Embracing Forgiveness

Our Lenten journey focuses on reflecting how we may have fallen away from God, then repenting, and asking God to take us back in forgiveness.  Today, we consider the other side of the coin.  What does it mean to grant forgiveness to others when they ask us to forgive them?  Granting forgiveness requires demonstrating and living love and compassion, and our parable today begins to uncover the difficulty of embracing forgiveness as we forgive those who trespass against us.

We are all familiar with this parable of the prodigal son.  But exactly what is a prodigal?  Well, a prodigal is someone who is extravagant or generous.  A prodigal is someone who gives in large and copious amounts.  Our story today contains (1) a wandering prodigal son, (2) a rule-following elder son, and (3) a father who treats both sons in loving ways, even though the sons live their lives very differently.  Which character are you in this parable; with whom do you feel kinship?  Which character makes you just a little uncomfortable?  And which character makes you think?  Hmm?

Let us be in prayer together, “Generous extravagant loving God; who is the prodigal in our lives?  Who asks for forgiveness, and how do we treat that prodigal, embracing forgiveness in our relationship? Amen.”

When we consider this tale of a spendthrift prodigal son, his father and his other stay-at-home elder brother, I would imagine most of us think that the father in the story represents God, the loving father who accepts us all into his love and forgives us when we repent.  That is why this story is told during Lent, right?  The prodigal son finally repents, the father forgives and accepts him back, and we are invited to do likewise, repenting during this time in Lent.  That’s one nice standard interpretation, but parables are stories like a prism or jewel, with many facets and glimmers.  In this regular explanation, God accepts us all, even if we have strayed.  God forgives us if we turn back to God and repent.  But, what about the elder stay-at-home follow-all-the-rules son.  What does this son teach us?

Actually, if we stop a moment to be very candid about our feelings, most of us think, feel and conduct our lives a lot like the elder son.  We believe everyone should work heard, keeping their nose to the grindstone and follow all the rules.  Then we will be rewarded accordingly.  An honest day’s work earns an honest day’s pay.  Follow the rules and you will be rewarded.  If you listen to some Christians, they take this a step further.  They believe Katrina swept New Orleans away because those people were sinners—they did not follow the rules and so they got punished.   Perhaps this is human nature, believing that we are rewarded for being good and faithful children, while others are punished because they fall short of our idea of God’s plan.  But Jesus’ ministry denies this interpretation.  Our parable actually teaches the opposite, teaching instead the golden rule that we are to forgive as we wish to be forgiven ourselves.

The elder stay-at-home son really represents how most of us live our lives, expecting that our conscientious rule-following behavior will be rewarded, and those that are not rule followers will somehow be given less.  The elder brother believes the prosperity gospel, meaning those that follow the rules will be blessed and prosper, and those who disregard the rules will suffer.  But in this parable, the father’s grace and forgiveness model a very different path, the path of compassion and reconciliation.  This parable rejects the prosperity gospel and instead models forgiveness.  Sadly, however, the elder brother does not forgive and is trapped in anger and hurt, even while the father forgives and moves on in reconciliation.  This parable actually presents the choices each of us has when it comes to embracing forgiveness and forgiving others.

Our parable models two ways to respond to the prodigal son’s repentance.  One model is the father, who forgives generously.  The other model is the elder brother, who complains that rule-breakers should be punished and not forgiven.  The father welcomes the partying, generous extravagant repentant prodigal back with loving open arms, and throws a feast of celebration, modeling how we as Christians are called by Jesus to treat one another in forgiveness, acceptance and love.  The father celebrates relationships and forgiveness.  In the other hand, the elder brother models how most of us really feel about sharing our inheritance with someone who didn’t earn it and squandered it away.  The Christian journey then is moving from how the elder brother responds in anger and resentment to how the father responds in forgiveness, grace and love. 

Well, so far, so good.  We understand what the elder son and father represent.  But then, who or what does the prodigal son represent?  If Christians are called to move from the model of the elder brother’s anger to the model of the father’s embracing forgiveness, who or what does the prodigal son represent and teach us?

This parable has always reminded me of another vexing parable.  Remember the parable where the workers in the vineyard are all given the same wage regardless of how long they worked that day?  I think that parable teaches the same lesson as our parable today.  The workers who work the longest but get paid the same as those working just an hour are like the elder brother in our parable today.  When the vineyard owner pays everyone the same regardless how long they worked, the longest working rule-following workers demand that work and pay should follow the rules!  But as we think about the vineyard parable, who does the vineyard owner represent?  Isn’t the vineyard owner a prodigal, someone who spends extravagantly and generously and breaks the rules?  In that parable, the vineyard owner asks, “Can’t I pay people as I wish, even being extravagant if I want to be?”  In the vineyard parable, we easily see the vineyard owner as gracious God, offering generous and extravagant love to everyone.  Not  equal pay, but gracious, and extravagant pay.  So I have a question for you.  Since we can see the vineyard owner as modeling God in generous and extravagant giving, can we perhaps consider the prodigal son as modeling an extravagant and rule-breaking Jesus in our parable today?

The prodigal parable begins with an interesting observation, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners, and eats with them.’” The context of this parable is trying to help us understand how and why Jesus was breaking the social rules and mixing with the riff-raff.  Jesus ate and drank with the rabble of society.  He celebrated life and talked much about parties and banquets and having a good time.  It sounds to me like Jesus lived an extravagant and generous life, not a life of following the rules and doing the “right thing” like the elder brother.  Really, if you think about it, Jesus’ life was more like the rule-breaking prodigal son than the elder stay-at-home rule-following brother.  Jesus flaunted the rules, socialized with tax collectors and sinners, spoke to loose woman hanging around at wells, healed folks who were not the social elite or on the best-dressed list, healing on the Sabbath because he cared more about healing and compassion than he did about the religious rules.  Christ reaches out in forgiveness and reconciling love to all of us, even when we are unlovable, as our passage from 2 Corinthians says.  And we are invited also into a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation, responding like Christ, in love and embracing forgiveness. 

Now, I fully realize talking about the prodigal son as modeling Jesus is absolutely scandalous, but isn’t that what the Gospels teach us over and over again?  Jesus was a social rule-breaker; Jesus was scandalous!  He was not the good elder stay-at-home brother that followed all the rules.  Jesus believed more in people than in the rules, he believed more in compassion and grace than in religious or social regulations.  Jesus was more interested in telling truth to power than following the rules.  Jesus was scandalous, extravagant and abundantly generous [pause].  Jesus was a prodigal son.

Now I understand this upside-down interpretation might make us a bit uncomfortable—I know it makes me squirm.  But Jesus’ parables made his hearers squirm, and perhaps we can learn from our uncomfortableness in the same way Jesus challenged his original hearers.  I recognize the elder son in me, the one who always follows the rules.  I recognize that rule-follower part of me struggles with this interpretation.  I live my life trying to be gracious and forgiving like the father, but I humanly fail there also, and must constantly repent—I’m human.  Our Lenten journey acknowledges our shortcomings and turns back around to God.   This is the Christian journey, growing in grace and in knowledge of Christ; moving from our human impulses modeled by the elder brother’s rule-following greed and growing into embracing the fathers’ forgiveness, expressed in generosity and extravagant prodigal abundance.  The Lenten journey challenges all of us to grow in grace, growing from following the rules to embracing forgiveness.

If we know that the Christian life is graciously growing and learning, leaving the life of the elder-son and transforming into the gracious father who embraces forgiveness, then the only character left in our parable to model Jesus or God is, in fact, the prodigal son.  Jesus lived like the vineyard landlord, generously flaunting the rules and extravagantly feeding and healing everyone, no matter whether they followed the religious rules, or not.  Jesus and God care more about people and unconditional love and forgiveness than about any human social rule.

What would it be like to live a life of prodigal generosity and extravagant forgiveness like Jesus, living outside of the social rules and embracing forgiveness with and for one another?  What would it be like to live like Jesus in unconditional prodigal love?  Amen.