Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32
This is a parable we love, love, love. Unless, that is, Jesus is telling it to us. Then it is another matter.
You know what I mean? It’s a really nice story in the abstract way. Like saying, “I love people. Only, not that particular one, or that one, or that one either.” It turns out that we mean a very specific and relatively small set of people.
The first time I realized how hard this parable is was when I was reading it to an adult Bible study group. I looked up at the faces around me and they said, “I don’t like that one.” They didn’t like it because they had taken it personally (which is good.) They had asked themselves, am I as forgiving as this father? Do I want to be that forgiving? And their answer was no.
Parables that talk about forgiveness in a personal way are very off-putting for many of us. The parable of the prodigal son is about forgiveness. But even worse, it is about who is acceptable. What people are worthy of love.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is an exemplar of the form, because it does such a great job of drawing us into it. and compelling us to feel it.
It begins well enough: a man had two sons. Splendid! Fortunate man. Then his younger son hands the father an egregious insult. Terrible! Now we have to choose a side, and most likely we choose the father. We are angry on his behalf. We are offended for his sake.
We have scorn for the foolish young man who is wasteful and dishonors his father. We are glad when we see him suffer for his mistakes. We can’t wait to see him get what coming to him. But he doesn’t. Something odd happens.
His father runs down the path toward this pitiful son dragging himself home. He runs – hiking up his robes, skinny legs showing, sandals flapping. He throws his arms around this sorry son, crying tears of joy. We wonder, what happened to his dignity? Where is his self-respect? We are embarrassed for him.
At that point we wander over to see what the brother is saying; the elder brother – the one who has been nurturing his resentments for a long, long time. Out there in the fields, hitting that earth with a vengeance, muttering under his breath things that he would never say aloud to his father – until now. He tells his father exactly how he feels.
And what he feels is this: he agreed with his brother when he said, “I am not worthy to be called your son.”
But here is the question we must face: Is this true? Is this younger son worthy of love and grace? Are the people we call sinners worthy of love and grace?
This is a tremendously uncomfortable story for us, because it asks us these specific questions: Who are the people who have been banished from our community? and are they worthy of love and grace? Before you say there is no one who fits that definition, please stop and think. There are people who have been made to feel unwelcome by the church. We cannot deny this.
Someone recently said to me, “My son was far from home for the first time in his life, lonely and longing for community. I wanted so much to tell him to go find a church, because church has been the loving community surrounding him his entire life. But I could not tell him that because there was a huge risk that the church he walked into would condemn him for his sexuality. Imagine how it feels to know that your beloved son, who is so lonely and vulnerable, might be told by the church of Jesus Christ that he is not welcome.”
The people whose sexuality does not conform to our ideas about what is acceptable – are they worthy of love and grace?
I read a story last week about a young woman who became pregnant in high school. She decided she wanted to keep her baby, and so she became an unwed teen mother. Her church did not banish her, but they didn’t run out to show her love either. She tried to join the church’s mother’s group, but it just wasn’t welcoming to her. The other women’s lives were so different, and they clearly had no interest in the struggles of her particular life.
The ones who didn’t do marriage and babies in the way we find acceptable and proper – are they worthy of love and grace?
There are so many others. The children of divorce who cannot meet the demands of weekly confirmation classes because every other weekend they are at mom’s house, and mom doesn’t go to church. The ones with mental illness which makes them maybe too loud or too emotional, and they have been told, maybe with words, maybe just a look, that they should probably not come. The ones who don’t have the right clothes, something they notice the moment they walk in the room.
Are these ones worthy of love and grace? Are they welcome, really? We don’t even have to say anything, because they can tell by the way we act.
The best quality of church is also its greatest liability: we become this close-knit community. But then we stitch ourselves together so tightly that there is no room for someone different to come in and be a part of this community.
There are people who watch our service on livestream who do not dare to step into our sanctuary and sit with us, because of how we might judge them.
It hurts to hear these things and it hurts to say them. But there is something else that should be said, something we probably don’t say often enough, and it is this: It can be very hard to open your arms in love and grace to all the others if you, yourself, have felt unwanted, unloved.
Perhaps you are a prodigal, yourself. Maybe you have felt the ache inside you of being judged. Rejected.
The Pharisees and the scribes grumbled quiet criticisms of Jesus because he welcomed sinners and sat at table with them. And in response to that, he told them this parable, which asks: Who is worth of love and grace?
The father believes the prodigal is worthy. And it seems very clear to me that Jesus also believes that he is worthy of love and grace. The question we have to ask ourselves is, do we?
A wise person once told me that when someone judge others harshly, you have to know that he judges himself just as harshly. I pray that we treat ourselves and all the other real, flesh and blood, actual people in the world with love and grace.
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Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
