The Patient Father

Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            We have before us today a very familiar parable, one that we’ve all likely heard—or at least heard it referred to—more times than we can count. It’s most often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, named so because of the wastefulness of the younger son in the parable. We have the familiar young man, impatient for his share of the inheritance, who tells his father to split the property and give him what’s coming to him. When he gets his share, he takes his money and goes to a distant country and promptly spends every penny. Then, when things go from bad to worse, he has to hire himself out to feed unclean pigs (something that would have been abhorrent for a Jew), but still he’s starving. He realizes that things in his father’s household weren’t so bad. Even the servants have more than enough bread to eat. So he decides to go home and ask his father to become a servant earning a livable wage. But before he can even enter the gates, his father spots him, runs out to him, restores him, and starts the celebration. This is to the chagrin of his older brother, who’s been slaving away in the fields. When he comes back and finds the reason for the celebration, he refuses to join in the festivities. Their father has to go out and beg him to come in and be glad that his brother is alive and back in the fold.

            It’s called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but did you notice which character is at the center, who speaks to both brothers, who holds it all together? In order for this parable to work in the beautiful way that it does, we must first consider the infinite patience and graciousness of the father in the story. He’s the one who has forbearance and limitless longsuffering to actually divide the inheritance before his death, sending away a portion of the property and wealth he would otherwise need to live. He’s the one who takes the insult of his younger son essentially saying he would rather have his stuff than have him around. The father is the one who sits waiting where he can see the road toward the house, where he can spot his boy coming home, even from a long distance. When his son begins to recite the speech he’s practiced in his head, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants,” the father cuts him off before he can get to the request to be a servant and instead covers him with his robe, puts shoes on his feet, and marks him as his son by putting his ring on his finger. The father is one who won’t accept a probationary status for this returned child of his, but welcomes him back fully. Even when the older son stands outside the party simmering in his rage, the father goes out and entreats him, taking his older son’s insults too, begging him to come in and celebrate with everyone else at the party. Indeed, the center of gravity in this parable is not a wayward young man who sees the light and then straightens up to earn his way back. The beating heart of this parable is this father who loves his son more than reason can understand, more than caution would advise, more than he loves himself.

            Lent is a wonderful season in the Church year. We focus on the cross. We hear all that Jesus has done. Our hymns this time of year overflow with good news of forgiveness, the hope of restoration, faith that every one of us can be received into God’s good graces. But our fallen nature is particularly gifted at finding ways to make everything about ourselves. We think about what we’re doing that might make us more worthy to receive good things from God. We compare and contrast our Lenten practices—or our everyday living—against others. We can’t stop thinking about what we’re doing, what we’re sacrificing, how much harder we work than others, how much holier we are than those people out there, or those people who do that, or who are across the political aisle, or who are much more lost than we’ve ever been ourselves. So even when we have something as beautiful as the parable of the prodigal son, we cast ourselves as the title character, the one who journeys the way home. Obviously we’re not the mean older son. Or, if we are the older son, it’s only because we haven’t wandered as far on those worse paths, or because we’ve done more, or worked harder, or only want what we think is fair for ourselves. But again, because of original sin and the inward curve on our soul that it causes, it’s always about us.

            But Lent is not about you or your works or your powers or your will. Yes, the Church can and has found good beneficial ways to use Lent to discipline the body, heart, and mind so that you walk and act and live as your faith believes and confesses. But see that, just as in the parable, the center is the Father and His love. All along, your Father in heaven has been patient. Jesus has been carrying the cross for you. He’s not going to let you become a hired servant, earning your keep in His household. He’s not going to let you stand outside His eternal joy, festering over some perceived grievance or slight. You’re His child; He’s already said so at your baptism. He’s already sacrificed the choice calf on Mount Calvary so that you can eat at His table and receive all that His sacrifice offers: forgiveness, oneness with Him and with your brothers and sisters in the faith, wholeness and healing, resurrection and eternal life. Your heavenly Father has already run out to you before you were even close and He covered you with the robe of Christ’s righteousness. As the prophet Isaiah sang, the Lord God is your strength and your song, and He has become your salvation. He who knew no sin has become sin for you so that in His body He can destroy sin and leave it dead and nailed to the cross. He became sin so that you can become God’s child again.

            And for you, the celebration. You, His son, His daughter, were dead and now are alive. You were lost and He found you. He ran out to you when you were still a long way off and brought you back home. For you He has joy, peace, reconciliation. You’re being brought back into the household of God anew, whether you wandered to a far country of sin and confusion like the younger son in the parable, or whether you were separated from Him in your own heart by your self-inflicted anger and work and frustration, like the older son in the parable. It doesn’t matter where your separation from Him has come from. He calls both the younger and the older to be with Him at the feast. He shares all He has with all of His children.

            We’re turning a corner in Lent. After this week, as we get closer to the cross, things will intensify. Our focus will sharpen on Jesus and what He has done. Look to Him, the One reaching out to you, the One bearing all the cost, the One redeeming and reconciling you to God and to one another. Have your heart prepared to come in and celebrate the feast of Easter, when your brother Jesus’ work is completed for you, when the dead are brought back alive, when you taste the feast that awaits you in eternity. In the name of Jesus, the Crucified One. Amen.