IT'S THE FATHER!

A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Joshua 5:9-12; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32]

There was a man who had two sons…

Every time I encounter this gospel and hear its opening line, it is as if I hear in the background the most compelling music.  Its sound heralds that something special is about to start.  Like the opening four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the first line of the “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is so enticing that any person would be a fool not to recognize the inauguration of a profoundly important story.

There was a man who had two sons…

Yet, having said this, how is it – how is it that for so many of us this parable (perhaps the most famous (and important) of Jesus’ parables) has become so bland – even to the point of being boring?  The answer, I think, lies in the fact that the common interpretation of this parable is to turn its narrative into a morality play: a play that emphasizes what not to do with one’s life – with one’s “religious” life.  This is to say that the “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is too frequently regarded either as a Sunday School fable, whereby we try to teach our kids to be “good”.  Or in more sophisticated circles, the interpretive focus turns the parable into a “predictable piece of self-help advice” that zeroes in on the wastrel boy as a kind of “come-back player of the year”!1

But we know that Jesus employs the parable format for a particular reason.  His parables are not meant as morality plays but to turn what we know on its head so that we might begin to recognize what God knows.

So it is that to focus on the two sons (especially the easy target of the younger son) reduces Jesus’ revelatory parable to a version of reality t.v. show.  As such, the intended and redeeming shock value of the parable is drained of its life.  Perhaps the genesis of this problem has to do with the parable’s official title.  After all, it is called “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”.  And while it is undeniably true that the two sons are necessary foils for the parable’s revelation, the true and undeniable focus that Jesus conveys is the father.

So, this is where I want to start this sermon and to pose what I regard as the parable’s centering question, which is: “What is the nature of your God?”

Yes, discovering responses to this question does require noting the actions of the father’s two sons.  And while on the surface these two boys [these two men] appear to be the antithesis of one another – and on the surface they are. Yet, at the deepest levels of Jesus’ story, they ironically stand on the same emotional and spiritual spot, albeit, looking in opposite directions.  The point is that they both center their lives around “things”, when what the father personifies is the centrality of relationship and the awareness of being in Communion, being present to him and, thereby, to one another.

This is what I mean when I say that we tend to want to evaluate the parable’s meaning along moral lines: that is, what is “right” and what is “wrong”.  And surely, such moral issues are important, but as significant as issues of “right” and “wrong” are, they are not primary.  Being aware of the connection between us and among us is what is key; and this is the simple but radical point of Jesus’ parable, especially in light of his own life, death, and resurrection.

Nonetheless, in light of what Jesus quietly offers in this parable, we do need to look at the two sons.  For they are the story’s counterpoints, they are us, revealing with their lives what the father is like, which is to say what God is all about.

Clearly, the brightest spotlight shines on the younger son.  He is the quintessential “brat”.  Evidently spoiled by his father’s implicit lenient parenting, this sophomoric young man (“sophomore” meaning a “wise fool” as in a “pretentious adolescent”) – this younger son makes the outlandish request that his father immediately give him his share of the family inheritance.  Father, I want – ah yes, those two, telling words – I want right now what’s coming to me.2

Of course, for this to happen, what the young whipper-snapper is implicitly saying (whether he recognizes it or not) is that he wished his father were dead.  For inheritance issues usually come into play only at the death of the one whose will is adjudicated.

But, I get it: What teenager (or young adult, for that matter) has not at some time or another wished that their father or mother were out of the way?  And in response to this challenge, which parent among us has either not felt heart-break or rage at such a disrespectful projection?  And for those of us for whom this is not our first rodeo with this parable, who among us has not wished that the parable’s father would rise up in some manner of mature resistance to this child-tyrant?  But, of course, at this point we get a foretaste that our standards and experiences are not what the parable is about: That our feelings and expectations do not determine how the father acts.

Risking being shamed on social media for his apparently weak (perhaps even absent) sense of parenting, the parable’s father apparently caves into his young son’s demands.  Calling his financial advisor and his lawyer, the father dissolves his own assets (undoubtedly at no small expense) to produce what would have been the younger son’s inheritance.  In so doing, the father seems to facilitate what both the father and all of us know the “brat” will do.

In the clinical-sounding words of the text, we learn that the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.3  It is only when the first-born son rants about his wasteful brother that we learn what “dissolute living” entails.  But we already knew (didn’t we?) that dealing with painted women and other addictive bobbles is inevitably dangerous to one’s life, not to mention to one’s soul.

What follows in the parable’s narrative does seem like a morality play because we quickly learn (as St. Paul has noted) that the “wages of sin” [especially such notoriously “hot” sin as the prodigal’s) results in death’s presence.  So, having hit what we in our time call “rock bottom”, the prodigal quickly “sobers up” (as it were) and (as the text so gently puts it) “came to himself”, whereby he makes a plan  to return to his father.

In his plan to return to the father and thanks to his recent sobriety, the younger son realized that he had relinquished his right to claim sonship with the father; but perhaps given the old man’s demonstrated soft-heartedness (soft-headedness, some would claim!), he might return as a hired hand, working for his father and what was left of the family business.  Of course, at this point, the plot thickens.

In the story’s imagery and in the purposes of Jesus, the story-teller, the father throws a great and festive feast to mark and celebrate the return of his lost, now found, younger son.  (Cue the violins to play soft strains of “Amazing Grace”!).  But there is, as we know, more to this story – much more.

In almost perfect, Saturday matinee- movie style, the parable continues with an implicit, “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…”.  The story suddenly shifts to the elder son, who gets a whiff of the barbeque roasting in the air. [By the way, the meat is not pork, not in this Jewish household!]  Above the sumptuous smoke, the elder son hears the sound of merry-making coming from the family gazebo, down by the fishing pond.  Learning that his wastrel, younger brother had returned home with his tail between his legs, the elder son is outraged by the feast and what seems to him as the wanton lack of justice.  His brother’s ruinous behavior didn’t seem to matter to the father; and this was just too much for the unblemished brother to stomach.  He not only stubbornly refused his father’s personal invitation to join the family reunion, but the elder son also got into his father’s face and read him the riot act.

Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends?  Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast.4

I imagine a hard silence was mutually observed between the father and his eldest son, a hard silence that was only broken by what the father said next.  Son, you don’t understand.  You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours – but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate.  This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive!  He was lost, and [now] he’s found.5

OK, boys will be boys!   But they are not the story’s point. Jesus’ point in telling the parable is to portray what God is like and what our life with God is like.  What does the parable say about life on God’s terms?  Moreover, to the part in each of us that is either the “prodigal” or the “elder son” (or to whatever mixture in between), what prevents us from joining and appreciating the father’s feast?

The answer to these questions – if our answers honestly honor Jesus’ parable – our answers require that we grasp the parable’s fundamental issue, which is, There is nothing the father won’t do to keep Communion with us.  And this never changes.

Earlier, I said that for all their apparent differences, the two boys are essentially the same.  They both are wrapped up and defined by things and unaware of the relationship that provides real life. This is to say that they both want their father’s money and all that that type of wealth can provide.  Yet, the father’s priority is keeping relationships, keeping connection with his two, clearly imperfect sons.  The setting for this truth is the feast that the father throws in celebration for the reunion of his family.

Perhaps, like me, you are drawn to the imagery of the parable’s feast.  I don’t think it is a stretch at all for us to think of our experience of Holy Communion as a clear pathway into this reality that is at the heart of the parable’s father.  I wonder to what extent our familiarity with Communion reduces its reality to a “thing”, something we do in church.  I think back to the pandemic times, when we couldn’t offer Communion; and I still muse about the fact that I was never approached by anyone about this loss in their lives.  Is Communion simply something we can do or not?  It’s nice, but …

To what extent is this sacramental action an experience of reunion and the celebration of being fed by God as the Holy One’s beloved guests?  In “keeping the feast”, are we aware that God gives us what we need and cannot provide for ourselves?  To what extent does a sense of gratitude come with what is offered to us?  Seeing ourselves in this parable, once we “come to ourselves”, is it running the risk of realizing the unfathomable: namely, that God “dies” rather than lose connection with each and all of us?

As we go through Holy Week and confront all that we already know about this time and experience, I ask you to bring an awareness of what makes this week “holy”: namely, That God would rather die than let us slip away.

And to this awareness and with respect to the question: “What is the nature of your God?” two, stark propositions emerge.  Either God is an “idiot” for bringing us to the feast; or God is really onto something.

Most of the time, at least with our words, we believe the latter; and that, beloved of God, is the source of our hope, our life, and our strength.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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1.  Tom Long. Christian Century, sermon note: March 14, 2025

2.  Luke 15:12 – The Message

3.  Luke 15:13

4.  Luke 15: 29-30 –The Message

5.  Luke 15:31-32 -- The Message