Lent IV

Joshua 4:19-24,5:9-12
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Luke 15:11-32

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I LOVE LENT. I find it a powerful opportunity to renew my relationship with God and to be more open to grace and growth. I am already excited about the great liturgy of Holy Week. I’ve never experienced better worship than here during Holy Week: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Saturday evening.

But I recognize that Lent can be a hard slog. We have just passed the half-way point, and our disciplines become increasingly inconvenient and annoying. The temptation to break them becomes stronger. Last week a friend told me that despite her regard for me, she’d hit me if it meant she could in good conscience have an oreo cookie. Our disciplines may seem insignificant, but they do help our character grow.

The Church knows that Lent becomes old, and so we have Rose Sunday – a moment to focus a bit more energy and attention on rejoicing. The Church honors the full range of human emotion and experience, but today we don’t allow for much dreariness, heaviness, or bleakness. The gospels probably don’t have a more powerful parable about God’s love and joy and mercy than today’s. It expresses the heart of the gospel.

Everyone calls it the ‘prodigal son,’ and that probably reflects our fascination with loose and luxurious living and guilt about our own excesses. We’d be better off, however, if we focus our attention on the prodigal’s father. We should call the parable ‘the loving father’ or ‘the man who had two sons.’ The parable’s most important theme is God’s love for us – not our sin.

I associate this parable with a custom of the Babemba tribe of South Africa. Apparently, the Babemba tribe has a unique way of dealing with a member who acts irresponsibly or unjustly. They put the offending person in the center of the village, alone and unfettered.

All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length.

The tribal ceremony often lasts several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.1

No doubt, it’s an unusual way to deal with bad behavior, and it is probably offensive to our sense of justice. Not many of us would exert much effort to stand around telling a garden-variety criminal – a gang member or a prostitute – about their good deeds. We’re likely to figure that we couldn’t have a truly civil, sophisticated, large society with such a system for justice, and we may be right about that. I don’t know.

However offensive and unrealistic we find the Babemba custom, Jesus’ parable of the loving father was probably more offensive and unrealistic to his audience. Jesus tells the parable in response to murmuring against him for eating with tax collectors and sinners – in essence, for being friends with gang members, extortionists, and prostitutes. He’s saying that their turning to God is cause for celebration. The dead are alive; the lost are found. When God changes lives, it’s time to celebrate.

We get resentful when God’s grace offends our sense of justice, when his mercy appears to condone sin – as it does in today’s gospel, when he’s merciful to someone whose character we question. We have many legitimate reasons to question the character of the younger son.2

First, he’s irresponsible. The younger son insults his father by asking for his inheritance. Jewish custom directed the younger son to receive a third of his father’s estate, usually at the father’s death. If the father desired, he could divide up his estate earlier, but then his heirs would then be responsible for taking care of him. The younger son takes his inheritance and leaves town. He wants the benefits, the inheritance, but none of the accompanying responsibility. He’s walking away from being a son. He’s essentially told his father to kiss off.

Second, he’s self-absorbed. The younger son appears incapable of honoring relationships or making commitments. He seems to have a very modern concept of freedom, the freedom to do what he wants without regard to other people. The ancient world valued family and community relationships far above individual freedom. So the younger son’s behavior would have been even more offensive to them than it is to us.

Third, he’s impatient. The younger son seeks immediate gratification. He could wait for the proper order of things and receive his inheritance in the future. But he wants the future now. Why wait when it seems you can have it all now? He exercises no self-restraint, no self-control.

We easily recognize the younger son’s poor character, but what may not be as clear is that the elder brother has the same flaws.3 We understand and sympathize with the elder brother. We understand and sympathize with his anger and indignation at his younger brother for abandoning him to look after their father. We understand and sympathize with why he refuses to come in join the party.

The elder brother doesn’t want to accept responsibility for his younger brother. He’d prefer his brother to be a starving outcast – the just and fitting outcome of his bad behavior. The elder brother wants to be free of his younger brother, rather than renewing his commitment to him. He resents celebrating his return to the family. He worries that he’s being used and that his father’s generosity will diminish his own future.

The loving father, of course, has all the virtues that the children don’t. First, although he didn’t have to, he generously divides up and relinquishes his estate, but he doesn’t relinquish his responsibility to his son, who runs away from him. Second, he sacrifices his own freedom and independence at the request of his son. He places the utmost value on his relationship with his son, not on his property. Third, he risks his own future by placing his trust in his sons, neither of whom seems worthy of trust. He trusts that they will take care of him in his old age. The father is what we want to be. He embodies the virtues Jesus calls us to have.

And these qualities of the father are also what we see in the Babemba tribe’s exercise of justice. Instead of focusing on punishment or vengeance, the Babemba tribe accepts responsibility for healing and reconciling with the person who has offended. The tribe makes a sacrifice of time and effort to bring the accused back into the fold, to run out and greet them. The tribe affirms their relationship with the offender; they don’t expel him; they don’t seek to be free of him. They honor their commitment to one another. The tribe risks their future to re-integrate people back into their community. Then they have a party and celebrate the reunion. Healing and reconciliation come from love and joy and mercy.

The loving father of today’s parable is God’s way – mercy more than justice, joy more than bitterness, love more than isolation. It’s what God wants us to be. Christianity is all about growing into this image of humanity – this image of divinity. That’s what this parish family is all about, nurturing our transformation, and it’s happening here, in us individually and in us corporately.

The parable of the loving father shows us that when we turn from going our own way and begin to follow God’s way, there should be rejoicing and a party. Lent may keep us from the party, but only for a time, and a good Lent means we’ll have renewed our relationship with God and have something to party about.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Alice Walker, Sent by Earth, Seven Stories Press (2001).

2. Roger E. Van Harn, The Lectionary Commentary: The Gospels, Eerdmans (2001), pp. 407-10, for discussion about the three character flaws of the sons and the father’s virtues.

3. Van Harn, p. 410.