God Restores Relationships
Lent 4 – March 14, 2010
So, anyone who thinks that the Bible is filled with stories about goody-two-shoes and holier-than-thou folks has clearly never read this story. It's one of the reasons that I love this parable, and so much of the Bible – it tells us about life as it really is. It tells us stories about people we can relate to, because the stories are about people just like us. This story especially – this one we call “The Prodigal Son”. It's kind of an unfortunate label, actually, because it puts all the focus on one person, the younger son – but Jesus starts the story this way, “There was a man who had two sons.” The parable's about all 3 of them – the man, the younger son, and the elder son.
Now we tend most often to spend our time and attention looking at the younger son, the one who comes to his dad and demands that he get his share of the inheritance today, not now – right now, so he can go off and explore the world. Now for us, that might seem a bit over the top – it doesn't quite seem right to ask for the inheritance before the parent's dead, but we at least understand the impulse to move away from home, to get out there & make a life for yourself – that's what most parents today hope their kids will do – even if they hope they won't go too far away.
But that's not quite the way it worked in Jesus' day. In that culture, family & community were everything. When the younger son asked for his inheritance early, he was basically telling his dad, “You're dead to me.” To leave home & go to a distant country was to say basically the same thing to the neighbors. This young man was cutting himself off from all the relationships that mattered – in leaving them all behind, he became dead to them too.
But the younger son isn't the only one who knows how to wreck his relationships. Because when his younger brother came back, much to the older brother's chagrin, their dad just took him in! No recrimination, no guilt trips – heck, the father throws a party for the whole town! And we know how that went over with the older son. He stands outside, smelling the food and listening to the music and watching the dancing, and he stays outside. Instead of joining the welcome home party, the older son throws himself a pity party. It's not fair! How could their father take that good-for-nothing back like nothing ever happened, as if he hadn't treated their relationship like it meant nothing, as if he hadn't squandered his inheritance in wild and foolish living, as if he hadn't come back, tail between his legs, looking to get back in his father's good graces?
“If anybody should get a party,” he thinks, “it should be me! I 'm the good son. I'm the dutiful one. I'm the responsible one. I never went off to live it up. I stayed here on the farm like a good son should. I work hard for this family. But no-o-o! It's this slacker who gets the party. It's just not right!” So he complains to his father – and Jesus ended the story without telling us if the elder son ever came in, or if he stayed outside, self-righteous and resentful, cut off from his father and his brother.
It's your classic family dysfunction, a story as old as the world itself – family conflict between parents and children, between siblings. It starts with Cain and Abel and it doesn't stop there. It's all through the Bible. And it's in the stories of our own culture – movies, TV shows, books. We love this story because it's about us. None of us is perfect; none of our families is perfect. Every family has these characters. We may identify more with the younger son. Or maybe we feel like the older brother. Sometimes you may have been in the role of the father, or maybe you've seen it play out as you looked on as a neighbor & shook your head at the Joneses and their difficult children. But no matter where we find ourselves in the story, we all know the reality of wrecked relationships. We know how it feels to be cut off from the ones who mean the most, whether it's through our own selfishness and bad decisions, or because we can't let go of old hurts and injuries, can't let go of our sense of self-righteousness and what is fair, what we deserve and the other person doesn't. We all know how it feels to be alienated from the ones we love, whether it's a parent or a brother or sister or spouse or child, or perhaps even from God.
But this story isn't just about two sons. Jesus said there was a man who had two sons, and it's this man and his actions that are really at the heart of the message Jesus was trying to get across to his listeners, those Pharisees and scribes who were all up in arms at the kind of people Jesus was hanging out with. And what Jesus tells us about the man, the father of these two sons is enough to blow you away. Because what we see with the father is that no matter what his sons might do to try to wreck their relationship with him, the father will go to any lengths to restore that relationship. It starts when the younger son asks for his inheritance. The dad could've said no. He could've said, “Do you know what the neighbors will say about us if I give you your share now?” Or he could've said “Good-bye & good riddance & don't come crawling to me if things don't work out.” But he didn't. And when the son went off & spent all his money and got himself in trouble with no food to eat and doing work no respectable Jewish boy would have been caught dead doing; when the son decided he'd have better luck just going home and asking to be brought in as a hired hand; when the son finally came trudging up the road back home, his father could've done any number of things. He could have turned his back on him, refusing even to speak to him. He could have hired him as a servant. He could have made him grovel, could have made him pay for his disrespect and bad decisions, begrudgingly taking him back in. He could have done any of those things or more – it's only human nature – but he doesn't do any of them.
I love this picture of a dad whose son has left them all for dead, waiting & watching the road for signs of his return, who sees him coming while he was still far off & is filled, not with recrimination, but compassion, who runs to meet him, robes hiked up & flapping in the breeze for everyone to see, racing to grab his wayward son in the biggest bear-hug you can imagine, not even stopping to listen to the son's well-rehearsed request for forgiveness, just jumping for joy that he's come home again, safe and sound & calling for clean clothes and shoes and a spontaneous party with the best food, reserved for the most special of occasions, welcoming him home as a beloved son, restoring him fully to his place in the family and in the town. No dignified man would do that. No self-respecting family leader would lower himself that way in the eyes of the community. But the father doesn't care about appearances, doesn't care about what the neighbors think, doesn't care if they all shake their heads at his foolishness.
And it's not just the younger son he shows compassion to. When the older boy acts all petty and petulant outside, his father comes out to him. That's also something you wouldn't do back then. The host stayed at the party – to leave to go get wayward son number 2 was yet another sign of weakness and foolishness. But the father still doesn't care. Restoring his relationship with his son is more important than his pride, than his status, than his reputation. The father goes out to the son, listens to him, and reminds him that his position in the family is secure, that the father will hold nothing back from this son either, but that it's still right to celebrate the return of his younger brother.
This is the picture of the God we follow, the one we dare to call Father. It is a God who will stop at nothing to restore our broken relationships – both with God and with each other. It's a God who doesn't hold our sins or our selfishness or our bad decisions against us, but instead is anxiously looking down the road, waiting to see us appear on the horizon and rushing to welcome us home before we can even say a word. It's a God whose love and grace and forgiveness may strike us older brothers as over-the-top and unfair, this lavish love that won't let anything get in its way. But it's the love that God offers to each of us, love so deep that it sent us another Son, one who lived and died to restore our wrecked relationships, and trusting the message of that reconciliation to us.
This God, this amazing God who offers us such amazing grace, is throwing a party, and the whole world is invited. Come take your place at the banquet!
Amen.
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