Luke 15.1-3,11b-32
All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. 2 The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “ This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. ”
3 Jesus told them this parable:
“A certain man had two sons. 12 The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ Then the father divided his estate between them. 13 Soon afterward, the younger son gathered everything together and took a trip to a land far away. There, he wasted his wealth through extravagant living.
14 “When he had used up his resources, a severe food shortage arose in that country and he began to be in need. 15 He hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to eat his fill from what the pigs ate, but no one gave him anything. 17 When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, but I’m starving to death! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and say to him, “ Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I no longer deserve to be called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands. ” ’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.
“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. His father ran to him, hugged him, and kissed him. 21 Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! 23 Fetch the fattened calf and slaughter it. We must celebrate with feasting 24 because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life! He was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25 “ Now his older son was in the field. Coming in from the field, he approached the house and heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the servants and asked what was going on. 27 The servant replied, ‘Your brother has arrived, and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he received his son back safe and sound.’ 28 Then the older son was furious and didn’t want to enter in, but his father came out and begged him. 29 He answered his father, ‘Look, I’ve served you all these years, and I never disobeyed your instruction. Yet you’ve never given me as much as a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours returned, after gobbling up your estate on prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’ 31 Then his father said, ‘Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.’ ”
Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
LORD , my rock and my redeemer.
We like to think that, when we read parables, when we hear Jesus say, “The Kingdom of God is like…”, that means that one of the characters must be God.
But Jesus doesn’t say that. Jesus doesn’t say, “God is like…”. Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God is like…”.
It would be easy to assume that one of these characters is God. And it’s relatively obvious which one gets it. It’s not the runaway. It’s not the jerk of a homebody brother who can’t handle the younger’s attempt at reconciliation. We like to think it’s the father, that God welcomes us with opened arms like that and tries to help the older brother understand that’s a better way to be, or something.
Now, the argument is, “Jesus doesn’t say, ‘The Kingdom of God is like…’. There’s no intro”.
Fine.
I think the rule still applies. Parables don’t show us one character of give us a moral or something. Parables aren’t foils or fables. Parables are stories. Word pictures.
Stories told by the most brilliant storyteller in history. A storyteller of infinite imagination and cosmically complete knowledge.
And the Storyteller doesn’t give us a rulebook. It’s a storybook.
Do we know the difference between a storybook and a rulebook?
Rulebooks have to keep getting updated because they have to keep addressing a changing game, a changing environment, a changing economy, a changing politic.
Storybooks keep stories. Stories well told don’t change. The better a story is told, generally, the more broadly it is told, and the longer it lasts.
Can’t say that about rules. They don’t last longer because they’re better rules. Rules always get outdated.
Stories do sometimes. The best don’t.
A story like the Prodigal doesn’t. Or it hasn’t yet. And because the Storyteller is the most brilliant in all creation, I should imagine that it won’t.
The Prodigal is a story. A story about a prodigal.
Or maybe a story about more than one prodigal.
We assume that the prodigal is the younger brother, who wasted his 50% of his father’s fortune on prodigal, or wasteful and extravagant and reckless, living.
We read that and see how what happens to him and realize that what he has done is a bad idea. It impoverishes him. It slanders his father’s name and blows half his fortune. It devalues his older brother’s fortune, which was more valuable because of the half paired up with it.
But prodigal is:
Spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.
Is there only one character being prodigal in this story? I don’t think so.
Watch how the father initially allows the younger son to take what he desires. He must know what the son will do. Maybe he has a hope that the son will make a wiser choice, but a father knows his son. A parent knows the child. We have a good idea, most of the time, what the outcome will be if we allow the child a certain amount of liberty.
The father knows that the son will destroy his half of the inheritance.
But he gifts the inheritance to him, anyway.
And then, watch how the father welcomes him back after he had wasted his fortune. He lets go of any sense of dignity he has and runs out to meet his younger son. He prepares a glorious feast for the son, a feast fit for royalty for this young man who has defiled his father’s name and fortune.
The son did not deserve either gift. But the father gave it anyway.
Reckless extravagance.
How often do we see that kind of generosity, that recklessness, in our stories, in scripture?
Isn’t that what’s going on in our reading from Joshua? In what way did the children of Israel deserve to ever come out of the wilderness?
But God promised them a future, a land. And God gave them a feast.
Isn’t that what the Psalmist is celebrating?
The one whose wrongdoing is forgiven,
whose sin is covered over, is truly happy!
What is forgiveness but reckless? It’s not like forgiveness is a natural reaction. The natural reaction is vengeance. The natural reaction is to strike back at who has hurt us.
But that’s not what God does.
And so it’s not what we’re called to do. We are called to step out in faith and forgive. And it’s painful and it’s unnatural and it’s against our better judgment. And typically, we just won’t do it. We neglect that expectation. We neglect God’s calling to be God’s people, a Body marked most prominently by forgiveness.
No wonder so many people turn away from the Church. What do we have to offer that’s better than what they can get elsewhere? We look and act just like everybody else. We don’t even try to be like Jesus.
What’s the point of being Christian if we’re not going to act like Christ?
Christ is passionate and extravagant and, by human standards, mortally reckless.
How is Jesus anything but prodigal?
How is Jesus calling us to be anything but prodigal, anything but recklessly extravagant with our love, with our forgiveness, with the gifts with which we are blessed?
And how do we get so selfish with them?
I mean, seriously, the best-loved propositions in Christianity all involve making me better, improving my relationship with Christ, how I connect better with the Holy Spirit, all about my salvation, my reward in heaven.
That’s not reckless extravagance. That’s conservative selfishness.
Have you heard it? Think about how we typically react when we’re trying to improve our relationship with Christ? What do we do?
Maybe we come to church more, where we hope something will inspire us, but we can’t stop thinking about what our neighbor thinks about what we’re doing and thinking and how they’re judging us and so we can’t still ourselves long enough to listen and let our souls breathe in the life-giving breath of God.
Or maybe we read the Bible more, but we assume that the people of the Bible live in the same kind of world that we live in today because we’re too lazy to imagine a different world or to do our homework to see why Paul would scold the chatterboxes in Corinth
or what God was actually reacting to when he rescued Lot from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
. And you don’t need me to point out what’s going on there, by the way. You just need to find a few decent commentaries. Bestseller and wealthy entrepreneur Max Lucado doesn’t count, by the way.
Or maybe we pray more, but we get so frightened by the concept of silence (maybe God isn’t really there!) that we fill the time with our own noise, creating nothing but a narcissistic mess of the time when our focus is supposed to be on the Divine, not on the flesh.
Then, when we ought to be focusing on God, when we ought to be God’s hands and feet loving on God’s beautiful creation, we instead focus all on ourselves. And the best we can do is slather makeup over the perfect image of God we are created to be like a three-year old who found mom’s Kaboodle and doesn’t know what the purpose of a mirror is.
God calls us to be child-like, not childish. Child-likeness is open-eyed and amazed. Childishness is selfish and full of tantrums.
Do you see the difference?
How do you think God sees you? Is God constantly judging you, shaking a divine head and wondering why you’ve gone wrong again? Or is God watching you and praising your every victory, nurturing and nudging you gently into better choices, into means of grace, beaming like a parent whose child is taking those first couple steps before crashing back down onto a perfectly-padded rumpus?
Open-eyed, beaming, amazed.
That’s how God sees us, and that’s how God is calling us to see each other.
So then, from this point on we won’t recognize people by human standards. Even though we used to know Christ by human standards, that isn’t how we know him now.
So we are ambassadors who represent Christ. God is negotiating with you through us. We beg you as Christ’s representatives, “ Be reconciled to God! ”
God is running out to us with opened arms. In fact, God has never left us alone. God has always been with us, even in our darkest, most God-forsaking moments, there was grace, dwelling, calling from the depths of our being; the very love of God dwelling in us and waiting for us to respond.
Showering on us extravagant, abundant forgiveness and mercy.
Reminding us that the Kingdom is right now, right here, in every act of reconciliation and love.
All of these new things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and who gave us the ministry of reconciliation. In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. He has trusted us with this message of reconciliation.
Like the ancient family of Israel, God is still promising us a future. And not some distant, far off specter in a cloudy realm, but a future that is blossoming into the present every time we allow God in.
Today, friends, be prodigal like God. Love relentlessly. Give extravagantly. Show the world fathomless forgiveness.
And the Kingdom of God will be with you, bursting out from you today.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment