Prodigal Grace

Explaining a parable is a little like explaining a joke, but there is so much that we don’t “get” if we don’t understand what the people who heard Jesus tell the parable would have automatically “gotten.” Jesus tells this parable, the third of 3 about seeking something that is lost: a man with 100 sheep and one is lost, a woman with 10 coins and one is lost, a father with two sons and one is lost. Jesus tells the parables in response to the grumbling of the Pharisees and the legal experts. Remember the Pharisees believed that if we just get the church pure enough, if we get all the people who are “God’s people” to follow the rules of God closely enough, then the Messiah will come and God’s reign will be accomplished – the Kingdom of God, as they envisioned it, would come. So they were concerned about who was “in” and who was “out” and about making sure anyone who was “in” was doing what they ought to do.

Jesus was not doing what he ought to do, but he was popular, and he was a good Bible teacher, and he had a big following. The problem was he kept letting people who ought to be “out,” “IN.” “This fellow,” they said, “is welcoming tax collectors and sinners. He even eats with them!” So, Jesus responds with these parables that are now so familiar, we might not really listen. So, let’s lean in and really listen and hear again the story of the man who had two sons.

The first difference to note between their culture and ours is that we live in a guilt culture. If you don’t do what you are supposed to do, or what your family or loved ones want you to do, you are subject to being guilted…”Mmmm” with that gentle shake of the head and avoiding eye contact until you apologize or backtrack, or you do what they wanted. Their culture was a shame/honor culture. Your actions could bring either shame or honor to you, and to your family, and your actions toward another person can shame or honor them.

The younger of the man’s two sons comes to the father and dishonors him. He asks for his inheritance. It was customary for a family to live in a multigenerational compound with a patriarch. The patriarch owned it all. When he died, the next generation would divide the whole into patriarchal compounds. So, the oldest son received half of everything, and the other sons inherited equal shares of the other half. So, when the younger son wants to leave, the whole household is shamed, and when he wants his half of his father’s estate, their shame is evident to everyone around – the whole community – as he puts his half of his father’s farm and animals and anything else that wasn’t already cash equivalent up for sale.

And while he heads down the road of a prodigal life – prodigal means excess, expansive – he expands his horizons, abandoning the land God gave his ancestors and moving far away, the prodigal lives lavishly, and in his excess squanders the money, does not at all follow the law, and he finds himself so destitute and desperate and far from home that there are pig farms there – pigs were unclean, remember – and he gets a job taking care of the pigs, touching them! – and it is SO bad that he wishes he could eat the pigs’ food – remember Jesus told this story in response to questions about who HE ate with.

Meanwhile, the older son keeps living a life of prodigal righteousness, making good choices. The older son, knowing that all that is his father’s is now his works to build their family’s reputation back. Every purchase of land back restores just a bit of their dignity. Day after day, bit by bit, he moves on.

Their father is never the same. Broken, shamed, he doesn’t focus on the land and rebuilding what was lost, he focuses on the horizon, on that son that left them in this shape. But one day, while the older son is in the fields doing the work that has wholly fallen to him now, his father sees a speck on the horizon and starts running. The workers of the household try to “not notice” (big eyes, sideward glance). It was undignified for a patriarch to run. And the father, is hurling himself out and across the property to the main road.

The welcome, prodigal grace – the hug, the robe, the ring, the excessive party…certainly offended the Pharisees who knew just what Jesus was getting at. Why did he welcome the likes of tax collectors like Matthew and Zaccheaus? Why did he eat with sinners like…well, every person he met…over and over again, he declared, “Your sins are forgiven.” God’s grace is prodigal, undeserved, unearned (in fact, it can’t be earned). It is restoration of relationship that releases the right to “pay back.” Theologian Dorothee Solle who grew up in Nazi Germany called the kind of grace that allows us to see the image of God in another person, regardless of what they have done, “borrow[ing] the eyes of God.” Theologian Richard Rohr describes it as the “x-factor” that “ knits families, friendships, and countries back together after betrayal, hurt, and even violence (Kirsten Powers).” Author Kirsten Powers writes that grace is “refusing to reduce people to the sum of their worst actions.”

The Pharisees knew what Jesus was saying, people who change their ways can seek and receive forgiveness. But Jesus didn’t stop with the reunion. The older brother, he said, heard the party and heard about the ring, and the robe, and the hug, and the running, and he was furious.

Here he had done everything right, to the very best of his ability. He had brought honor back to his father and his household. He had always figured his brother would come dragging back home, and he knew their father would hire him. He had imagined working in the fields again together and tried to prepare his heart to forgive and not be bitter. But, he had not imagined that his father would give him the ring and the robe, making him once again a full son who stood to inherit half of his father’s household again. Did his father condone the life his brother had been living? Surely not! Did he have no sense of fairness? Is there no punishment? Does their father not take his brother’s sins seriously? He is infuriated, red-faced and fuming; he just can’t believe their father.

Jesus says the prodigal father, full to the brim with grace, comes out and meets the older son and pleads with him to see that he had lost one son and regained him, and he didn’t want to lose the other son. Please, come in to the party.

But, it is up to the son whether or not he will.

And the Pharisees knew that Jesus was talking to them. And as much as we would like to identify we would like to identify with the younger brother and sing about God’s amazing grace for us, the sting of this parable is that most of us are really more like the older brother. We have been good and faithful, and when we sing “Amazing Grace” we picture the party being for us. We understand that people change their ways and can seek and receive forgiveness. But Jesus doesn’t stop with letting the younger son come home; God’s prodigal grace isn’t just reconciliation, it’s compassion – there’s a celebration just that the child has come back… The older son stands there outside the party thinking, “My brother needs to change his ways before our father lets him back into the family.” And so did the Pharisees. And, if we are honest, we think the older brother as a point, too. We, too, are a bit offended at God’s compassion – where’s the justice? Where’s the punishment? Where’s the judgment?

Take just a moment and think of the sinners you know, or the people you label as sinners.

God’s prodigal grace overflows for the younger son and the older son; God’s prodigal grace overflows for the person you label as “sinner” and for you. But, it’s up to you…will you join the party?