March 18, 2007
The Fourth Sunday in Epiphany (Year C)
Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Good morning.
I would like you to try imagining something this morning. What if we were to somehow lose all the texts of the New Testament, except for one or two, or put another way, if we had to select the two or three texts which were at the core of Christianity, then surely the story we have heard today would be one. It speaks of "coming to our senses" and being engulfed by God's love. Chapter 15 of Luke has been described as the center of Luke's gospel of Jesus Christ and this parable as the paragon of the parables.
Another text we would also want to keep is the story of Jesus' first sermon when he returns home to
And finally we would need one of the resurrection stories, perhaps Jesus meeting Mary Magdalene in the garden: "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it that you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him, and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).
These three texts are essentially linked together in the core of Luke's message, but that is a topic for another day. Focusing on today's gospel, it is the story of the Prodigal Son, the Waiting Father, and the Angry Brother. This story resonates with our life experience: adolescent rebellion; alienation from family; the appeal of the new and the foreign; the consequences of foolish living; the warmth of home remembered; the experience of self-encounter, awakening, and repentance; the joy of reunion; the power of forgiveness; the dynamics of "brotherly love" or "sibling rivalry" that lead to one's departure and the other's indignation. But as I concentrated on this story as just that – a story of family relationships with my 21st century mind - I was struck by one question: Where was the mother?
Don't you find it odd that this story does not include in some way the anguish suffered by the mother seeing her youngest son decide he will seek his fortune in the world while forsaking his family? If this parable were a story about family, then the picture is not complete. If this were a story crafted to provide insight to family dynamics, coming of age, proper parenting, then there are a lot of missing details.
Jesus used parables to illustrate his experience of God and as a vehicle for teaching his message. The Jewish understandings of God and God's relationship with his people were based on the patriarchal society which had been in place for hundreds of years. Only recently have we added to our liturgy the names of Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, ancestors of Jesus, to accompany Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I do not know how this parable strikes women today with its male exclusiveness. It would be glib to say that if a woman were there, she would have averted this family falling out. That would miss the essential truths it means to capture; but it is true that were Jesus telling parables today, he would have to craft a different message – not merely for political correctness – but because the understanding of human relatedness to God cannot simply be told anymore in exclusively male terms. So Jesus' parable is not merely meant to be a picture of first century family life. It is intended to give us a lesson on how Jesus was going to build God's kingdom.
You will recall from Melissa Buono's sermon a few weeks ago about taking a path, choosing either the path to wholeness or the path to woe. Jesus tells this parable because he is criticized for being with sinners, for eating with them; the scribes and Pharisees grumble about who Jesus chooses to eat with. In reading about Jesus in the gospels, I am always struck about his ability to simply "be" with someone – to be open to their essential wholeness, regardless of what kind of life they lead.
I recall Gale's words from the first evening of the Connect? series, when she described how the act of eating together at the time of Jesus was an act of total acceptance of who was together at the table, without regard to their social acceptability, their ritual purity, their conformity to "religious hygiene." Jesus is open to the goodness within the other. He is totally focused on whom he is with.
This parable is Jesus' retort to the Pharisees and scribes who object to the company Jesus keeps; how can this Teacher Jesus be truly from God when he is too good to the outcast and not good enough to them?
The parable begins with the younger son arrogantly treating his father as if he were dead and demands his inheritance. Our English bible uses the word "share of the property" which in the Greek is ousia – better translated as being or existence. And the second use of property, bios is the standard Greek word for life. So a more accurate rendering of the parable would be "Father, give me a share of your existence." The father divided his life between his two sons. As the parable develops, there is the recognition by the younger son that he is utterly lost, that he has wasted not just his father's property but also his life. All that he had been given has been squandered; he remembers the life he enjoyed in his father's house; he remembers that even the hired hands enjoyed a better life. He finds himself at rock- bottom. I do not think we today can fully appreciate how completely alienated this son had become. As a Jew, he had sunken so low as to go live with gentiles in a place away from the Promised Land. He has sunken so low as to be a caretaker of swine – this is an abomination for Jews – and he is jealous of the pig's food. He is trapped in a foreign land in the midst of famine – not the land of milk and honey.
But in the mire of the pig pen, he "comes to himself.. The journey home begins with coming to oneself. That means the most difficult step is the first one. I do not know if he consciously engages on a 12-step process, but certainly that first step of facing himself was the most difficult.
He rehearses his little speech. "I am a sinner before heaven and before you." He dares not hope to be restored to son-ship, and would willingly accept the status of a paid worker on his father's estate.
Perhaps this young man was able to face the reality of where his life had led him because he still had a memory of his former way of life.
When he finally comes to himself, he realizes that he needs to go back to the source of his life: his father.
He finds his father running to meet him – not the proper Middle Eastern adult. It would be unbecoming and a loss of dignity for a grown man to run. But the father does run to him and falls on him, gives him a kiss of greeting and forgiveness, and cuts off him off in the middle of his confession with instructions for a party. The father is ready to welcome this son with a celebration for the whole town, to share this recovered life with others. This is the whole morale of the story: The father, from beginning to end is willing to share his life with his sons.
The elder son who hears the din going on at home asks of a servant, what is the meaning of this. He turns with anger to his father. He coldly responds to his father, ignoring his entreaties, he alienates himself from the celebration for "this son of yours." The father's tender words are rejected: "my son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours".
The elder son is lost too and his deadness is a little harder to fathom. He can't see why there has to be a party, because compared to his brother, he sees himself as proper and righteous. He cannot see that his self-righteousness means that he, too, cuts himself off from the source of his life. He can't see that without his father, he is still basically dead. If self-awareness and repentance for the prodigal son mean learning to say "Father" again, then for the elder son it means learning to say "brother" again.
Jesus comes as the perfect son who gets it right, but it is never with self-righteousness. Throughout his ministry, Jesus proclaims himself to be doing his father's desire, not his own. Down to the last moment before his arrest and passion – when he comes to fully understand what his mission is – he prays "Not my will be done, but thy will be done."
If we truly believe in the Incarnation, that God became human so that we could become more God-like, then we must have faith that God's life is in each one of us.
There is much brokenness for those who follow the path of the younger prodigal son or the older self-righteous son. Some days we are even those sons and daughters who have left the home of our heavenly father and find ourselves broken and dead.
The Son of God came so that we might know that the door is always open. We can choose to live each day as Jesus did in faith of a God who is the source of sustained life. We can live without fear of the brokenness in our lives, and in the lives of those around us, giving ourselves to others in love. We can live our lives as a celebration of life to be shared with all of God's children.
"God's children": What an extraordinary concept.
First, the mystery of God is beyond human words. But Jesus told us to call God Father, or as the Aramaic Abba is translated daddy even dada.
I stood on a beach ten days ago with my three-year grandson Liam firmly grasping my hand. Do you know the tenacity of three-year-olds? Their grasp does not know any limitations in their expectations of you. He calls me "Papa Andy".
In my prayers to God, am I to mirror this simplicity and pray to "Papa God?"
It is most times easier for me to focus on Jesus, having risen from the dead, standing at the
God gave us Jesus to follow and imitate. We need to take Jesus seriously. As Jesus shared his table with the outcasts and the poor and the marginalized, we also have to focus on who we invite to this table for sharing. If we are to have any kind of serious spirituality, if we seek to grow in wisdom and grace, then we must see our life of faith inextricably enmeshed in the web of relationships in our time, as Jesus was in His time and His place. We share this table with family, friends, and strangers – all followers of Jesus.
And having worked to build a family of believers together, then we too will hear: "Quickly, bring out a robe--the best one--and put it on; put a ring on your finger and sandals on your feet. We will eat and celebrate; for we who were dead are alive again; we who were lost have been found."
- Andrew J. Carpentier
[I wish to acknowledge the writings of Paul Nuechterlein, Andrew Marr, Jim Reagan in the "Catholic Worker", Luke Timothy Johnson, R. Alan Culpepper, and Albert Nolan.]