Prodigal Sons

By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector

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Families are messy and complicated. 
We don’t have to look far to see these dynamics within our own families, and when we turn to the scriptures, we find we are in good company. Including Jesus' family, which features a teen mom, an adoptive dad, and brothers that reject him.  So when we are struggling with our family, lift these challenges up in prayer, because Christ quite literally knows what we’re going through. 

Today’s parable draws our attention to a father and his two sons. One fascinating element of this story is how the family sidesteps the normative inheritance practices followed by Jews since the time of Moses. Like now, inheritances were generally distributed upon the death of a parent. Asking a parent to advance an inheritance was akin to saying ‘I wish you were dead.’  The eldest son typically received a double portion, as they were expected to carry on the family estate which supported the wider family. If a family farm keeps being divided, it runs the risk of eventually not being large enough to support the family. 

By accommodating the younger son’s request, the father was required to sell off assets. If we think about how compound interest works, this means it’s not just the sold assets that were lost, but all the interest those assets would have produced had they waited until the father died. For example, if the father sold off a cow - how many calves would that cow have produced that would have generated further income for the family estate? By acquiescing to the younger son’s desire, the father is creating a potential financial strain on the inheritance that belonged to the older son and his lineage. 
 
We’re not told how the father or older brother felt about any of this.  What we know is the father distributed his inheritance in life. The younger son took the cash and got as far away as possible - free at last. Meanwhile, the older brother has now inherited the family estate. The father now owns nothing. He is dependent on the older son to care for and financially sustain him. 

Now let’s fast forward to the brother’s return. The father is so overjoyed to see his younger son, that he adorns him with a robe, ring, and sandals. He orders a calf to be killed for a feast. Which all sounds swell, except, none of it was his to legally give away!

It’s like taking one child’s lego set - which they had great plans for - and giving it to their sibling who had already built their set, and sold for profit. Of course the first child is going to be upset. For them it would be a great injustice. Except this father and his sons were not disagreeing about lego sets. 

Having gotten his cash, the younger son left the country, and was living large until he ran out of money. When a famine overtook the region, things started to get rough. He became a hired hand for a local farmer. Yet this job did not provide enough to resolve his hunger. Remembering how the hired hands were treated at his family farm, he decided he would tell his father he had sinned - to acknowledge that he was no longer worthy to be called son, but would his father please take him back as a hired hand. 

The younger son may be sincere in his regret. Though some scholars doubt it. The younger son’s comment is offered in a way that is reminiscent of Pharaoh speaking to Moses and Aaron during the plague of locusts. Pharaoh says: 
“I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. Now forgive my sin once more and pray to the Lord your God to take this deadly plague away from me.” (Ex 10:16)

In other words, saying whatever is necessary to get what you want. In that context, it makes the younger brother’s comment seem less sincere. Yet when someone apologizes to us, we can’t really know their intentions. We have to listen to our instincts. Or in some instances, ignore those instincts, and offer forgiveness anyways - because we know it is the right thing for the whole family or community.  

In any case, when the father saw his younger son off in the distance, walking towards the family farm, he was, “...filled with compassion.” In one of the most moving acts of love within scripture, the father, who is presumably an old man now, physically runs to his son.He throws his arms around him, and kisses him. 

The father doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the younger son’s apology. He is too busy wanting to celebrate the greatest thing possible. His son has returned home, his family is finally together again. “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”  This is a level of joy that is beyond day to day. It is a life altering moment for the father, no matter his son's intentions.

To compound the family tension, no one even bothers to tell the older son that his brother has returned home. He is out working in the fields, while his father gives away his property to celebrate the return of his brother. It isn’t until he asks a nearby slave what is happening that he learns about his brother's return. All this is to say - if the older brother seems livid, he is certainly within his rights.

Anger is a funny thing. It is generally a secondary emotion, covering up deeper feelings within us. The older brother could have heard the news and stormed into the family party and made a scene. Instead, he swallows his rage, like a carbonated beverage bottled and shaken up. It will blow on whomever dares open it. 

So when the father comes out to the field, and pleads with him to come inside and join the celebration, the older son erupts. Behind his angry statements are not only the anger at this one event, but the bottled up resentments that have been sitting and stewing for some time. This was the final straw. 

The older son compares the work he’s done to support his father, like that of a slave. He laments there has never been any kind of celebration for his presence, and he has never been anything but respectful and hard working. He is so full of hurt and injustice that he can’t even refer to his sibling as a brother. Yet when this son of yours comes back after wasting everything you gave him and abandoning our family, you throw him a party? His father tells him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” 


There is nothing about this situation that seems fair. So what do we do with this text? How do we make sense of it?

It begins to make more sense if we consider the wider context in which Jesus tells the parable. Jesus had been hanging out with the kind of folks that nobody ever wanted around. The folks that make us wary and want to call the authorities to move them along. Jesus was breaking all the agreed upon social norms by eating with them. The Pharisees saw this, and were once again deeply troubled.

We often vilify those who challenge Jesus, such as the Pharisees. But generally speaking - that’s a mistake.  Challengers often represent religious leaders who were doing everything they could to protect the traditions of their faith, as they understood them. They thought they were doing the morally right thing. 

As one commentator noted, the offense these religious leaders are trying to get at, is that these people Jesus is eating with, don’t deserve to be spending time with Jesus.* The sheer fact that Jesus is eating with them elevates their dignity, and from the perspective of the religious authorities, such an elevation lowers Jesus' dignity. Yet in telling this parable alongside a couple of others, Jesus is saying to them: Yeah, that’s the point. 

Why would Jesus eat with those society had considered beneath him? Well, because he was trying to help society rediscover mercy, grace, forgiveness, and compassion as God intended them. In her book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, Anne Lamott defines mercy as, “...radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves absolving the unabsolvable, forgiving the unforgivable.”** 

She compares this kind of forgiveness as setting a prisoner free, only to discover all this time, that the prisoner was really you.** She explains that mercy is not something we do. Rather, “... it is something in you, accessed, revealed, or cultivated through use, like a muscle. We find it in the most unlikely places, never where we first look.”** 

In this parable, the father is able to absolve the unabsolvable, forgive the unforgivable. Irrelevant of whether the younger son is sincere or not. The motivations behind returning home simply do not matter to the father. Instead, he has compassion on his younger son’s troubles, and shows him the kind of love that will remind him just how precious he is in the eyes of his father. What the older brother struggles to understand is that when the father elevates the younger son, it does not lower the value of the older son, and everything he has done to support his father. It’s completely unrelated, as hard as that is for the older son to believe. 

In spending time with those on the margins, and flipping community norms, Jesus is proclaiming an ancient truth - each and every person is inherently valuable in the eyes of God. Each and every child of God will have their own lived experiences, their own ways of struggling, growing, and changing. Irrelevant of our choices or behaviors, we are cherished by God as their very own. 

This is not a free pass to act out or be horrible. Those kinds of actions grieve God, and like a loving parent, God is always calling us back towards being in right relationship with God, one another, and the wider world.  This season of Lent is the time when we are invited to pay closer attention as we examine our actions, behaviors, and relationships as we look towards the cross, grave, and resurrection. As we try to make sense of the chaos and uncertainty unfolding in our world, we remember we have a role to play in both giving and receiving mercy. 

This Lent, are we going to stay angry in the field or will we do something truly daring, by going inside and joining the feast? I pray we'll all find the courage to notice the joy and mercy of our God in our complicated families and in our messy world. I pray that we will risk it all by embracing mercy, and going into the feast. Amen. 











*  Working Preacher Podcast for 4 Lent, 2025. 
** Anne Lamott, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, 10, 19, 49, 51

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