Saturday of the 2nd Week of Lent Lk. 15:11-32

The lectionary readings these last few days have juxtaposed vivid, earthy stories and texts that show, on the one hand, human ignominy, deviousness, jealousy, and malice, and on the other hand, human integrity, trust in God, God’s care for the poor, and especially, divine mercy. This last emphasis — “God delights in showing mercy” (Micah 7:7) – culminates in the third of three “Lost and Found” parables Jesus tells as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15.

I prefer to call this famous story the Parable of the Prodigal Father since, according to the logic of human judgment, what was wasted even more than the life of the youngest son was the love of the elderly father. As we all know, for the son to ask his father for his share of the inheritance was not just to thumb his nose at his father but essentially to wish him dead: “I got better things to do than to wait around here while you take your damn time to die, so I’m asking for my cut now, old man.” And the father, not having attended the Friday Fish Fry followed by the seminar on “Tough Love,” obliges the son.

We know the arc of this story well, probably too well, how the wasted, lascivious son burns through his money like a reckless lotto winner until he’s left flat broke, feeding pigs, and then finally standing at the nearest freeway entrance with a cardboard sign. We know how the son returns home, how the father receives him, and how the older brother does not. It is not my intention here to exegete this entire story (I recommend Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son). But I do want to emphasize two aspects of it that— because it has become so familiar— might be taken for granted or missed altogether.

First, the overlooked obvious: let’s remember that Jesus is telling the story. Just as in the case of the parable of the loving shepherd who seeks out the one lost sheep and the parable of the woman who after turning her house upside down to find the lost coin calls the neighbors together for a spontaneous, celebratory block party, so too in this story we clearly see a portrayal of the Divine heart. Yes, this is a conversion story, but it’s more than a story of conversion. It is a homecoming story, but it’s more than a story of coming home. What it is is a window into Jesus’ understanding and experience of who God is and what God is like. It is especially a story about the extravagance of God’s love and the prodigality of God’s compassionate heart.

Second, the nose-thumbing son is famously described as “coming to his senses” or as some English translations have it as “coming to himself.” Most often it is implied or stated that this signals the son’s conversion, the son’s waking up not just to his wild ways but more importantly to the schmuck he has been to his father. But I think this is to give too much credit too soon to the conniving son. I see nothing at this point in the text that suggests genuine remorse or anything other than the realization that even his father’s hired hands have it better than he does now and if he has to return with mud on his face, beat his breast, apologize to his father, and mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa all the way to the outdoor shower, that at least he will have a futon to sleep on and three decent meals a day. That doesn’t sound like transformation. That sounds like calculation.

As I imagine it, the prodigal son of a gun makes that final turn for home, rehearsing his lines, trying out different inflections so the remorse sounds convincing, when the old man sees him coming. Every afternoon and evening since the day the scoundrel son ran off with his inheritance, the old man has sat in the wooden rocking chair on the front porch. Even when he had a novel in his hands or was working the Crossword in the Times, he was really always looking past the page down the end of the road. Then one evening just as the sun is sliding behind the hill, he spots his son, his boy—filthy and much thinner but he’d recognize that gait anywhere— and so as fast as his skinny legs will lift him, he rises from the rocker and hops down the porch stairs, pulling his hamstring as he goes.

Now, running toward his son who is practicing his lines, the father closes the distance between them in what can only be described as a hobbled shuffle until at last he reaches his long lost son. The frail-looking young man is startled and scared to see his aged father coming at him like this and forgetting his lines he stops dead in his tracks. He flinches as the father raises his bony arms and hands and then wraps himself around his boy (Later the emaciated son thought the embrace gave “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” a totally new meaning). Surprised by joy, the son is overtaken with emotion and sobs uncontrollably into the old man’s chest, lost in the embrace of grace and found by kisses on his wet face. And without thinking, his heart breaks open and he falls to his knees, overwhelmed by the lavishness of the old man’s gesture and the extravagance of a compassion he has never known but that now is as real and solid as the ground on which he kneels.

It is then, I believe, the true transformation takes place, for despite his sensible, well-rehearsed subterfuge what he had never planned on, what he never ever imagined is that before he could even get his scripted words out of his mouth his father showers him with love, drenches him with tears of joy, smothers him with kisses, all rising from the depths of the old man where compassion and deep sympathy are born. It is then the words come pouring forth, raw and real and unrehearsed, full of sorrow and choking on shame and completely discomfited by such unearned benevolence. He is reduced to a heaving heap of humanity – but mainly reclaimed as the beloved son of a father whose love was bigger and more blessed than any transgression.

In the end, he does indeed come to himself as he comes into the arms of his abba. In the end, what was lost is found by the breadth of mercy and the depth of compassion and what was dead is brought back to life by a prodigal forgiveness and an overflowing love that defies logic but describes God. Because of this, the son’s life was never the same. He never tried to pay back the father’s love. He knew he never could. He never tried to earn the father’s love. He knew he’d never have to. But he did live marked forever by a love that was so ineffably profound and personal, that all he wanted to do was to honor his father by living that love, by giving it away to others as he had received it that fading day just a half-block from home in the arms that once let him go, then once again took him back and held him tight.♦

pax ~ djm

Artwork: Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son