Lent 4 year C Sermon 10 Prodigal Son
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
And behind their hands…the ultra religious in the crowd… mutter to each other… ‘This Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them…’
the one who is forgiven…and the one who refuses to forgive.
Grace and hospitality are extended to both…one humbly accepts…but other would rather keep sipping on his cup of bitterness and entitlement.
By the end of the story…
two of the characters… are already having a party…
but the other… has self-excluded…refusing the invitation…to celebrate the reconciliation of the family.
Who are they supposed to be… really?
God…the nation of Israel…and the pagan gentiles?
Maybe Jesus himself…the pious Pharisees…and all those deemed to be unclean?
And who are we supposed to identify with…as individuals and together as the community of faith?
For us…sitting here in third millennium Aotearoa New Zealand …it’s tempting to see the story the way we always have… through the lens of our own cultural assumptions …coming to the same familiar conclusions.
Isn’t it sad… how the youngest son runs off and
gets in with the wrong crowd…hits the booze and the drugs… and ends up in the gutter…and isn’t it wonderful… how the dad… joyfully welcomes him home… when he’s ready to say sorry…
Pretty simple… maybe God’s just like the father?
And isn’t it a shame…the older son’s so bound up… with resentment and anger… that he cuts himself off from the party. Isn’t it a pity…he’s so judgmental…so absorbed…with what he thinks he deserves…
he actually misses out.
Certainly this interpretation makes sense to us…
it would make a good movie wouldn’t it…
but our story teller isn’t a twenty first century film maker…he’s a first century rabbi. And the culture of his audience isn’t pacific-pakeha…but middle-eastern.
What if our very familiarity…with the parable of the Prodigal Son…causes us to miss something…some nuance…some treasure of inspiration and meaning…aimed…at an entirely different group of people
How do we avoid domesticating the Gospel… or holding it culturally captive?
In his book …Jesus through middle eastern eyes: cultural studies in the Gospels…Professor Kenneth Bailey tries to deepen our understanding of Jesus’ actual cultural context.
Bailey’s lectured on New Testament…
in middle-eastern universities for most of his life.
His research takes him all over the middle-east…
to ask ordinary Jews and Arabs…
how they understand Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son.
And Bailey makes some amazing discoveries about the underlying tension in the story…invisible to the western eye…between patriarchal honour and scandalous grace.
What startles Bailey is how consistent and passionate …are the replies of Jews and Arabs alike…especially to the shocking suggestion…that a son would dare to ask for his inheritance…while his father is still alive.
They don’t see this as a story of irresponsible youth…to Bailey’s Semitic audience…the son is shamefully abusive…humiliating and dis-honouring the father…as though the son is saying…‘Dad, I can’t wait for you to die.
In a culture where patriarchal honour…family honour…ethnic and tribal honour…must be preserved at all costs…the father is expected to explode with rage…sever the relationship…and disown the son.
So this is far more serious than running off to Europe… with the money your parents saved for uni…and ending up in the gutter.
And the listeners are appalled to hear… that flying in the face of cultural expectations…the father doesn’t retaliate…instead… he freely and completely… grants his younger son’s request…no strings attached.
They can’t project their social norms onto this father… his love is different…this father gives his children unheard of freedom…even to reject and dishonour him. [pause]
And there’s another counter-cultural twist…
As well as expecting the father to strike back… Arabs and Jews see the other brother as complicit in the crime…because as the oldest… it’s his responsibility to act as mediator and peacemaker…in the family…so the father’s honour can remain intact.
But in Jesus’ parable…the older brother does nothing to protest this insult… to his father’s honour…he won’t lift a finger to prevent the break-up of the family… instead he distances himself…from the whole drama.
To the Semitic mind the older brother remains disgracefully silent…both boys have turned their backs on family unity. Doesn’t psalm 133 say…‘How good and pleasant it is… when children live together in unity’?.
And then of course in his freedom…the younger son…
carelessly descends…into a self-created hell…[pause]
And when he’s as low as he can go…when he can’t slide down any further…stripped of all physical emotional and spiritual support…starving and penniless…
the prodigal son decides to change direction…
to turn his life around…to head home…which is what the Hebrew word for repentance… literally means.
And consistent with rabbinical teaching on repentance.[i]
the son knows what he has to do…so we hear him rehearsing the ritual words of atonement … I’ll just go back to my father and I’ll say…Father, I’ve sinned… against heaven and against you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son’…just let me live as your hired servant.
There’s no hope for anything else…his own poor judgment…has destroyed his relationships and his wealth…he’s lost everything…and in his cultural context…the prodigal son…is taking a huge risk coming home…
His abusive actions…will have offended the honour…not only his father…but the family and community. And the middle-eastern audience knows…were the young man to set foot in the village an angry mob would descend on him.
Before anyone else can get to him…before the boy can even open his mouth in the ritual of atonement…his father runs to him…as no dignified middle-eastern patriarch… ever ran…
In front of everyone in the village…before his child can begin to repent…the father throws his arms around him…and substitutes kisses for words… [pause]
Could we create a place where scandalous love and boundless hospitality is offered?
A place of celebration, support and safety for those who’d never imagine it in their wildest dreams they’d be welcome here…will our welcome feel to them…
like coming home?
Our vision as a parish is to build an invitational spiritually growing multi-generational faith community where all are welcome to this table of grace without limits. I pray that you will join this journey with energy and passion.
[i] Commentary by Rabbi Rami Shapiro
There is no vicarious atonement in Judaism; you alone are each responsible for your actions and for setting things right with those you have harmed. While forgiveness is to be sought whenever necessary, the final month of the Hebrew calendar is set aside for serious forgiveness practice. You are to go to everyone you know and ask them for forgiveness. The command is to ask for forgiveness, not to bestow it (though that is advisable). It is the asking that is the greater healing. Here's why:
The Hebrew word for repentance is teshuvah, literally "returning." Repentance is the act of returning to your true divine self, the self created in the image and likeness of God and which knows that all things are manifestations of God. Returning requires the shattering of the egoic self, the self predicated on the illusion of separateness, and devoted to selfishness and a zero-sum worldview where your success depends on another's failure. Wherever you are devoted to defending an isolated sense of self, there lurks the potential for sin.
[ii] The father is seized by the same emotion splanchnizomai that occurs in the parables of the merciful master and the Good Samaritan…an emotion that moves us to just and merciful action.
