Luke 15:1-22

Luke 23: 34-53

The parable that shows up in the lectionary for today is certainly one of the most familiar, if not the most familiar, stories that Jesus ever told. In fact, it could suffer from being overly familiar, which can cause us to stop listening to something. That is why it was helpful to hear a fresh reading of it from Amy and Louise.

Another reason the parable is so “familiar” is because of the root of that very word. Familiar comes from the word for family, implying that if something is familiar it is because it reminds us of our family. The parable is filled with family themes like loyalty, responsibility, sibling rivalry, inheritance, forgiveness, reconciliation, jealousy, duty, alienation, and that for which we most long but often gets lost in all this familiar mess: love.

Countless novels, memoirs, and movies have all tackled the themes of this parable, some fairly literally. I am thinking of Norman Maclean’s novel, A River Runs Through It.

In that story, there is a brother who remains home dutifully and a brother who is daring and fun-loving. It is largely about the complicated and complex relationship between two brothers and their father.

A recent movie now out on video that tackles some of these same issues is Pieces of April. It focuses on a mother and her relationship with her three children. There is a daughter who was always the wild child, and finally runs away to New York City. There is another daughter at home who is almost an ideal child. There is a son who is more like the Mother’s best friend. The mother, in an Academy award nominated performance by Patricia Clarkson, is dying of cancer. The father arranges a visit to the alienated daughter in New York City, who agrees to host them for Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone expects it to be a total disaster, perhaps even the father, who is hoping not so much for reconciliation as for just a civil meal together. It’s a pathos-filled and yet funny movie about the grace involved in forgiveness as well as the grace of finding unexpected community.

There’s another story that I love that helps me appreciate the surprises in this parable.

The following is a story that appeared in New York magazine under the title “True Tales of New York,” written by Gloria Gonzalez:

You grow up fast in Spanish Harlem, especially if your parents are supers of the building. You see a lot … FBI agents looking for former tenants, welfare caseworkers lurking in the alley trying to catch a father ”visiting,” the bill collectors posing as relatives.

There are also the good times, the open-house parties every Friday night after cashing the paycheck. One long-awaited celebration was the night that Jose was due home after three years as a United States Marine.

Every family had contributed a home-cooked dish and a dollar for the beer and soda. Neighbors began decorating the apartment with crepe paper and balloons the night before, and someone was dispatched to the local funeral parlor to borrow folding chairs.

The day of the party, relatives arrived from the Bronx and from as far away as San Juan. Papo, Jose’s cousin, and I were posted on the stoop as lookouts.

A taxi arrived and deposited its passenger. Papo and I paid scant attention to the tall brunette in the off-the-shoulder blouse and billowing skirt.

It wasn’t till she screamed our names and swept us off the ground in a crushing hug that we realized that the perfumed woman was Jose!

In a daze we lugged her suitcases up two flights, our eyes fixed on Jose’s ankles, strapped into stiletto heels, as he took the stairs two at a time while urging us to hurry.

With the music of Tito Puente in the background, Jose threw the door open and announced, “I am home.”

The needle was pulled on Tito Puente.

“Me, Jose, the person has not changed. Only the outside. You are my family and I love every one of you. If you want me to go I will go and not be angry. But if you find it in your heart to love Josefina, I would love to stay.”

No one spoke. Everyone stared. Those who didn’t speak English waited for the whispered translation. Even the outside city noises seemed to halt abruptly. I stood in the open doorway, still holding the suitcase, not daring to enter.

After what seemed hours – but could only have been moments – his mother stumbled forward and said to her son, “Are you hungry?”

I was eleven. It was the best party I ever went to.

-Gloria Gonzalez, West New York, New Jersey

The original parable would have been funny, shocking, and even offensive to Jesus’ original audience in a way that we miss because of major cultural differences.

Kenneth Bailey helped me see this in his book Poet and Peasant. Bailey found a fascinating way to give Jesus’ parables a fresh hearing. He spent over fifteen years telling the parables of Jesus to modern day peasants in the Middle East, many of whom had never heard them before. In some cases, the rural inhabitants were living in cultures and conditions that still had much in common with the conditions of Jesus’ time.

This is what happened when Bailey began telling one group the story of the Prodigal Son. “There was a man who had two sons, and the younger of them said to the father, “Father, give me the share of my property that falls to me.”” Before Bailey could go on reading, there was uproar among the hearers. He would have to stop and the ensuing conversation always ran something like this.

“Why does this upset you so? Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?”

“Never!”

“Could anyone make such a request?”

“Impossible!”

“If anyone did, what would happen?”

“His father would beat him, of course!”

“Why?”

“This request means he wants his father to die!”

When Bailey continued the story, his audience expected the father in the story to explode and punish the boy for his cruel request. But instead, to their shock, the father unquestionably complies with the request.

Now when the son leaves for a far country, this was understandable to Bailey’s audience. The younger son had better leave that community, for when word got out he would have quickly earned the hatred of his neighbors. That is why he left so fast.

Bailey was surprised that the modern day peasants were just as disturbed by the behavior of the older brother. The parable says that the Father divided his property between his sons. They would have expected the older son to refuse to accept his share before his father’s death. Furthermore, he would have been expected to try to talk his brother out of this foolishness and try to bring about reconciliation.

Bailey’s audience were disgusted with how he wasted his father’s money and laughed when the younger son fell so low as to be among pigs, glad to see that the young man had gotten his due. They nodded approvingly when he came to his senses and headed home to beg his father’s forgiveness. What they expected in the story was this: the prodigal son reaches the village and is identified. A crowd gathers to laugh at his ragged clothes, and taunt him with verbal abuse, delighting in his failure. They expect him to be punished severely by his father.

But then the parable turns crazier than ever. The father sees the boy when he is yet a long way off. This implies that the father had often looked out longingly for his lost son. He is filled with compassion and he bounds off the porch and runs down the road. Older Middle Eastern men do not run. It would have been very undignified to run at all, but especially running towards this wayward son. And then to the audience’s shock, he goes to hugging and kissing him, calling for new clothes, and invites everyone to the biggest party in town.

Bailey’s hearers could identify with the elder brother’s reaction. Along with the elder brother, they thought: “Let the son come home, but to penance, not a party. What about facing the consequences of your own action! What about reaping what you sow?”

Instead, there is a party with the youngest son the most surprised of all, sheepishly enjoying it all. But the father notices that his other son has not come in from the field. And he goes out to find him as well. He leaves his guests, which a good host should not have to do.

He listens patiently to the older son’s tirade as he points out how obedient he has been, saying that all these years he has been working like a slave, which does not seem to have been the case. He is furious about a huge party going on for “this son of yours” as if it is not his own brother.

Then we see this is a parent who has lost both of their children-- one leading a life of recklessness and self-righteousness that has taken him so far away from his relationship with his father that he might as well have been feeding pigs in a foreign country. He has stayed put, and followed orders, and done the right thing. He wants his father to love him for all of that. His father tells him that he does love him but not for any of that. “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.”

He does not love either of his sons according to what they have done or what they deserve. He loves them because they are his children. He forgives them because he is filled with compassion for them.

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells this parable and two others in response to being criticized for hanging out with sinners and the like. With these parables, Jesus says, “That’s what I do, all right.” God is like that too.

Ann Lamott tells a story about a girl who was crying in the night. When her mother came to comfort her, the girl said she was too afraid of the dark to sleep. “But God’s with you, comforting and protecting you,” the mother said. “But I need someone with skin on,” the little girl said. (Blue Shoe, p. 278)

We in the church believe that Jesus was God with skin on. This parable was not just a story Jesus told, it was one he embodied. He is the one on the porch looking out for us lost ones, hoping we will come home.

On the cross, when Jesus was being crucified, he spoke these powerful and shocking words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”

He looked down and saw even the folks who hated him, his enemies, as children who had lost their way. Even on the cross, even in the midst of being tortured, Jesus still embodied what the love of God was all about: forgiveness, and grace, and love.