Good morning. It’s the fourth Sunday in Lent, the midway point, when we wear our festive vestments and the Scripture readings are all about grace, and forgiveness, and abundance. It’s one of my favorite days of the church year--”laetere” Sunday after the Latin word for “rejoice.” It’s spring, the days are longer, the nights shorter, and God’s grace (we’re reminded) never fails. Grace doesn’t rise and then set like the sun. Grace doesn’t change with the seasons. Grace is always present and plentiful, there for us to accept it when we’re ready.
That’s what our parable for today is all about, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It’s the entire Gospel in 21 verses. You could cut out a few of the parables from Scripture and it probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Christianity without this one, though, might not work. It’s that important.
I think, I hope, we’re familiar with the story. It seems to have originated with Jesus; there’s no prior version of it or anything like it out there, which also makes this parable special. A young man asks his father for his portion of his inheritance now, before his father’s death, and his father (outrageously) grants it. The outright disrespect of this son, all but rendering his father dead by asking for what should only be given him after his father dies, is striking. The son takes the money, squanders it in dissolute living, and then finds himself in the midst of a famine in a strange land with nothing: no more money, no friends to lean on, it’s just him. So he finds employment in someone’s pig sty. He hits rock bottom.
Before long, though, he “comes to himself.” Sitting in his squalid surroundings, he realizes he can go back to his father’s house and live, if not with the same comforts as before, at least probably as comfortably as his father’s servants, if he asks for forgiveness first.
Indeed, the father welcomes him back, and with more enthusiasm than he could ever have imagined. He runs out to him as he’s approaching the house, and throws his arms around his son before he even utters a word of remorse. This isn’t forgiveness conditioned on contrition; God is always well ahead of us with his love and grace. Before long, they’re celebrating in their finery with a big feast and it’s as if the son had gone out and done something great with his life, not the complete opposite.
But there’s another son. No matter how many times I read this, I almost expect the story to end there, neatly and happily resolved. But it doesn’t. Because there’s an older son, who never left home, and who does not agree with the father’s ready grace. He feels he’s never been rewarded half as much for staying put and doing his duty.
I loved what one member of our weekly Bible study said last Wednesday: I just can’t accept that this parable would favor messing up one’s life and crawling back for forgiveness over doing one’s duty all along. Despite all the rules we Christians have created over the centuries, and the premium we put on dutiful church attendance and good behavior and that sort of thing, the truth is, Christianity is first and foremost for those who mess up royally, and come home. I would argue that’s all of us, whether we stray in obvious ways like the youngest son, or not. It’s only in our weakness that we really come to understand God’s transforming grace.
I had the privilege about a month ago of reading this with the 7th and 8th grade confirmation class. I love them all, but they’re not always super engaged with the lessons. It was different that night. We read this, and I asked them to ponder how someone could run off with his dad’s money, utterly waste it, then come back and be fully embraced without question--embraced, celebrated, and have gifts lavished on him. What dad does this? Would your dad or mom do this? (It’s OK - everyone said no, including my son.) And what kid asks for their inheritance before their parents are even gone?
We kept going: does the older son have the right to be mad? Are you an oldest or a youngest child in your family? Does your youngest sibling get away with everything? Does your oldest sibling sometimes resent you and you don’t know why? Who do you identify with in this story?
The truth is, both sons were lost. One in dissolute living, the other in following all the rules yet consumed with resentment. You can do and say all the right things all the time and get perfect grades and still be lost. We’ll all be lost in life, at some point, probably many times over. The question for us is not whether that will happen (because it will), but whether we can, in those moments, return to God’s grace, trusting that we’ll always be loved and welcomed back, no matter how far we’ve fallen.
The priest and writer Henri Nouwen spent years pondering this parable. He was especially fascinated by Rembrandt’s painting of it. He went to St. Petersburg and spent the better part of 4 days, perched on a chair provided just for him, looking at it and thinking about the parable and his life and all the ways this one parable spoke to him--as a young and then middle-aged man, as a son, a child of God, a lonely lost soul, at times, as a psychotherapist, a priest, and all the other roles he’d assumed to then in his life.
Then he went back to his home and hung the painting up on the wall of his study and stared at it for several more years. Then he wrote not one, but two books, about it--the parable, and the painting.
He refers in those to our “Primal Identity” as the son (or daughter) in the loving arms of our father’s embrace. That is the only relationship we have with God. It’s just that sometimes we forget it. He says at one point, “I am convinced that all my emotional problems would melt as the snow in the sun if I could let the truth of God’s … love permeate my heart.”
And so, on this fourth Sunday in Lent when we celebrate grace and abundance, let’s remember that primal identity that we share, as Christians. We’ll forget it. We’ll wander far from home, as we always do. But today, at least today, let’s feel ourselves in the embrace of a loving God.