The “prodigal” reveals so much about us. That we long for forgiveness for ourselves. And something else for others.
For Sunday
The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Collect
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
“He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.”
Reflection
This parable Jesus tells is of a lost son. We know it as the parable of the Prodigal Son. It is perhaps Jesus’s most famous parable. Artists throughout history have tried to capture its essence in paint and music for centuries. It is at once beautiful and tragic.
As a teaching, it relies on a simple idea: that we are bound to compare one another. And we will judge wastefulness as bad and loyalty as good every single time. What better way to write a story to illustrate that dynamic than two sons: the good one and the bad one, the older and the younger, the wise and the impulsive.
So Jesus casts the story perfectly and then upends all of our expectations.
Even when we’ve read this story a thousand times, we fall for its spell every time!
Each reading: the younger sounds petulant and stupid. The older as justified in his hurt. We can’t help it. It’s automatic.
It is striking when we realize that this is how everyone reads it.
Because this is how the brothers would have experienced it. And that righteous anger at the younger brother seems less and less just when we imagine that nobody has sympathy for him. Nobody, of course, except those that have been in his shoes.
The best line, of course, is the last one. But this one, earlier in the story, carves at my heart:
“He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.”
Luke 15:16
The younger son, already punished by his actions and his separation, can find neither sympathy, nor a simple hand out. Nothing at all. Not a soul anywhere will give him scraps, even trash. Not even one.
The coldness with which we treat the beggar; part skepticism and part disdain; reveals our own sense of moral justification in refusing to be generous.
And it reveals the thumb we naturally put on the scale in support of the older brother. That we might assume a man deserves to starve. Or perhaps the fates should claim him. Even his death would leave the conscience clear, for he brought this upon himself.
These, of course, are not moral positions, but sadistic ones. And it reveals how foreign the father’s celebration is from our own hearts. For it is far easier to imagine all the ways the older brother’s frustrations make sense (and ought to be excused) than to consider that the younger may be reconciled to the father; that we all ought to celebrate this; and that it is, indeed, a miracle.
It is curious that we might struggle with something so near to God’s heart.