Luke 15
March 31, 2019
As
the scene opens, preacher is talking about the story we have in front of us
today: what’s otherwise known as the Prodigal Son.
“We’re all
prodigal children at some time or another,” the preacher tells his flock. “But
God can guide you home.”
The
congregation usually so engaged and attentive, always rewarding the good word
from their preacher with “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” are distracted. There is
another kind of music drifting up from the riverside. The soulful sound of
blues interrupts the preacher’s sermon. Not just any soulful sound of blues,
but blues being sung by the preacher’s very own prodigal daughter: Shug Avery.
In response, the choir is encouraged to sing, “God Is Trying to Tell You
Something.” And as they begin to sing, that refrain – God is trying to tell you
something – winds and drifts down to the folks jamming at the edge of the
river. Shug stops singing; listening, listening, listening. She smiles, a sort-of
sad smile, but the edges of that sadness are blurred by hope.
“Speak
Lord,” Shug sings. “Speak Lord.” Then she begins to walk, and all the people
gathered around her follow. As she walks she sings, and as she sings, she
walks. She walks up the wooden dock. She walks up the long road, the dirt road,
and at the road’s end stands the church; the church that loved her, the church
that rebuked her. She walks faster and faster, singing louder and louder. It’s
as if the music is carrying her, calling her. The soloist in the choir can hear
her. The people in the church can hear her. Her father can hear her. She and
all the people with her walk and dance and sing their way into the church; Shug
is at their head, singing with joy, singing with love; just singing and crying
and crying and singing. The whole church is singing. The choir is singing. God
is trying to tell you something. Speak Lord. Her father has stopped preaching
altogether. He takes off his glasses and stares at his daughter who is coming
from a long way off. She walks up the aisle toward him and stops, staring back at
her father, singing and waiting and wondering. Would he cast her out? Would he
turn away? He doesn’t move. He stares at his daughter, and his eyes and his
face tell her what he cannot say. He loves her. He loves her. He loves her. She
moves toward him and when she finally reaches him, she throws her arms around
him. Slowly, as though he was trying to remember how, he wraps his arms around
her too. In the midst of the singing and the tears, she whispers in his ear,
“See
Daddy, sinners have souls too.”
God
is trying to tell you something. In the movie, The Color Purple, it was
this music that brought Shug Avery – this rebellious woman, this preacher’s
daughter who walked away from the life she was told she must live – back into
her father’s arms. It was this music that brought her to herself. And it was
hunger that brought the younger son back himself. It was hunger, and the
recognition that his wanton and wasteful ways had brought him to the point of
starvation, living with pigs, so hungry that he was tempted to eat the slop
that the pigs ate. That was the moment when he came to himself. That was the
moment when he realized that the hired hands on his father’s farm lived better
than he was living. That was the moment when he made up his mind to go home;
when he rehearsed what he would say to his father once he saw him. That was the
moment when this son, the one we know as prodigal, decided to go home, to
return to his father and his family, and ask for forgiveness.
“There
was a man who had two sons.” These words are so familiar and so famous that all
I have to do is say them and them alone, and you would most likely know exactly
which parable was about to come next. One commentator wrote that these opening
words to the parable of the man with two sons brings to a mind a story he once
heard about a man who went to the movies. The man saw the MGM lion roar and
thought that he must have already seen that movie, so he got up and left the
theater. This parable is so familiar to us that maybe you might be tempted to
check out a little bit. I mean after all, you’ve heard it and heard it and
heard it. What more can be said about it? What more do any of us need to know?
Believe
me; I struggled with this same idea from a preaching perspective. What else can
I say about this parable? What else can I do with it? But for a moment, just a
moment, let’s try to let go of what we think we know about this parable and
hear it with new ears.
“There
was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father,
give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his
property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and
traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in
dissolute living.”
What did it mean for a son to ask
his father for his inheritance even before his father was dead? In essence the
younger son told his father, “Hey Dad! Drop dead!” Or “You are already dead to
me, old man, so give me what I will get when you actually are.” What a guy! The
first surprise of this parable – because that’s what parables are meant to do,
shock and surprise – is this, why did his father do it? Why did he give him the
money? Just because the son asked for it doesn’t mean the father should have
given it to him. We can speculate as to the back story about this family
dynamic all we want, but there is nothing in the text to suggest what that
story might be. What we have to wrestle with is what Jesus said. The younger
son asked for his inheritance and the father gave it to him. With all that
money in his possession, the son took off. He was ready to see the world. He
was ready to do some living. I suspect if I had been given that much cash when
I was younger, I might have done the same thing. I would have operated under
the same delusion as the younger son; that the money would last forever, no
matter how wasteful and wild I was with it.
Well
we do know what happens next. The money is gone, the son is starving. He hires
himself out to work for a farmer and ends up living with pigs. Then he comes to
himself, and makes up his mind to go home and ask for forgiveness.
But
as he approaches his father’s home, we readers get surprised a second time. The
father, who I suspect many considered very foolish for giving the son his
inheritance in the first place, does not react as he was supposed to. Shouldn’t
he have been furious with his son? Shouldn’t he have been somewhat reluctant to
welcome his son back home? Shouldn’t he have taken the son’s offer to be a
hired hand seriously? That’s what the son deserved after all. He deserved
nothing better than to live not as a member of the family, but as one of his
father’s workers. He was due no blessing. He was due no benefits.
But
the father did not get that message. The father sees him from a long way off,
and was filled with compassion. He runs to his son. He throws his arms around
him. He kisses him. When his son begins his rehearsed speech, he cuts him off.
He calls for his servants to bring the best robe and put it on him, to put a
ring on his finger, to kill the fatted calf and get the party started. His son
was dead, but he is alive. He was lost, but now he is found!
But
this was a man with two sons. The younger son was dead but alive, lost but
found. But what about the older son? If we’re honest, really honest, we
would admit that the older son is the only one in this story who acts as we
expect. He is doing his duty. He is being responsible. He is working in the
fields as he was supposed to, but he hears the music and the celebrating and
the party, and he asked one of the slaves what was going on. When they tell him
about his lost and found younger brother, he is furious! He refuses to come
into the house. He refuses to join the party. He refuses to celebrate his
younger brother’s return. His father pleads with him. Please son, please, come
inside, celebrate with us.
But
the older brother would not be moved.
“’Listen!
For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never
disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I
might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has
devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”
Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine
is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours
was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
Don’t
you get it, the father said? Don’t you get it? Your brother was dead. But he is
alive. He was lost, but now he is found! We have to celebrate this. We have to
rejoice. But the older brother could not let go of his resentment. He could not
see that the new life of his brother warranted celebration. In his mind the
rejoicing over his brother was just another way that he, the older son, had
been mistreated, taken for granted and ignored. And as I said, if we’re honest,
we probably get that feeling don’t we? Maybe we’ve felt it as well. Maybe we’ve
felt that same resentment, that same burning anger, that same seething rage.
Maybe we’re feeling it right now. But what the father was trying to tell his
older son, and what the older son would not see, was that the rejoicing for the
younger son did not take away from the older one. There was room for both of
them. There was joy and love and celebration for both of them. But one was
dead, and was now alive. Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he understand it? Can’t
we?
Sometimes
we hear this parable as a call to repentance. If we just repent of our sins and
turn back toward God, look at the grace with which we will be greeted. But
while there is certainly abundant repentance and forgiveness in this story,
what I think this parable and the two before it really reveal is a glimpse into
the heart of God.
Remember
these parables begin with the Pharisees and scribes grumbling because Jesus was
eating with tax collectors and sinners. So Jesus told them three parables about
lost and found, dead and alive, so that they could see the heart of God.
And
what is that we see in God’s heart when someone returns? Joy! Celebration!
Grace! Mercy! Love! If anyone is a prodigal in these parables, it is the one
who leaves the 99 sheep to find the one that is lost. It is the woman who
sweeps her house to find the lost coin. It is the father who welcomes his son
home with rejoicing. If there is a prodigal in these parables it is God. God
who loves so recklessly, so, some might even say, wastefully. It is God who is
the prodigal; God who refuses to give up on any one of God’s children. It is
God who is over the top with mercy, with grace, with abundant and overflowing
love. Does that mean that God loves the ones who are not lost less? No! But
when the lost one is found, God is not going to skimp on joy. Neither should
we. We see in these parables a glimpse of God’s heart. What would our families
look like, our neighborhoods look like, our communities, our country and our
world be like, if we could show to others even a fraction of the love and mercy
we are shown? What would every aspect of our lives look like if we could
replace resentment with joy, if we could celebrate instead of seethe? What
would every aspect of our lives look like if we could be as prodigal with our
love and mercy with others as God is with us? Maybe that is the question we
must ask this Lent and always.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Amen.”