Luke 15:11-32
The Risk of Grace
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
March 27, 2022
Image: New in Christ by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman
© a sanctified art | sanctifiedart.org
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/axiRiW-micQ
Somewhere in America, there lived a man and a woman who had 8 children, 4 sons and 4 daughters. They lived through some world wars and some local wars and the Great Depression. The children had enough to eat and clothes to wear, but mostly they grew up in poverty. Eventually they each made their way out into the world. Almost all of them became successful in their chosen occupations. None of them became very wealthy, but most were comfortably middle-class. Back on the farm, the decades went by. The adult children went home regularly. They maintained and modernized the place for their aging parents. One day, the father died of a heart attack. The mother continued to live there, but neither she nor her husband had been farming for years. The farmland was rented out to others. She got older and eventually she went to live in a nursing home. The farm was put into a trust with its income providing care for her for the rest of her life and with the stipulation that when she died, the farm would be sold and evenly divided among her 8 children.
One of her daughters, Susie, had not done as well as her siblings. She had made a series of poor choices and never seemed to land on her feet. One day, she went to visit her mother in the nursing home. She asked her mother to give her a parcel of land from the farm, maybe 100 acres. Susie planned to farm it herself. The mother, who had always felt bad for Susie, agreed and signed the papers that Susie had drawn up. Well, of course, the entire farm was now held in trust and what Susie was attempting to do was illegal. When she tried to file the papers, her siblings found out. She did not get the farmland she wanted and none of her brothers and sisters ever spoke to her again.
This could be a true story. We all know about serious family fights and a lot of them are about money.
Jesus told a story about a family fight. This story, which is often called the parable of the prodigal son, may be the most well-known of all of Jesus’ stories. We have heard it interpreted from the father’s point of view, from the younger brother’s point of view, from the experience of the older brother. I have even seen a few sermons written from the point of view of a mother, whom Jesus doesn’t even mention.
This story is found in the Bible and so we think it is a story about God. And maybe it is. But first, it is a story about a human family in all its messiness.
The messiness starts when the younger brother asks for his inheritance and the father gives it to him. The son might be considered rude or bold to ask for it, but the father definitely looks foolish for giving it to him. Ben Sirach, an influential rabbi from two hundred years before Jesus, counseled “do not give your property to another, in case you change your mind and must ask for it. . . When the days of your life reach their end, at the time of your death, [then]distribute your property.” (Sirach 33:20, 23)
About the time that the young son has blown through his wad of cash, famine has come to the land. He has no money to buy food, but less food is available for everyone, undoubtedly driving up prices. So, how much of this should be laid on the father? If he had just said no, would the younger son have gotten into that predicament?
Amy-Jill Levine, New Testament professor at Vanderbilt, reports that people from different cultures see this differently. Readers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa tend to blame it on a combination of bad parenting and personal irresponsibility. Russian readers point to the famine – there was no food to distribute. And one Kenyan graduate student said that the real problem was a lack of generosity, that when the young man was hungry in the far country, no one gave him anything.[1]
That’s kind of what happens in the family stories we know, isn’t it? Some parents blame themselves— they think “if only I had not been so hard on him” or “I should have practiced tough love and just said no.” Outsiders mutter about permissive parenting and about kids today who just don’t have any respect.
Sometimes, the person in this kind of predicament recognizes their own error and understands that they kind of brought the problem on themselves. Sometimes, they are too ashamed to go home or ask for help. In other cases, they may continue to blame everything and everyone one else.
“I was doing just fine. It would have all worked out if it hadn’t been for the darn famine.”
Or “If my father had just been better at his job, then he would have been wealthier and I would have had a better inheritance. This is not my fault.”
You probably know real-life people who blame themselves too much or too little. Parents who are torn up about decisions their children have made. Siblings who are furious at or indifferent to or grieving for a sister or brother who isn’t around much any more.
The story gets even messier when the younger brother decides to go home again. This is the fulcrum, the hinge point of interpretation in the story. It says that the son came to himself -- but that statement is neutral. It could mean a couple of different things. It could mean that he takes responsibility for his actions, that he is sincerely sorry and wants to make things right with his father and brother. Or it could mean that he realizes he is out of options, except the option which had worked before, which was manipulating his father.
We can read the story either way. It is really ambiguous. I have always chosen to read it as if the younger brother is sincerely sorry. But there are some clues that that might not be the case. First, it says that while he is desperately hungry, he thinks about his father’s servants who have more than they need to eat. When he talks to himself about the situation, it sounds like he resents the servants for having more than they should rightly have, while he, a son and heir, is starving. It is only when he plans what to say to his father, that he sounds willing to give up his status.[2]
In his planning, he keeps repeating the term “father”, even though he says he is not worthy to be called “son”, He still think of himself as the son of his father. When the two men are reunited, he begins with the word “Father,” not “Sir” or “Lord”. As soon as he speaks the word, he reinstates himself a son, not a hired worker or slave.[3]
Is he sincerely sorry? Who knows? I’m a first-born child. Are there any other oldest children in the room? How many remember the rules in your house – rules about how late you could stay out, how old you had to be to go to certain movies or before you could spend the night at a friend’s house? How many remember seeing your parents change the rules for your younger siblings? Your parents let them do stuff way before you got to. That’s a familiar dynamic.
Those of us who are older children may more easily see that the younger son may be a classic manipulator. He was able to convince his father to divide up his estate, after all. Maybe he knows that his carefully planned speech “I have sinned against heaven and earth. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” is the exact right thing to say to get his father to welcome him home.
The father either thinks that his son is sincere or he doesn’t care whether he is. The father is willing to look foolish, willing to be taken advantage of, for the joy of having his son home again.
In all the excitement, no one has thought to inform the older brother. As he finishes his chores for the day, he hears the noise of a party. He only finds out that his brother is home because he asks a servant. Then, he absolutely refuses to be under the same roof as his long-lost brother. He knows from experience how his old man indulges him. His kid brother is probably going to ask for something more, for something that now belongs to him, and his dad will probably hand it over as well.
It is at this point that the father realizes that he has also lost his older son. The older son’s resentment, which is somewhat justified, has eaten away at their relationship even though he stayed home and worked dutifully all these years. The story ends with a party going on inside while the father is outside pleading with his older son, assuring him of his love and care.
When someone mentions this parable to me, I think “oh that’s the one where the son runs away and the father welcomes him home and all is forgiven.” I don’t think to myself “that’s the one where you have to make up your own ending.” But that’s really closer to the truth. Jesus leaves so much unsaid. What happens next? Does the older brother reconcile with his father, with his brother? Does the younger brother become a considerate, contributing member of the household? Or does he hang around long enough to recover and then take off again on another get-rich scheme? Does the village speak of a wise and generous father, or of an indulgent, gullible fool?
I’m left wondering what Jesus really intended with this parable. Luke says that he told it because some religious leaders were judging him for the people he was friendly with. Maybe they thought Jesus was being taken advantage of, that Jesus was the fool. Maybe this story was Jesus’ way of saying that everyone is invited to the celebration -the ones whose life mission is to do good and those whose only goal is to party hearty. Maybe he is saying that he knows some people resent him and other people want to take advantage of him, but that is the risk of grace. Extending grace, trying to include everyone, often ends up pleasing no one.
Trying to bring the family together, going for the joy of reconciliation, of having everyone at the party under the same roof is really hard. Some one is going to be resentful. Someone will need admit they were wrong. Some one may have to forgive. Some one may end up being duped.
Grace is risky, it is costly, as Bonhoeffer says. You might look foolish. You might be taken advantage of or stabbed in the back. That’s very real. “But,” Jesus seems to be saying, “it’s worth the risk. It’s worth the risk for the possibility of joy. The joy of being found again, of being welcomed home. It’s worth it for the possibility of joy.
It's worth the risk of meeting your sibling halfway. Risking their rejection. Offering an apology. There is a joy that is possible if you cross the threshold and share the space with the one you want to despise.
Grace is risky. Grace is costly. Grace can get you killed. But it just might be worth it for the joy.
[1] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), p. 55
[2] Richard Swanson, A Provocation: Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C at https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2022/03/20/a-provocation-4th-sunday-in-lent-march-27-2022-luke-151-3-11-32/
[3] Amy-Jill Levine, p. 64.