Lent 4
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
Joshua 4:19-24; Psalm 34:1-8; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
If you look at the listing you'll notice that we left out verses 4-11a, which turn out to be the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. What we heard goes by a number of titles, the most familiar being the Prodigal Son (where prodigal means "recklessly spendthrift") A better one, given the theme, would be "the lost sons" - and, yes, I said "lost sons", plural.
Luke has clustered together parables that, no matter the named players - sheep, coins - all have to do with relationships, and each have similar themes: about lostness, and about celebration, each of which is summed up with something like this: "There will be rejoicing in heaven when that which was lost has been found!"
Looking briefly at all three parables - and especially their cultural setting - is important, therefore.
The most important thing relevant to all three is this: Jesus' culture was one where people were considered dispensable - remember Caiaphas' statement: "It is better that one person die than that the whole people perish."?
To abandon 99 sheep in search of one lost one without either the guarantee that the lost one could be found or that the 99 wouldn't also wander off would have been considered foolhardy and irresponsible by Jesus' listeners. You just didn't do that. Jesus listeners wouldn't have called it the parable of the lost sheep, but the parable of the foolhardy shepherd, quite simply because it contradicted accepted wisdom, contradicted the accepted social contract of first century Israel.
That's how parables work! That very contradiction would have brought out what Jesus was really saying for his listeners and challenged their presuppositions. And what he was saying was this: "everyone matters; no one is dispensable."
The Parable of the Lost Coin is similar. Yes, the woman finds her coin. Then she throws a party where not just that one but quite possibly the other nine coins were used up in paying for the celebration. What, do you suppose, Jesus' listeners would have called that parable? "The Parable of the Crazy Woman"!!
Each of these parables ends the same way. When the lost sheep is returned, when the coin is found, there's extravagant - you could say, "outrageous" - celebration. It's striking in its excessiveness - totally "over the top". That's the way it is with God - "totally over the top"!
You know what to expect with the third parable, don't you - something that will violate accepted cultural norms in claiming that no one is expendable and all result in over-the-top celebration!
Jesus' hearers might give this parable a new name, too: the parable of the stupid father.
What we have here are two sons here whose relationship with their father is not healthy. The younger dares to ask for his inheritance before the father dies: "I wish you were dead", he's saying. The older remains silent and he, too receives inheritance. So he's saying the same thing as the younger son, just silently, to himself.
Both, apparently, recognize their father as a 'soft touch', both - though each in his own way - look down on him. Why, then did the younger son leave, if dad was a pushover? Couldn't he have asked for his inheritance and stayed, like his elder brother? No. Why?
Based on what happens in this parable the two brothers show themselves to be mirror images of each other, each needing the other for their own self-definition: the elder brother "needed" the irresponsible behavior of the younger to build up his own self-identification as a righteous man; the younger becomes the mirror image of that righteousness and insularity. He has to leave to live that mirror life of profligacy, even if the result was his own disintegration.
So when the profligate, spendthrift son comes back what might Jesus' listeners expect from the father, based on the cultural expectations of the time?
Probably they would have expected the father - who, remember, has been treated as dead by both his sons - to do the same thing: "you are dead to me" would be what they would expect.
Instead we have this almost irresponsible, ecstatic reception, and a wild celebration that embraces everyone - even the grim, distant older son. The father is eternally patient, endlessly generous, unrestrictedly gracious, terminally loving.
That makes this parable a special one for us, because in this parable Jesus blows apart the accepted family structure of the distant father, the obedient and the expendable sons, and presents something quite different. No one - not the profligate, nor the silently angry son is expendable. That accepted set of First Century family norms is blown apart.
Here is the Good News for us: the parable does the same for us and our own social and family norms. In our own day hasn't our own capacity for love been obscured, our capacity for celebration fizzled?
So this parable much more than the first two invites us to look at our own lives, our own families, our own social and family norms, our own cultural expectations. That picture isn't always pretty - we all know prodigals, and self-righteous folk, and sometimes we find to our own sadness that we are them in one way or another.
The parable goes further in two ways. Firstly in what it promises: joy, celebration. Unexpectedly expressive joy, unreasonably excessive celebration. This isn't where the traditional understanding focuses, is it? Traditionally this parable is seen as an invitation to repent, where we understand repentance as being miserable about past wrongs - as being that prodigal son who can fall no further.
The second thing that's striking is the order in which repentance works in this parable. It doesn't begin with repentance to get to celebration - neither son repents in the way we think of it. The Profligate son, in particular, schemes to be accepted back, he never confesses culpability.
In fact this parable works in reverse: the gifts of love and celebration lead to repentance. God makes the first move. In our encounter with God we discover who we really are and we respond with a desire to be different, to be the people God sees in us.
Through this parable our understanding - like that of Jesus' hearers - is being turned on its head! This is its message: celebrate God's gifts, especially in each other, and we will also see the contrast - all those ways we've been living that contribute to the dysfunction in our lives, all the ways that isolate and separate us because we have defined ourselves over against others. Through this new sight we come to ourselves, we find ourselves for the first time.
Begin - but don't end - with celebration! An almost irresponsible, ecstatic celebration; a wild celebration that embraces everyone. Because in God's kingdom no one is dispensable.
And give all these parables a new common name - not the ones that Jesus' listeners might have given them. The parables of the extravagantly joyful, loving, forgiving God. Amen.
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