Pop-quiz, sports fans: what is the longest parable in all of the Gospels? Yup, that’s right, it’s the one I just read: the Jesus-story usually called “the parable of the prodigal son.”
You know what’s really weird about this parable? For all of its colorful details, we don’t know how it ends! Think about it. It’s like those limited series we like to binge-watch, with a cliff-hanger at the end of each episode right before the credits that make you go “Ahhh!”
How does it turn out?
Will the faithful son go into the party and greet his brother?
Does the returning little brother realize that his big brother is not at the party and seek him out?
Will the father ever witness his two estranged sons embrace?
And the biggest question of them all: which character do you identify with the most?
Ouch!
In this parable Jesus invites us to walk with both sons and the father, so that we can listen to how God is calling each of us.
The story of the two estranged sons and their father only appears in Luke’s Gospel and none of the other three, but it is probably one of the most famous of all Jesus’ teachings. It comes at the end of a long string of other parables in Luke about how much God values everyone.
God’s love, Jesus says, is like a shepherd with a hundred sheep who, on losing one, leaves the ninety-nine and searches diligently for the one lost sheep.
God’s love, Jesus says, is like a woman with ten gold coins who, on losing one, turns the whole house upside down and sweeps every nook and cranny until she finds it.
In Luke's Gospel, we are hearing a story that explains why it is that God has expanded the Covenant circle to not just include the Jewish nation but all people. The original covenant people--as seen in the oldest son-- are not left out, and the people who joined in or even returned to the Covenant community--as seen in the youngest son--are not only welcomed in! So this is also a story of how God's love works and is available to everyone.
But it is not only the searching and the finding that is important, but the rejoicing is essential! Jesus says God rejoices when even one lost person is found. The shepherd rejoices to find the one lost sheep. The woman calls all her friends and neighbors and rejoices with them, endlessly telling them the story of the coin she lost and how relieved she was to find it. You can almost hear her say “You’ll never believe where I found it…it was in the last place I looked!” And Jesus tells us in Luke’s Gospel that the church (that’s us, the gathered people of God!) is to rejoice whenever anyone comes to themselves, comes home and is welcomed by God and God’s people.
I think that this is why so many churches host 12-step meetings, like AA, NA, OA, CODA, and all the other Anonymous’. It’s not the cheap rent that brings these groups into our parish halls. It’s what the Church does! It is why we are here! And it’s what Jesus does for us!
We have all, at one time or another, also been like the son who leaves. Nouwen wrote that, when we come back, just like the youngest son, we discover that God is not interested in our prepared, over-rehearsed speeches. All of us have counted up our wrongs and found ourselves wanting, and all of us hope that we might get some small job just to keep us warm, fed and occupied. Not much, we tell ourselves, just enough, because we know we don’t deserve anything else. Just a little kindness will do. We learn from Jesus that God is not interested in reminding us over and over again of our failings. God is not interested in sharing crumbs. God wants us home.
And, like the father in the story, God celebrates and calls in the whole family and neighborhood when we return.
Nouwen also says that all of us are like the son who stayed home. We count up our rights and our sacrifices and we expect our due. All of us at one time or another have demanded to be recognized and have felt injured or slighted when someone else got what we thought we deserved—especially if they’ve not been as good, or as competent, or as faithful as we have been.
We have all been the brother who stayed, and for us the challenge is to accept not only God’s justice, but more than that we must learn to accept God’s extravagant love and generous forgiveness. In his own way, the good son, when he refused to accept the wayward son’s welcome, becomes a prodigal himself.
And there is a third challenge in this parable, one that we often overlook. Nouwen reminds us that we are also called to be like the father in the story, the one who forgives and the one who welcomes; the one who is patient and the one who coaxes and the one who never loses faith. It is the father who not only runs out to greet the wayward son on his return and embraces him; but it is also the father who leaves the party and enters the darkness to stand with the faithful son and embraces him as well. My hunch is that the father allowed the youngest son to go off to the Big City because he understood that this might be how he learns about life and himself. In this story the father shows us that God’s love is not a zero-sum game with only winners and losers. Jesus’ parable reminds that God never says, “I told you so!”
Jesus reminds us in the Gospel lesson that the feast is for everyone. “All that I have is yours” the father says to the faithful but angry son outside the party. “You are always with me.” For us to take on the role of the father is to find the language and the way to welcome all God’s people into the feast and rejoice that everyone is there.
So … who are you in this story?
I think Jesus’ parable of the Two Prodigals and their Dad is a kind of a spiritual Rorschach test. You know one of those tests that therapists used to do to get you to speak what you see in a blob of ink. Probably the person in the story with whom we identify the most and the person who irritates us the most, are teaching us something about where we are spiritually and where we need to grow.
At the heart of the father’s love that Jesus talks about in this story is empathy. Empathy is a much-maligned attribute lately. Some, like a certain gazzilionaire in the news lately, thinks it is a weakness. But without God’s astounding empathy… which we Christians know is made manifest in the incarnation, where God lives and walks amongst us in the person of Jesus… none of us would have a chance at life. Without empathy, the lost son is not welcomed, the faithful son is forgotten, and this family that Jesus presents us-- Jews and Gentile, male and female, slave and free-- falls apart.
As we move closer and closer to the journey to the cross and resurrection, we will become mindful of the fact that God has embraced all of us. We are called to embrace all the people God sends to us. Why? Because all of us at one time or another have been the wayward son who was welcomed beyond all expectation. And all of us have, at one time or another, been the faithful son who, despite doing everything "right," felt slighted or ignored. And since we live in a world filled with people who are seeking and people who are hurting, we need more and more to enter into the role of that loving father who welcomed both siblings into the banquet.
And now for the cliffhanger: The only way for the faithful son and his wayward brother will embrace is when both of them accept the extravagant forgiveness of the father that neither son expected nor dreamed of.
How will it turn out? For them? For us? For you and me?
Let’s come to the banquet and find out!
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Scripture for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 30, 2025
Website for Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida
Here is the bulletin for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C, (or this 10 AM liturgy bulletin) for March 30, 2025, the Church of the Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida.
Here is the livestream of the March 30, 2025 10 a.m. liturgy at Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida.
If you want to go deeper: Here is Bishop Nick Knisely's (Rhode Island) sermon on this passage, which helped me sort through some of the questions on empathy that I was pondering this week as I studied this week's Gospel.
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