From rich food, we go to the prodigal son and feasting. Lent Lectionary is finding a celebratory groove in these days of late winter. Which suits me just fine. Next week, I’m heading home to Ottawa for a long-awaited visit, and I’m looking forward to some feasting with my family. Not sure if the prodigal title fits, but…
This passage is often retitled by commentators as the story of the Prodigal Father. It is the father who is wastefully extravagant. First, he fulfils his younger son’s request to divide up the family inheritance early, and then when the money is gone, he extravagantly welcomes the silly son home again and throws a party. An unimaginable welcome – the stuff of legends. This story has within it all the great and ancient father and son stories, and all the tales of brothers. It is Aegeus waiting on the cliffs for Theseus, it is the birthright battles of Jacob and Esau, it is the love of Jacob for Joseph, it’s Daedalus and Icarus and a father’s fateful providing. And yet, it is more. It is a depiction of compelling, beautiful love that’s wasteful in its abundance and extravagant in its unboundedness. It is hope and it is gospel.
When I was a teenager off at summer camp, one of the youth leaders told this story as a personal account. He was clever in his telling – weaving a confessional tone and changing enough of the details that we didn’t wake up to what the source story was. Some of us had already heard part of his real life story, and this monologue was presented, in a way, as a second chapter. He told us that he’d taken money from his parents and run away to Toronto. Drugs and parties and we were hooked. Then he told us about going back home again and about expecting his folks to call the cops on him. It was a really powerful story. And had some powerful reaction, too. People believed him. And then felt betrayed when they figured it out. It got a bit complicated.
Stories become really powerful when we make them personal.
Some people read this passage in Luke not just as a story, but as a reflection of Jesus’ own life. He left home. He had conflicting relationship with his siblings, though his mother seemed never to close the door on him. Perhaps this is one more layer of power to this story.
Have you read Henri Nouwen’s wise book about this passage, and about the painting by Rembrandt that depicts it? The Return of the Prodigal Son describes Nouwen’s own experience of making this story personal. Through his mediation on Rembrandt’s painting, Nouwen slowly identifies with each of the characters in the story. The younger son at the centre, who wastes what he has been given and returns home. The older son who has always been faithful and struggles with his father’s reaction. The father who lives with open hands and loves his sons abundantly. Nouwen demonstrates how both sons are called to repentance. Both need to choose to return to love and both need their father’s open arms. Neither are righteous as both are confined by their own self-focus. In a way, both need to return home. If you aren’t already familiar with this reflection, I suggest that you find a copy. Ask your minister – there may very well be one on the library shelf – and it is excellent Lenten reading.
The context of this homecoming story in Luke is the Pharisees’ complaint about Jesus’ feasting. Jesus responds first with the parable of the lost sheep, then one about a woman with a lost coin. The lectionary reading only gives us the story of the prodigal son this week, and the other two celebratory stories remain in the shadow. But what a response to criticism! Three stories about the importance of joy in the life of faith. To steal a book title from Bill Duncan, this chapter in Luke is certainly a smiling school for Calvinists. Necessary stories for our Lenten days.
In another place, Nouwen wrote these words:
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
For joy, read love. Read life. Read Christ. We need to choose to have open eyes and open arms that we might return home. We need to make this our story, not just by telling it convincingly perhaps, but but finding out how we already live it.
