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A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent delivered at St. Simon's Episcopal Church, Arlington Heights, IL
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
By Rev. Mary Haggerty
Parables are meant to be confusing, disconcerting. They are supposed to make us see the world in a new way. The Parable of the Prodigal Son, as it is called, is so familiar to us that it runs the risk of being merely a comfort rather than a challenge to our ingrained habits. We know this story so well that it ceases to shake us up anymore.
What if we heard it anew? What is this parable really about? We like to say reconciliation. The younger son came home and was reconciled and, boy that nasty older brother. He better reconcile himself to this. We like to decide who we stand with. Are we the repentant younger brother or are we the angry older brother? We like to make this story about right and wrong. About good behavior. About right behavior and wrong behavior.
But honestly, I don’t think that’s what it’s about at all. The living, breathing text says to me that this is parable about hunger. It’s a parable about hunger and the grace of God being the only thing that can fully satiate that hunger.
The younger son is deeply hungry. Life is boring. Life is too constrictive under his father’s rules. Maybe he feels like there’s more to life than what he’s experiencing. So he says, “Give me what’s due me. I’m out of here.” And off he goes to satiate that hunger. In the process, he does some really stupid things, and he finds out – this rich kid from a family that has enough calves to just kill one on the spot for a party – this rich kid finds out what hunger really is.
He doesn’t come running back because he is repentant. He comes running back because he is hungry. There is a famine in the land where he finds himself. And no amount of hard work or cunning can fill his belly. Nothing can satisfy the churning inside of him. Luke writes, “He came to himself.” Maybe he realized he had a good thing going back home. All of his needs were met and then some. He says to himself, “How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!”
So, he crafts a story of repentance in his head, even deigns to say I will be your servant. Just give me something to eat and take me out of this horrible situation I got myself in. And off he goes again, in search of something to satisfy that hunger. What does he find? His father doesn’t care about his stupid story. His father doesn’t even care if he’s truly repentant. His father only knows that he was lost and now he has been found. And he comes running to greet him.
This is one of my favorite images in the scriptures. The father hitching up his robes, dirt blowing up all around him, neighbors watching and shaking their heads in disgust or astonishment. Nothing stops him from running to his son who was lost in the land of hunger. And he can’t wait to feed him on the finest food. There is no entrance fee to this banquet. Only the outpouring of extravagant love.
Jesus tells this story in response to the religious leaders grumbling: “Look at who he eats with. Look at who he invites to the table. Who does this guy think he is?” His reply is clear in the story. I am mercy, I am grace, I am dignity for all, I am who I am. Ultimately that is what gets him killed.
And then we have the older brother. He’s got all of his physical needs met, doesn’t he? He lives on the family compound. He works hard but he’s well fed and clothed. He’s got everything he needs, but he is so hungry to be seen. That hunger is apparent when his younger brother comes home and he says, “Wait a minute. I have been here all this time. I have been working for you, doing what I am supposed to do. And you are going to recognize HIM and not me? You are going to throw a party for the one who broke all the rules, and you forget to tell me, the one who has been doing it right all along?"
He is so hungry to be seen, to be recognized. I can’t say I blame him. The younger brother has really screwed up. But the father of the two boys isn’t going to make his love conditional on anything. Instead, he says to the older son, “I see you. I have always seen you. I am right here. Everything I have is yours. I am grace, I am mercy, I am the dignity that you are seeking. Just open your eyes. Allow your heart to take it in. Let me feed you. Let me satisfy your grinding hunger."
That’s the joy we celebrate this Lateare Sunday. That’s why Jenny is wearing pink vestments, and I have on a pink stole. Yes, our story is a hard one. We will enter into the passion in a few weeks. The horrible, vicious, violent passion of our beloved Jesus. But it doesn’t end there. We go through it. We come out at Easter. We come out on the other side with God’s grace prevailing and satiating every hunger that we could ever have.
We focus on the passion and death of Christ as an act of love. Not because God needed a debt to be paid off. Not because only a perfect sacrifice could overcome our imperfection. Not because Jesus magically took away our sins or stood in for us. But because we know the whole story. We know that Jesus went to his death in the name of radical, vulnerable, wastefully extravagant love. He stood deeply in the proclamation of that love, knowing that nothing could bend or twist it. Nothing could manipulate it or extinguish it. Not even death could put out the flame of God’s love for us, for God’s precious people.
That is the joy of Lent.
It’s a time to look squarely at ourselves in the safety of God’s gaze, a time to come to ourselves and admit the hungers that drive us and lead us to squander God’s gift of life. Lent is a time to face the hunger in us that leads us to believe there isn’t enough to go around, and there surely can’t be room at the table for people who don’t follow the rules. Lent is the time to look at ways we deny our membership in the family of God or deny that membership to others.
And then to recognize that God is ready to come running to us wherever we are, no matter what, with our doubts and uncertainties, with our fears and our longings, with our pain and our sorrow. God is ready to hitch up those robes and run like a fool for us to bring us to the banquet that has been there all along.
Mary holds a B.A. from Loyola Marymount University, an M.A. from Regis University and an M. Div. from University of the South School of Theology. Currently, she serves as a supply priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago and as a spiritual director. Mary lives in the suburbs of Chicago with her husband. She is the mother of four and grandmother of six.
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