This week's lectionary uses Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son as an example of the kind of grace and love that God pours out upon us. The parable might more appropriately be entitled "The Prodigal Parent." The word prodigal means 'extravagantly wasteful' which describes both the young man's spending of his inheritance and also the father's demonstration of love toward his son upon the son's return.
If you read the passage in Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 you will quickly see that Jesus is dealing with Religious leaders who feel that Jesus is hanging out with the wrong kinds of people, with those that they find unacceptable to themselves and who they also wish to define as unacceptable to God. So Jesus tells them a story about a horrible son, a child who goes against all that is acceptable to their society by behaving in an unthinkable manner and demands that his father give to him his portion of the estate that would be left to him when his father dies. This is basically the same thing as saying, "Drop dead, Dad...and do it right now." In order to fulfill the son's request...something the father does and which would have been not only outrageous to Jesus' listeners, but totally unexpected of a Jewish father in that society...the father apparently divides his property in half and gives each son a half. Law said only one-third would go to the youngest son, while the oldest son would get two-thirds of the inheritance.
The younger boy apparently converts his property into cash, again a horrendous kind of action because you did not sell the family farmland as it was entrusted to you for future generations as a gift from God, departs with his wealth and spends it recklessly. He went to a Gentile city and hung out with unclean Gentile people. Soon he is destitute and must go to work for a pig farmer in order to stay alive, the worst kind of employment a Jewish man could have taken in that society. It would have made this sinful and unacceptable boy completely unclean. No one could have wanted such a person in their community, let alone in their home. Faced with starvation the boy decides to go home and offer himself to his father as a servant on the farm reasoning that his father treats his servants better than the boy is being treated by his own employer.
Off the child goes back home. Now Jesus' listeners would have expected the father to reject the son and kick him back out, but there is another turn of events, another unexpected action by a character within this story. The father has been watching for the return of the son and upon seeing him walking toward the house, the father runs out to him and embraces him and bestows upon the son all of the honors reserved only for a beloved, well-behaved child. This would have been a horrendous situation to the listeners. How could this father do this after all the son has done to hurt the father? And most important of all, if you notice, the son never got to tell the father that he was sorry for what he had done. No real repentance if you read the story carefully, just pure and simple self-preservation on the boy's part knowing his father would at least feed him and he wouldn't starve. That's not real repentance. And anyway, the boy never even gets to tell any part of his story because the father overwhelms him with love, care, restoration, hope and a future. This is, if you will, a glimpse of the resurrection Jesus himself will experience in a short while.
Many teach that in order to receive God's love and blessings we must repent, we must enumerate our sins and beg God to forgive us, throwing ourselves upon God's mercy. Many think that some so-called sins by their definition are so horrible as to almost cause God to fail to forgive anyone who commits those sins. Homosexuality, pre-marital sex, pregnancy out of wedlock, divorce, and more have all been treated almost as unforgiveable 'sins' by many on the religious right. But even with such "unspeakable and horrible" sins we have the reassurance from this parable that God goes running past those who say God cannot act in love toward such sinners, and we see God embracing all persons with God's amazing grace, enfolding them with God's unlimited love, and restoring them to their rightful place as God's own children.
The young man in this story was loved by the father before he demanded his own way, before he left home, in the same way that he was greeted and loved and welcomed back home when he did return. Jesus' story is about an unthinkable, extravagant loving parent who exceeds all social standards to demonstrate love for the child. I think Jesus is trying to tell us that there is nobody who falls outside of the boundaries of God's love and grace. God's love and grace are truly Amazing and beyond expectation and belief. God is truly prodigal in God's love for you and me. It's at least something to think about.
Pastor Ray
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