Year C

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

God Is Not Fair!

We live in a world where the concept of fairness is nearly elevated to a level of worship. Most of the squabbles of young children and even most adults erupt from this very old emotion of feeling somehow slighted or mistreated. Growing up with my two brothers, if I thought one of them got more than I did at Christmas or for their birthday, instead of being grateful for what I got that feeling of being slighted would raise its ugly head. One Christmas the main gift for each of us was a $50 dollar bill, a lot back then. That’s fairness and Mom was pretty smart! Now, I travel a bit on the highways and nothing makes my sense of fairness go crazy than when I move over to the left lane to pass someone and another car zooms up in the right lane passing me and then tries to sneak in front of me in the left lane. Many times when I see someone trying to do this, I speed up so they can’t get in. It’s not fair.

If we think we outgrow this obsession with fairness, think again. It’s as old as Eden and so deeply imbedded in our collective marrow that most people take it to the grave. So when we hear this very familiar story of the Prodigal Son our sense of fairness raises its ugly head.  In our parable today, there are three principal characters: a father and his two sons and each of their actions tell us something about them and it also tells us something very significant about God. What we find out is God is not fair! This story gets at the very heart of God, who is always more eager to forgive than we are to receive forgiveness, always more ready to go to any length necessary to embrace us in love. 

The word “prodigal” is derived from the Latin word prodigere, which is translated as the verb ‘to squander.” Therefore, a prodigal is one who throws away opportunities recklessly and wastefully. We know all about this prodigal, this squander. And we know all about the father, who takes back his squandering son even before the confession gets completely confessed. The father runs across the field and smothers his son with kisses, a robe, a ring and a huge party. Many of us have sown a few wild oats in our day and are grateful to be taken back and forgiven, yet I would guess that most of us would identify best with the older brother.

What has the older son been doing while his squandering younger brother is off doing his thing? He has been working his hind off for weeks doing not only his job but his brothers. He is exhausted and quite unexpectedly while he is out working in the field he hears the music and dancing and knows his father usually doesn’t throw parties on weekdays. Then, he hears that his brother has returned and it is too much to bear; a robe, a ring, the fatted calf and a party, all for someone who left and squandered his share of the inheritance? It simply wasn’t fair and who could blame the older brother for being upset and angry.

Yet, being fair is not what the father cares about at that moment. His sinning son was lost and now was found. This story in Lent invites us to contemplate the lengths to which God will go to restore us to right relationship with God’s self and each other. God doesn’t play by our rules, see life the way we see it, or keep score the way we keep it. God isn’t fair. God has an ongoing love affair with sinners. He throws a party of rich food and drink to get their attention. He invites the poor and the underserving. Dances with the lazy and slips rings on their fingers. What forgiveness and love the Father shows for all his squandering, sinful children.

So where are we at the parable’s end? Are we inside the party celebrating or are we standing outside refusing to come in? The father passionately invites the older brother inside to join in the welcome. We don’t know what the older son does but the story really doesn’t end. In a world where God did not play fair then and still does not today, this parable forces us to make a choice because we are all of us the prodigal son and the older brother, working to be like the father. Will we RSVP to a party thrown by an unfair God? Or will we stubbornly remain outside?

In the 17 century, Rembrandt painted an extraordinary painting just before he died titled ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son.’ This painting is Rembrandt’s depiction of the gospel story today. And when the late Henri Nouwen, priest and author, first saw this painting, it led him on a journey of meditation that eventually leads him to write about his journey in an excellent book titled “The Return of the Prodigal Son – A story of Homecoming.”  Nowen says, “When I first saw Rembrandt’s painting, I was not as familiar with the home of God within me as I am now.

Nevertheless, my intense response to the father’s embrace of his son told me that I was desperately searching for that inner place where I too could be held as safely as the young man in the painting. For indeed, I am the younger son; I am the elder son; and I am on my way to becoming like the father. And more than any other story in the Gospels, this parable expresses the boundlessness of God’s compassionate love.” God calls all squanders to come home. Therefore, we can waste life waiting for people to act decently and fairly, waiting for others to apologize or earn our forgiveness and acceptance. Jesus waited on none of these things. His words as they rammed the crown of thorns over his brow, as they nailed his hands and feet on the cross, were not: have mercy Lord, this is unfair, but “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” We were all lost in our sins. Yet, before we knew it, God reached out in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

The gospel, and the other readings today, invite us to imagine both the cost and the hope of God’s forgiveness not just on a cosmic scale but also in the everyday terms of a father who loves his children enough to forgive one son his foolish waywardness and the other his hardness of heart. If we can imagine forgiveness and love in these terms we may be able to practice it and find the home of God within us. In the end, which brother is the authentic prodigal? It’s not the one who squanders, with a shady past. It’s the one who stay’s outside and could not forgive. Which one comes home to the Father’s extravagant love? It was the brother who was dead and has come to life; was lost and now was found.

This is truly a cause for celebration and all this leads us to a new way of life-a “new creation”-as Paul proclaims. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! Just as the father’s love reconciled him with his estranged son in the parable, so are we forgiven and reconciled to God through Christ, who never stops loving us and calls us to reconcile the world to God. We are now the ambassadors for Christ. This is the overwhelming scandal of grace which is not fair, yet is the cause for great rejoicing.