirms the older son by saying, “you are always by my side. Everything that’s mine is yours.”
· Which creates a dilemma that is not resolved in the story. Who gets the property and power?
So that’s the parable. When you analyse it like this, it really comes alive. But what to do with it in today’s world? I think there’s not much to say because it says it and leave us with our own ponderings. As a parable should.
But perhaps a couple of things. The father, as many have said, violates everything that is expected of him in that ancient time. He loves both sons, accepts both sons, the younger and the older, in a way that sometimes is so hard for us. He is willing always to put his honour in jeopardy for them. Expectations of him, and of the sons are broken down, by love, unconditional love. And by forgiveness, total, and unexpected forgiveness. Because in the end, it’s never really said whether the younger son really is remorseful or just plain calculating.
Yet it is love, the father’s love, not checks and balances, not rules and expectation that is the order of the day. And often it’s that love that leads to a reconciliation. In the future. Even if it’s not there at the start.
But that’s the beauty of this parable, it doesn’t quite lead us there.
We don’t hear what happens to the sons. Can they get over their animosity for one another, particularly when the father dies, and they are left to work together? The older son who felt aggrieved that dad never showed the love he had for him in ways that the older son wanted and expected, but who has all the power and the property, or the younger son, who left and then came back and was welcomed with a feast and a robe and a ring. The favoured child, maybe even supplanting the older brother, thinking he was fully restored only to discover that was not quite the case.
What about the third act!
With an established script of how these things play out they will clash and be broken by conflict and separation. We see that all the time in modern families, who fail to reconcile over differences that may have happened years ago. Or countries if you want to take it further.
Or will they. As Brandon Scott says, they could follower the father’s script, and surrender their male honour and self-righteousness, and grievances and keep on welcoming, and being with the other.
They have a choice between being lost or found, dead or alive. And maybe this is where we find the spirit’s prompting. Not to judge but to welcome, not to exclude and isolate but to love, not to damn forever but forgive with open hearts and minds.
They had a choice and so do we, always.
Amen
Bernard Brandon Scott. “Reimaging the world”. 2001.
Amy Jill Levine. “Short Stories by Jesus”. 2014.