Extravagant Love [Lent 4C]
The Rev. Jeremiah
Williamson
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Extravagant Love
He never even finished
his speech. A shame really, it was
brilliant in its brevity and emotional impact.
He rolled that speech over in his head on an infinite loop, making sure
every word was just right. He had
rehearsed it so many times that the biggest challenge, at this point, was not
remembering the words but making it sound sincere. It was, admittedly, a sales pitch, even a
strong one, but still as he walked the long road home, he was unsure if his
father would buy it. His father was soft,
too kind, too loving. The younger son
knew that he left his father brokenhearted.
It was a tender situation. This
young man, his father’s younger son, was hopeful; but even so, it felt like a
long shot.
Today’s parable opens
simply enough: there was a man who had two sons. That is not terribly unusual. I have two sons. Also, I am a man. My father also has two sons. I am one of them. A father fathering two sons is a rather unremarkable
occurrence. Jesus will have to do better
if he truly hopes to capture the attention of his audience.
And
he does. His second line is much more shocking
than the first. The son, the younger
son, demands his inheritance – from his very much alive father. Now that would have been shocking to that 1st
century Jewish audience. The common sense
of the day was that a proud, respectable father would never give an inheritance
before he died – to do so would make the father look weak, make him look like a
fool. And the son, the scoundrel, he
should have never even asked, should have never even let the thought cross his
mind. It was a slap in the face. It was a round-about, and yet also very
public, way of saying to his father, “I wish you were dead.” It was completely disrespectful: the opposite
of honor thy father and mother. But he,
the younger son, demands his premature inheritance anyway; clearly the younger son
does not respect his father and, it seems, does not mind making his father look
like a fool. This younger son just wants
his father’s money and he wants it now.
His father? Well, he can take or
leave him. The father relents; he doesn’t
force the son to stay until his death; he gives the son what he desires most: the
stuff. And the younger son leaves.
We
call this parable The Prodigal Son
because of what happens next – after the son strikes out on his own. He blows it all, a lifetime of hard work –
not his, his father’s, just gone. He’s reckless. Irresponsible. Extravagant.
He’s a prodigal. He took his
share of the inheritance and just started spending. He squandered his property on what the Gospel
calls “dissolute living,” and what his older brother imagines was “prostitutes”
– which I think is a pretty revealing interpretation. In the midst of his reckless spending spree,
the economy collapses. Wasteful spending
combined with a severe famine puts the younger son in an impossible
situation. He is now broke and desperate
but still, at first, does not even want to think about going home. After the way in which he publically shamed
and embarrassed his father, trampled his heart, there is no reason for him to
expect anything close to warm welcome there anyway.
And
so he does the unthinkable: he, a Jewish man, takes a job feeding the pigs of a
Gentile. Jesus, if his goal was to hold
the attention of his Jewish audience, could not have chosen a much more shockingly
inappropriate job for a young Jewish man.
The very task made the younger son ritually impure and of course physically
filthy. And in the most disturbing twist
of all, we are told that the younger son was willing to even eat the pig’s
food. In case you had any doubt, this is
a desperate man, a man at rock bottom; he is simply trying to survive and will
do whatever it takes to stay alive – finally, even return home.
But
before home, he needs a good plan. And
so he begins to hatch a scheme. Now you
might think that the younger son has had a change of heart. And I suppose that is possible. Certainly one could come to any number of
epiphanies face down in some pig slop.
But it seems to me that the younger son has no more love for his father
than he did at the beginning of the story.
Once again, as it was at the beginning of the parable, the father has
something that the son wants. And the
son intends to get it. In coming and
going, this son seems to be motivated by his own selfish desires. And anyway, his father has proved to be a
pushover before. I suspect the son
intends to once again play him for a fool.
Easy go, and now easy come back.
But still, he needs a
good plan. And so he crafts the perfect
little speech – brief but emotionally powerful.
He rehearsed that little speech so many times. He rolled it over in his head on an infinite
loop, while cleaning the sties, and slopping the hogs, and sneaking a
taste. The younger son rehearsed that
speech so many times that the biggest challenge was not remembering the words,
they were burned into his brain, the biggest challenge was making it sound
sincere. It was, admittedly, a sales
pitch, rehearsed and refined, and now it was time to see if his father would
buy it. You don’t make the journey
unless you believe there is at least a chance it will be worth the walk.
Besides, what did he
have to lose? He was pretty clearly at
rock bottom. Worst case: the pig farms
were always hiring. And so he set off,
back home, armed with nothing but a monologue, a well-rehearsed monologue.
He
never even finished the speech. Before he
reached the end of his plea, his face was devoured by a bear hug, cut off by
his father’s joyous cries. The one for
whom he had so carefully prepared it, didn’t need to hear it. His father had been watching that road home like
the sentinel of a threatened city – eyes trained on the horizon as if his life
depended on it. Always watching: because
he didn’t want to miss him. The father
was running to meet him before the son could even utter a word. It just didn’t matter. He hadn’t been a good son, but he was his son. And all the father could think about as he
ran up that road was the hug he was going to wrap around his little boy.
We
often call this parable The Prodigal Son
because the son is reckless and irresponsible and extravagant. And that is all true and so the title is an
accurate description of the story. But the
younger son is not the only one in the story who is reckless and irresponsible
and extravagant. The title The Prodigal Father is equally true
because the love and forgiveness he lays on his boy is equally reckless and
irresponsible and extravagant.
Maybe
the son’s apology was sincere. Maybe it
wasn’t. We’ll never know for sure. But that doesn’t matter, because the father’s
love most certainly was. The son didn’t
deserve the embrace or the kiss or the party; he didn’t even necessarily expect
it. But that doesn’t seem to concern the
father. Maybe it should. But it doesn’t. He was too happy and in love to care.
And
just as the younger son’s extravagance left him broke, so does the father’s
extravagance leave him broken. Never
will enough love come his way to undo the past; what his son did to him will
never go away. The father’s broken heart
will never unbreak; it will stay broken.
And still that father ran to his son, his broken heart recklessly spilling
a mess of love behind him.
This
story, this is the story of a father who chooses to see his son in the face of the
perpetrator. He sacrifices the upper
hand on the altar of forgiveness. Once
again, the father is the fool – a fool reflecting the image of his foolish God. Rowan Williams writes, “To forgive is to
share in the helplessness of God.”[1] To share in the helplessness of a God who
just can’t help but love us, a God who, in turn, asks us to give more than we receive, to love more than
we are loved, to expose our hearts in a world that will break them. In a savage world that feeds on the meek and
exploits the vulnerable, God calls us to lower our defenses and expose our vulnerable
hearts. It is a fools’ errand, I
suppose, responding to that call. God’s
call is for us to be reckless with
our mercy and irresponsible with our kindness and too extravagant with our
love. Just like that prodigal father. Because we are the prodigal sons and daughters of our prodigal God,
fools reflecting the image of our foolish God, a God who knows better than anyone
the devastating cost of extravagant love.
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