Dear People of Christ Church,
This week I’ve been spending a lot of time with the prodigal son, part of our Gospel Passage for Sunday. On Tuesday nights our Bible study is on the Scripture for the coming Sunday, so we spent time listening for what this passage says to us now. Usually we read the prodigal son by itself, but in a happy accident we heard the parables it follows: the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the woman who has lost a coin. All three stories, taken together, have a bit of a different sense than they do individually, which is how we usually hear them.
Hearing it as we did next to stories about lost sheep and lost coins, we have an opportunity to see the story as not being about the son’s repentance, but instead about the father’s pure love and forgiveness. A sheep can’t say it’s sorry. A coin doesn’t go off and enjoy itself under the couch and then “come to itself.” Is the son actually sorry? Maybe, maybe not. What’s at stake, if so? Maybe the father loves him so much it doesn’t matter. He “comes to himself.” But maybe it’s not his volition or his repentance that are the point.
The Jewish Bible Scholar Amy Jill Levine says that we get it all wrong when we read this text by itself, because that focuses too much on the son. Instead, it’s actually all about the father. What’s more, there’s also nothing especially Christian about how he reacts; it’s not like Jesus was reflecting some new innovation in the love of God, trying to set up the father as acting somehow contrary to how he’d normally react in his cultural context. Instead, Levine says, fathers love—that’s just what they do, there’s nothing unusual about it. She quotes similar rabbinic stories like this:
Pesikta Rabbati (184–85) recounts: A king had a son who had gone astray from his father on a journey of a hundred days. His friends said to him, “Return to your father.” He said, “I cannot.” Then his father sent word, “Return as far as you can, and I will come the rest of the way to you.” So God says, “Return to me, and I will return to you.”
Returning to God, allowing God to find us, being forgiven even when we don’t repent—one of the translations we heard on Tuesday night has the father calling for the ring and the robe before the son has even had time to say anything at all. It’s just his son. He just loves him and is thrilled to have him back.
I’m sharing here images from our own stained glass windows. Yes, it might not actually be “about” the son, but look at the suffering on the younger son’s face—look at the rage on the older brother’s, seeing the party in the distance—see how broken they both were, and in such different circumstances. More than one person mentioned how we remembered former beloved parishioner Marcia Luce’s frank distaste for the story, thinking the older brother go ripped off. Maybe it’s because I identify too much with the younger brother, but I can’t muster up too much sympathy for his anger. I just love this father too much, thinking about how much I need unconditional love like that, thinking about how far God has come to find me.
Blessings,
Sara+
P.S.—thanks to Heather Leonardo, who is offering the children’s sermon this Sunday!
Blessings,
Sara+
Miss the sermon from Sunday, February 28? It’s here.