TRINITY IX

August 1, 2010

St. Augustine Anglican Church

“For this thy brother was dead, and is alive again.”

The Rev. Gerald Parks +

          The Parable of the Prodigal Son, heard as today’s Gospel lesson (Luke 15:11-32) is lengthy, so long and so full of emotional crosscurrents that we may lose sight of our Lord’s point in telling it: the joy of a father’s heart when a son whom he has believed was lost, if not dead, has returned home. 

          On hearing it we may focus on the Prodigal himself, “which hath devoured thy living with harlots” (Luke 15:30); or we may question the improvident behavior of the father for giving an inheritance to a son who was too immature to manage it; or we may criticize the elder brother for his surly, selfish and unforgiving nature.  But all of these are coincidental and beside the point: a parable is not an allegory – it intends to convey one point only – and in this parable the point is that Jesus loved lost souls, sought to save them and was ever ready to receive them as we should also.  

          Which of us has not had a child, or known one, that has been foolish in some way?  We love them and want to help them, no matter how old they may have become, but the only things we can actually do are worry, lose sleep and pray, that somehow they will return to sanity – perhaps sadder, but wiser - and that everything will be alright once again.  Sometimes they do, but we must also be prepared for the fact that sometimes they don’t.  And in that event, what do we do then?

          There comes a time for each of us when those we love – children or otherwise – will seek the freedom of making their own decisions and living their own lives.  Hopefully, that desire for freedom will also be accompanied by the ability to pay for it, though we know that isn’t always the way it is, as with the Prodigal Son.  But we also know that it is the natural pathway from childhood into adulthood, and we know that we have no choice but to deal with it.  What we don’t know but will soon learn is that it is the most singularly difficult thing in our relationship with a child that we will ever be called upon to do.

          I have an adult nephew whose misfortune it was to lose his mother to cancer at an early age.  Being of a legal age to inherit, though, he was paid the proceeds from his mother’s life insurance – a sum of half a million dollars – as her only beneficiary.  It was a heady amount for a young man to deal with, as it would be for any of us, almost limitless, or so it seemed.  There being no one who could forbid it, he soon began buying things: first a new truck, then furniture and clothes.  In fact there wasn’t anything he wanted that he didn’t buy.  And being generous, he also treated himself and several of his friends to trips to Europe at his expense, flying first class and staying always in the finest hotels.  It was not exactly “riotous living,” and as far as we know there weren’t any “harlots” involved; but in a little over a year’s time, what had seemed an inexhaustible supply of cash, a short time before, was all gone; and so, by the way, were the “friends.”

          It sounds very much like a repeat of the Prodigal Son parable, I realize, and it is, but the ending to this story is not quite the same.  When my nephew returned to his father he was greeted with a reception that didn’t include a “fatted calf,” or a fine robe or jewelry, and there was no music and no dancing.  What he found was an indignant father who was not at all amused by his son’s foolishness, and who told him that his survival was his own affair.  “Get a job and be responsible,” his father told him, “I love you, but you are on your own!”

          Sometimes the greatest lessons in life are self-taught; and sometimes they are the direct result of “tough love.”  Sometimes, though, they are the product of both.  In this case the lesson was well learned, and father and son are reconciled in a relationship that is at a higher and more mature level than ever before.  That it was an expensive episode, both financially and emotionally, is clear; but the long-term lesson is also clear: making mistakes (even gigantic ones) can often turn out well, if we continue to remember that love heals – even that which we call “tough” love.

          It is clear to me that our heavenly Father is no stranger to tough love.  Every action God takes is done with love and compassion for all of us, who depend on His mercy and grace to sustain us in good times and bad.  The fact is, we depend on God’s love in everything we do: even our next breath and our next heartbeat are in His hands.  But God is a tough disciplinarian: He expects that we will follow in His way for us; and when we don’t, as the Prodigal Son did not, the consequences to us for our disobedience can be tough indeed.

          For a lot of Christians today, the idea of a “tough love” God is as foreign and repugnant as the concepts of sin and repentance seem to be.  We seek a God (and have invented one) that always agrees with our every whim, and is always warmly sentimental and foolish over us – more like a kindly old uncle than the God revealed to us in Holy Scripture.  But that is not God; it is only a caricature of God.  And more than that, it is a concoction of sinful men who wish to replace that God with a “bobble-head” version of their own making. 

          To fully understand the Parable of the Prodigal Son of the Bible, we must realize that the son was welcomed back by his father only after he had suffered and come to his senses: “And he went out and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.” (Luke 15:15-16)  Sometimes it is only through suffering that we learn; but the suffering is not nearly as important as what we learn from it.

          God takes no pleasure in our suffering, nor is He the cause of it – we are.  But God allows us to suffer from our mistakes at times so that we may learn; and when we have learned and return to Him, His joy is as the joy of the father of the Prodigal Son: “It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:32)