The Lost Son’s Father

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1669, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia, public domain, click on image to link.

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 56.

 But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. – Luke 15:20

The Sunday before my recent vacation, I introduced Luke by describing some things that distinguish his gospel from the ones written by Mark, Matthew, and John. According to Bible scholar Keith Nickle, the single most distinctive feature of Luke’s writing is the fact that he wrote a sequel, which we know as the Acts of the Apostles.[1] More than the other gospel writers, Luke was motivated to show how the good news of Jesus wasn’t just for the Jewish people, but for everyone in “all nations.”[2]

This past Sunday, Therese and I worshipped with the people of the American Church in Berlin, Germany. Contrary to what you might expect, the congregation claims its members represent about 25 nations.  Visitors were introduced from South Africa, Brazil, Poland, the Philippines, and more. An experience like that is a reminder that the spread of the church envisioned by Luke really did come to pass.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the gospel writer most interested in declaring God’s grace was for everyone should also choose to record two of Jesus parables about grace involving people who, in Jesus’ time, might have been considered unworthy. Three weeks ago, we looked at the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and today, the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

I thought about the Prodigal Son in June, when an article caught my attention with its title, “Why So Many Young People Are Cutting Off Their Parents.” [3] The article looked into the work of  Cornell University professor Karl Pillemer, who conducted a study which suggests more than 25% of American adults are alienated from a family member. Pillemer believes American families are severing ties at a pace never seen before. He says that contributing factors include unmet expectations, difficult childhood experiences, and value and lifestyle differences.

He writes, “The norms that forced families to stick together no matter what have weakened …. There is less of an overwhelmingly normative guideline that you must stick with your family no matter what. There is a sense among younger people today that if the relationship is aversive over a long period of time, they have the ability to get out of it.”

Pillemer’s research into fractured families invites us to enter an uncomfortable terrain that we would rather not visit.  He takes us into a vulnerable place inhabited by parents in pain about the unhealthy choices of their children, and children in pain about unhealthy aspects of their growing up years. If he is correct in saying there is so much alienation in our families, then it may help us understand even more why this parable is so loved.

One of my favorite preachers Barbara Brown Taylor sees the family in Jesus’ parable as being very much like the families Pillemar describes. It fact, she labels it, “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family.”[4]  There is the weak patriarch, easily swayed to give away too early a large portion of his estate to a foolish young man. There’s the sullen older son, whose anger and vindictiveness ultimately dishonors his father.  There’s even an absent mother closely connected to these characters, but of whom we know nothing.  And, our course, there’s the rebellious son, the one we call the “prodigal.”

We might wonder whether the Prodigal Son had an experience like one of the young people in Pillemar’s research study. Maybe the father had driven away the mother, and alienated her son, by being overly judgmental, or absent from home life. Or, taking a more traditional interpretative route, we might say the Prodigal Son had a typical young adult rebellious experience. He gave way to temptation, he surrendered to a force within that works against best intentions and ideals, something that the Bible describes as “sin.”  Like the prodigal son, at one time or another, we all face the temptation of a “distant country” that calls us to travel far from what our moral training tells us is right.

But one Bible scholar makes the case that to label Jesus’ story “the Parable of the Prodigal Son” is to put the focus in the wrong place.  Jesus’ emphasis is not the young man who took all the good things of the father's house and selfishly spent them.  There was nothing more unusual about that sort of experience in Jesus' day than in ours.  Rather, it is the father who is the truly remarkable character in Jesus' parable, because the offended father did not finally reject the son, but rather received him with compassion.  Therefore, says William Barclay, the parable should be more correctly called, "The Parable of the Father's Heart." In this reading, the focus is less on the lost son, and more on the lost son’s father.

Regardless of the label we assign to it, the story certainly is one of the best-known and most-loved parables.  Perhaps we love it so because it resonates with our experience.  There’s something in the parable that describes the truth about our families and our moral mistakes. 

I think we love the story of the prodigal son most of all because of the way things turn out between the prodigal and his father.  First, we see in the prodigal our own failures and detours.  Then, we see in the father the relationship we all hope for and dream about, the Father of whom all our human fathers are a shadow and a taste of things to come.

Maybe it’s like that well-known scene from the baseball film “Field of Dreams,” which I imagine most of you have seen at one time or another. You’ll remember how the Ray Kinsella character, played by Kevin Costner, describes the often tension-filled relationships of fathers and sons. Then, on the enchanted baseball diamond in a cornfield, a place on which ghosts have the chance to live out, after death, the dream denied them in life, on that field appears a young man.  He’s wearing an old uniform, jogging across the grass with a ball and catcher's mitt.  Ray realizes, “It's my dad.” And in a brief moment of playing catch on the magical field, reconciliation takes place.  With few words exchanged, the failings are forgotten, past actions and fallings-out let go.  They are father and son again.

In Jesus’ story, we are not told what the son thought or did after his father’s reception.  We have to guess what his reaction must have been.  In leaving out that detail, some suggest, Jesus invites us to stand in the place of the prodigal child, to imagine and experience the heights of relief and joy that follow when our turning toward home is met not with anger and condemnation, but rather with tears of joy.

According to Jesus, no matter what we have done, when our self-honesty about moral failure meets God’s unconditional acceptance, there is joy on earth and in heaven.

NOTES

[1] Keith F. Nickle, The Synoptic Gospels: An Introduction, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980, p. 125.

[2] Luke 24:47.

[3] Fortesa Latifi, “Why So Many Young People Are Cutting Off Their Parents,” Cosmopolitan, 22 June 2023, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a44178122/family-estrangement-cut-off-parents/ accessed 30 June 2023.

[4] Notes from sermon “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family,” Barbara Brown Taylor, Festival of Homiletics, Tennessee Center for the Performing Arts, Nashville, 22 May 2007.

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