Joshua 5:9 – 12 / Psalm 32 / Luke 15:1 – 3, 11b – 32
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania,
by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, March 27, 2022.
“ACTING LIKE THE ONE, OR
THE OTHER?”
(Homily text: Luke 15:1 – 3, 11b – 32)
The
gospel writer Luke has given us wonderful gifts in the various parables that
he’s passed along to us. So many of those that we read in his account are ones
that we wouldn’t know, absent his diligence in collecting them. For example,
think of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which is probably one of the
best-known of the parables. Or the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax
Collector, to cite another.
This
morning, we are treated to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, another of one of
the well-known parables.
But
this parable could also be known as the Parable of the Expectant Father, or the
Parable of the Hard-hearted Older Son, for there are three characters in Jesus’
story, and each one tells us something important about the nature of God, and
of our behaviors as human beings.
Let’s
begin by tracing the nature of each one of these three.
We’ll
begin with the younger son, the prodigal one.
Jesus
tells us that this younger son asks his father for his share of the
inheritance. The father, being generous, gives him what he asks for, and Jesus
tells us that he goes off to a far-off land, where he proceeds to spend all
he’s received in riotous living. Now, Jesus says, the money is all gone, and
this younger lad is reduced to working for a native of that foreign land. The
young son sinks so low that he is working with pigs. (Remember that Jesus’
original audience was made of up of Jews, for whom pigs were an unclean
animal….I believe Jesus is trying to drive home a point about the depths to
which this young man had descended.) Jesus adds that the son would like to eat
the stuff the pigs are eating, and that “no one gave him anything”.
Having
sunk to such a depth, the younger son comes to his senses, and decides to
return home. He rehearses his confession speech that he will offer to his
father along the way.
Let’s
stop there, and we’ll pick up the story of his encounter with the father in a
moment.
Now,
let’s turn our attention to the father. It turns out that the father has been
looking for his younger son, so much so that he sees the son coming a long distance
off. He runs to greet the son (remember that, in that culture, a grown man
wouldn’t run, for to do such a thing would be to cast off one’s dignity). Upon
meeting the son, the younger son begins his rehearsed speech, which is
interrupted by the father’s acceptance of him back into the family. (I think
this is an important point in the Lord’s parable, and one that it would be easy
to overlook.) The father decides to throw a party for his son.
Meanwhile,
Jesus tells us, the older son has been out in the fields. When he hears the
noise of the party going on, he comes in from the field and confronts his
father. His speech is a quite a bit different than the younger son, for the
older son recites all of the sins of the younger son, and then reminds his father
of all the good things he’s done faithfully over a long period of time.
This
parable lends itself easily to understanding it from an allegorical analysis.
(Recall that allegory essentially means “this = that”.)[1]
Beginning
with the father, we can reliably say that Jesus is trying to tell us something
about God’s nature. So then, we see that God the Father is generous, even to
the point of allowing us to do things that are harmful. But God also looks and waits, expectantly, for us to come to our
senses and to return home to Him. In this sense, then, what had been lost (in
the parable, the younger son; in our lives, us, each one of us) is found again
when we come to our senses and return to God’s ways.[2]
The
younger son depicts our ability to want to choose to live our lives by our own
desires and our own wills. Jesus makes clear that such a path often leads to
problems.
The
older son might represent our own tendency to want to stand on a platform of
our own achievements and “good deeds”. We might be tempted to say to God, “Look
at all the good stuff we’ve done.” (No doubt Jesus had in mind the attitudes of
many of God’s people in that day and time as they touted their rigorous
adherence to the requirements of the Law of Moses. The Pharisees, for one, were
marked with such behaviors, as the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax
Collector makes clear.)
The
question we might pose to ourselves this morning, in light of the message of
this parable, is this: “At what times in my life have I behaved like the
younger son? And at what times in my life, have I been tempted to try to stand
on my own laurels as a basis for being righteous?”
If
we’re honest with ourselves, it’s possible that we’ve behaved in both modes, at
least now and again.
Jesus
makes clear that the only proper approach to God is one of repentance,
contrition and confession. (What a marvelous Lenten theme!) The blunt truth is
that any right relationship with God begins with the realization that it is a
“zero-sum” proposition. We must begin by offering only ourselves, yes, even
with all our flaws, mistakes and sins. God knows all of these things anyway, so
it won’t do to try to downplay or to cloak their ugliness.
But
fortunately, God takes up the attitude of generosity, not the attitude of
judgment and disdain that we see in the older son. God is looking and waiting
for us to come to our senses.
Isn’t
it comforting to know that those are the markers of God’s nature, that He is
righteous and holy, but also merciful and forgiving? Yes, indeed, it is.
AMEN.
[1] Analyzing and understanding Holy Scripture was frequently done in the early Church by using allegory.
[2] The Parable of the Prodigal Son is the last of a series of three parables in chapter fifteen, each of which share a common theme, that of things that were lost, but had been found. The first one is the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:4 – 7< and the second is the Parable of the Lost Coin (15:8 – 10).
