Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church, Baltimore, Maryland
Jeremy Funk
Luke 15:1–3, 11–32
Nearly everyone knows today’s Gospel lesson. It’s often called the parable of the Prodigal—or wasteful—Son. That title refers, of course, to the father’s youngest son, who wastes the value of his share of family property in a distant land and returns, ruined, to find his father’s arms nevertheless open wide, ready to take him in once more. Even though the common title centers on the little brother, I find myself drawn this morning to the reflect on the two other major characters in the story: big brother, who feels taken for granted, and his foolish father, who nearly loses everything. They meet in the last scene.
Big brother had started sweating hours ago, as he did every day, working in the fields. Now trudging home he catches strains of music. As he nears the house the sounds grow louder—music and motion and laughter. He doesn’t remember that any plans had been made for the evening, so he asks a servant what’s up.
“Your brother’s back, and your dad is serving up the fattened calf to celebrate that he’s here safe and sound.”
Only after being let into the loop does big brother lose his cool. After such a long workday, he experiences this news as his last straw. Our lesson says, “Then he became angry and refused to go in.” When his father comes out, big brother doesn’t even greet him. Big brother’s first word is “Listen!” When had his father last listened to him—really listened to him? What comes next is righteous protest:
“I have followed all your instructions, minded all my p’s and q’s. But you haven’t given me permission to have my friends over, even for a small barbecue. Yet when this son of yours”—he can’t even bear to acknowledge his relationship with his brother—“when this son of yours returns, who’s called you as good as dead, who’s spent half the value of your property with riffraff, and who’s ruined our standing in this village, you pull out all the stops for him!”
What’s clear from big brother’s tirade is that he’s lost respect for and connection with his father. He feels taken for granted. He is the less favored son. Yet he may be seething below the surface too, measuring other angles of his father’s behavior as pathetic. Commentators Richard Rohrbaugh and Bruce Malina discuss the cultural context of this parable and call out foolishness in the father’s deeds: First, flouting accepted norms, the father agrees to divide his property while he is still alive. “In village life,” the commentators point out, “nonconformity is always seen as a threat to community stability.”[1] Second, besides upsetting life as usual by giving out his inheritance early, the father allows little brother to leave, to become a free agent, to separate himself from the interpersonal village economy, and so to become the object of derision and ostracism.
Little brother, in fact, sells off his half of the family property to non-Israelites. By selling to Gentiles, he doesn’t allow for the possibility (described in Leviticus and perhaps applied in actual practice) that the family might get its land back at the time of Jubilee every fifty years. As Rohrbaugh and Malina put it, “since land . . . is the welfare of any village family, the younger son has hurt far more than just himself. His entire extended family will forever live with diminished prospects.”[2]
To return to our story’s final scene, then, on one side of a closed door stands big brother: someone whom his father has likely too often taken for granted and who’s frustrated by that. Opening the door and stepping out into the anger is the foolish father who nearly lost everything. From his first son’s perspective, the father’s foolish because he capitulated to the whims of his youngest son; he’s foolish because he did this despite probably having a good idea of little brother’s character and of how that half would end up—and if he didn’t, he should have. After all, because of little brother, the entire family has been alienated from the village. Finally, from big brother’s perspective, the father is foolish for running down the road (something that should not be done) to protect a pariah, and for celebrating him.
Scholars of Jesus’s parables have reached little consensus about how to interpret them. Some students of the parables caution us against automatically assigning the role of God to a particular character, even if tradition has done so.[3] Still, in the parable before us today, the foolish father who nearly lost everything does remind me of God.
The father who’s nearly lost everything has nothing more to lose. One can only guess that he cut his property in half out of love for his restless son. Now he’s beyond grateful to have that youngest one back from a distant country, so he’s willing to open a closed door in his own house to try to restore connection with his oldest. Notice in what the father says the links he tries to make between himself and his firstborn son—with you and me, with yours and mine, with we: “His father came out and began to plead with him . . . ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate . . .’”
The father who’s nearly lost everything won’t stop until he’s done all he can to unite his family and to strengthen human connection. He throws a party, quite possibly for the entire village, to celebrate his son’s return and to repair relationships. “We had to celebrate and rejoice,” he tells his oldest son, “because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
Doesn’t that sound a lot like our vulnerable, foolish God? We Christians claim that God became human in Jesus Christ. We trust that God came to us in Jesus because God wants to be deeply known, wants to be with us. Jesus came teaching us what the world can be like if we choose to live under God’s love. He showed us signs of its presence in his healings. Our barrier to God may be our recklessness, our own brittle vision of righteousness, or something else. Well, Jesus himself partied with all kinds—with prodigals as well as prudes. And for all that, he ended up dead on a cross. Was his life only a fool’s errand?
No. As the cross looms larger before us each week, let et us proclaim with Paul that in Christ’s cross God has made foolish the wisdom of the wise, that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, that God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. In Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself. In the weakness, powerlessness, foolishness of the Christ’s cross, God identifies most closely with what it is to be vulnerable—to suffer, to come to the end with no way out, to be taken for a fool.
The good news goes on. Foolery is not the end. It’s only the beginning. In this season of Lent, let us marvel that—foolish as it sounds—the spent life of Jesus has become the divine life. God changed the cross of Jesus Christ, the instrument of his torture and execution, into an instrument of saving love for us. As we marvel, let us be changed.
How has Saint Luke’s worked out, lived out, this foolish love of God? Saint Luke’s stayed open when the folks who knew said we should close. Our congregation continues to meet, even if it’s in the church basement. Saint Luke’s reaches out to a neighborhood that some might call forgotten. We’re working to make Saturdays safe for children and working to form relationships here in Franklin Square. And now our missioner for community engagement, Trivia, has joined us in that work. The work is slow, and given the potential lack of results, some might consider it foolish. But what some take as foolish is not the end. The reckless, expansive, foolish love of God is only the beginning.
Maybe because I’m an eldest child I identify with big brother in our parable today. Though I don’t feel underappreciated, I do care about working hard, about pleasing my parents and family. So far as I know, my life has never gone wayward or been riotous! Over the last couple weeks I’ve realized that big brother may not like change. I hazard he’s gotten used to his kid brother, the party animal, being away. He spends his days in the field and likes coming home to a quiet house.
These guesses come as I’ve been looking over our lesson in view of what’s going on in my own life. Levi, my service dog, is living with us now. For the next two weeks of service-dog training, I’m in what’s called the bonding period: Levi is not to leave the house except to go to the yard or to training classes. My dog is remarkably well trained, but he is still a two-year-old lab with loads of energy. A couple days before Levi came to live with us, I began missing our quiet evenings and weekends at home. Home won’t be the same anymore—not with Levi and with Helen’s golden retriever, Emma, both on the premises. This change is exciting and hard at the same time.
So when big brother realizes that a party has broken out for little brother, and when Jesus says of big brother “He became angry and refused to go in,” I can understand big brother’s reaction. Home won’t be the same anymore—not with the kid back rowdy as ever, not with crazy old Dad taking him in again without ever admitting that the brat has ruined us. Sometimes we in the church feel the same way about change: if new folks come, if dear friends move away, if the priest retires and a new priest arrives, things will change and church won’t be the same anymore.
As we walk into and through the shadow of the cross, let us marvel and be changed. Our lesson ends with big brother and with his father, who nearly lost everything, still standing outside together. The father cannot plead forever. Big brother cannot stand forever before a closed door. Either he will refuse to go in, or he will go in. Either he will turn away from home and become like little brother, or he will go on in and find what is to be found.
I was having trouble focusing enough to write this sermon on Friday because Levi was pacing in my office and occasionally picking out paper scraps or old envelopes from my recycle bin. After I got over being annoyed for being bothered, I began to notice Levi’s curiosity and joy at discovering so many interesting things. As he started emptying my recycle bin, I tried to imagine him saying, “Look at this!” or asking, “What is that?” I pray that we as individuals and as a congregation are able to know such joy in finding what is to be found. Foolery is not the end. It’s only the beginning. As we walk into and through the shadow of the cross, let us marvel and be changed. Amen.
[1] Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (2nd ed., Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 290.
[2] Ibid.
[3] See, for example, Richard Ford, The Parables of Jesus and the Problems of the World (forthcoming).
Spreading Wide My Narrow Hands 