Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32
The lenten journey to the cross marks us as the offspring of Adam and Eve. We come face to face with our own mortality, recognizing our own story as a mere repetition of the first sin. From the moment the first couple ate of the fruit, the world devolved into confusion. The power of sin flooded the earth, and mired every relationship – the earth was cursed, violence took hold. Humans experienced separation from one another and from God. Of course, this was not at all how God intended it. The world was made by a Good Creator who makes Good Things. God created humanity to be in proper relationship with God, with others, with our self, and with Creation. But we continue to muck that all up in our attempt to save ourselves. So now, rather than relationships properly directed toward their Creator, those relationships between God, others, self, and creation have been severed.
The story of the Prodigal Son – which is really the story of the prodigal grace of the Father – narrates the sin of Adam and Eve and God’s radical response to that sin. We see, once again, relationships severed by sin and those same relationships restored by grace.
The younger of two sons moves into a far off and foreign land, squandering a too-soon acquired inheritance from his dad through excessive living. And after he spent everything, a famine hit the land and he was forced to take on the condition of a slave. Thinking that he could be at least a servant of his Father and still have food to eat, he made his way back home. At the same time, the Father never seemed to give up hope for the return of his son; keeping watch toward the distant horizon day after day. We all know what happens. The Father runs to meet his son, welcomes him as a son (not a servant), and throws a party to celebrate this lost child who had come home. It is truly an astounding story of God’s love and grace toward us wayward human beings.
As this story becomes more familiar to me, I recognize the nature of the relationships that are restored. Growing up, the spiritual dimension of the relationship between the Father and the son was always emphasized. But the story is detailed enough to parallel brokenness and redemption across the range of relationships mirrored within the story of the Garden of Eden – with God, self, others, and creation.
With an eye toward these relationships, we see the story take on a more complete view of what it means for God to redeem, restore, and save us. The son certainly sinned against his Father (and confesses as much). To ask for your inheritance before the death of your father is a great insult, and the sin is magnified by the physical distance that now exists between the father and the son (the distant country). Relationships remain healthy with a sense of intimacy and nearness, a physical impossibility if you’ve just taken from your father and left your family, home, and culture behind for a new and foreign place. The relationship between the Father and the son is broken.
We quickly find that creation itself plays an important role within the development of this story. After he squanders all that he has, the land is hit with a famine. Growing becomes difficult, wages drop, and economic resources become more scarce. We are left with a picture of the scarcity that exists within this distant land compared to the abundance of life provided in the house of the Father. In the distant land, the relationship between the son and creation is strained and breaking.
Further pronounced are the social and familial dynamics at work between the son and his brother . The brother continues on with his family duties, working for his father faithfully. By the end of the story, we see the way sin reverberates across relationships. Perhaps with an air of self-congratulation, the brother puffs himself up when compared to the son who ran off. And when his Father offers grace and hospitality to the lost son, the brother cannot even take it up himself to celebrate, groaning that the father never did for him what he is now doing for the other. And the brother fails to recognize that the Father’s dominion already belongs to him. The relationship between the son and brother was broken.
Finally, the story narrates a profound understanding of identity. As the son travels in distance away from the Father, his identity changes with him. In the far-country, instead of a beloved son of the Father, he hires himself to an unnamed foreign citizen, who farms him out to the unclean horde of pigs. It is here at the bottom that some remote memory begins to percolate. Why starve to death as a slave here, where I could at least be a slave and be well fed at home? The son could no longer conceive of himself as the son of the Father. Rather, he assumed the identity of that which he deserved, a slave. The relationship within the son and himself left a broken and shattered identity.
The wonderful thing about this story is that it actually narrates the putting-back-together of each of these broken relationships. Karl Barth, in volume IV of his Church Dogmatics, concluded that the story of the prodigal son only made complete sense when read side by side with the story of another Son of the Father. This Son willingly gave up equality with God to become a servant in the distant land. And by doing so reconciled all estranged and broken relationships, marked by justice and righteousness as properly ordered toward their Creator.
When the Father welcomes the son, he welcomes him as his son, giving him the ring of the family and restoring his identity. The distant land marked by scarcity is flipped at home – kill the fattened calf, tonight we feast out of our abundance. The relationship with the Father is immediately restored in a complete act of free grace. The arms of the father extend around the son in a gesture of forgiveness and acceptance.
The story does leave one little piece un-ended. It leaves the brother contemplating the words of the Father outside of the party. It’s important to recognize at this point who Jesus is talking to (Vs. 1-3). Clearly, Jesus relates the older brother’s sentiments with that of the Pharisees and teachers mumbling about Jesus welcoming sinners and tax collectors. We see the gesture of the Father reaching out to the older brother to bring reconciliation. And the story is left with a type of incompleteness, as if Jesus begs for a bodily response.
When we look around our families, churches, and communities, we see quickly the brokenness that exists in each of these relational dimensions. The earth cries out for healing from the toll of human non-care and neglect. Our relationships with our spouse, co-worker, or neighbors could be marked more by competition or envy than grace and love. We live in and out of multiple stories that compete for our allegiance and identity. And each of these relationships, when strained, cause further separation from the Creator. The story of the Prodigal Son allows us to better see and orient our life around the nature of a prodigal God who continues to hold out hope for the Divine Son to gather us all back into the house of God which is marked by justice and righteousness.
