Proverbs 25:21-22
Romans 12:18-21
Luke 15:11-32
What the younger son does in this story – the one Jesus just told us – what the younger son does here is terrible. It is unimaginably hurtful.
I’m not talking about wasting the money on “extravagant living” – I’m sure he made some bad decisions there, but, I just can’t get worked up about that. No, I’m talking about how the story begins – with him saying, to his dad, basically, “I wish you were dead.”
That’s what he’s saying when he says “I want my inheritance now” – because, of course, an inheritance is something you get after your parent has died. So what he’s really saying is “Dad, my relationship with you is less valuable to me than the wealth I will get after you die. If I could choose, I’d have you die right now so I could get that money. But, since you’re not dead, could you just give me the money anyway, and I’ll leave town?”
It is hurtful. This younger son is throwing away his relationship to his father, he is cutting himself from his family, because he wants some money.
And it’s worse even than that. You see, in the ancient world, this family’s wealth would not have been held primarily in money – the son’s inheritance would not have been a check for half of his dad’s estate – it would have been, well, half of the literal estate – the family’s wealth was held in land, and livestock – his share of the inheritance would have been half the land and livestock of the family farm. And so what this younger son demands – and what this indulgent father does – is sell half of the family farm – undercutting the family’s ability to make a living, to feed themselves – and convert that land, that livestock, into money, so that this younger son can give into his desires and take that money and go try his luck in a far off land.
What I’m saying is, this story is about a family that is broken apart – and that needs to be healed – and it’s broken not by some accident, not by tragic fate, but by an act of selfish will. It is intentionally broken, by a family member – a younger son – who doesn’t seem to care about the harm, the hurt, the damage he causes to his family. All he cares about is getting what’s his, about what he can get out of it.
That’s the first thing that strikes me about this story – how offensive the younger son’s request is. And the second thing, the next thing I notice is just how radical the father’s forgiveness is. When this younger son comes to his senses, when he’s run out of money and burned every bridge and is sitting in pig slop, wishing he could eat the food he’s supposed to be feeding to his pigs – he realizes that his father’s hired hands – the family’s employees – have better living conditions than he has right now – he realizes how good he had it at home – and he decides to go home, and beg for his father to make him a servant – a ranch hand on the family farm. He burned so many bridges that he can’t imagine asking to be forgiven, to be welcomed back as a son – he realizes just how much hurt he caused, just how wrong he went, he knows that asking for forgiveness, asking for a fresh start, is asking for a lot.
But his father – his father sees his son – this disaster, this hot mess of a child – his father sees him while he is still far off and runs down the road to greet him. It seems that the father was waiting on the porch, watching the road – he must have been there for weeks, months – hoping that one of these days, his beloved son would return to him. This son had done everything he could to burn this bridge, to destroy his relationship with his father, but the father wouldn’t let his son’s self-destruction and disregard for his love destroy their relationship. So, when this son asks to be welcomed back as a hired hand, as a servant, the father won’t hear of it – no, he says, you’re my son, so I’m going to welcome you home as a son! We are going to throw a party, put out the best food, and invite the whole town. Notice that part – he invites the whole town, all the servants – he makes this a celebration for all of them. This son has been in a desperate rush to destroy relationships, and so the father welcomes him back home by rebuilding relationships – maybe the people of the town, the employees on the farm, had been talking about what a jerk, what an idiot, this younger son had been. It may have been hard for him to re-integrate into that community. Well, what better way to make the town happy to see him, to make them forget all those whispered rumors and resentments, than by making him the cause of a party? They get a day off, and good food and drink, because this guy has come home. The father welcomes the son by inviting him into a network of relationships and helping him begin to repair them.
And that brings us to the older brother. If the younger son shows us how terribly we sometimes hurt each other – especially as we tear apart relationships in pursuit of our own selfish desires – and if the father shows just how radical true forgiveness can be, then the older son shows us – reminds us – of just how offensive forgiveness sometimes is. We sometimes depict the older brother – who doesn’t want to come to this party, who resents the father for welcoming his younger brother back with such open arms – we sometimes depict this older brother as stingy, or mean-spirited. But, I dunno, it seems to me that he just has a good memory. He remember how awful what his younger brother did was. He remember how much it hurt his father, hurt his family. He has probably been nursing his grudge against his spoiled younger brother the whole time that he’s been gone. And, so, he doesn’t want to forgive his brother. Even though forgiveness would cost him nothing. In reality, he hasn’t lost anything – his half of the farm is still his, he will still get it when his father dies. His father is the one who has been hurt, so if he’s nursing a grudge on behalf of his father, that seems misguided – because his father’s ready to forgive, his father is ready to heal this broken relationship. But the older son isn’t – maybe he resents the older son – maybe he wishes that he could have been out there, living extravagantly. He doesn’t seem to realize just how much his younger brother was hurt by his own actions. The older brother has everything – he has been home with the father, sharing in community and love and the good life – and it doesn’t cost him anything to welcome his younger brother back home – but he resents it anyway. He has grown to love his resentment, thinking of himself as better than his younger brother is something that nourishes him, and it’s going to be hard to give that up.
We are all of us, variously, the younger and the older brother. Sometimes all of us wander far away from God and need to be forgiven – we are the younger brother, depending only on God’s mercy for our very survival. And, often, we are the older brother, high and mighty and self-righteous and judgmental – seemingly unaware of how much we, too, depend on grace, seemingly unaware that, we too would be nothing without the father’s love, that it doesn’t hurt us to welcome outsiders and forgive broken people. Both of these sons attempt to divide the family in this story. The younger son divides the family by running off with half the family fortune and wasting it. The older son divides the family by his self-righteousness and by refusing to join in the father’s forgiveness of the younger son. But both of them do damage to their relationship with their father, both of them divide the family, and the father offers mercy to them both!
First and foremost, this is a story about God, and how God forgives. God is the father, who lavishes extravagant love on us, even when we don’t deserve it. When we run away, when our love fails, God’s love chases after us, and never gives up on us. Nothing we can do could ever stop God from loving us, could ever make God give up on us. When we break our relationship with God, God rebuilds the bridges we have burnt, God sustains the relationship from God’s side, and welcomes us back home with a party.
Secondly, this is a story that tells us to “go and do likewise.” This story is a calling, an invitation, to learn to forgive like God forgives. And, like I said last week, that doesn’t mean we have to let people hurt us, it doesn’t require us to let people walk all over us – it’s OK to say no and draw boundaries. But, also, God’s forgiveness is radical. Real forgiveness is offensive – it makes space in our hearts, in our lives, for people who have done wrong.
The forgiveness in this story is possible because the younger son is willing to admit just how wrong he had been. He has no pretensions, he doesn’t try to defend his actions. He just says, “I’m sorry. I know I don’t deserve it, but will you take me back?” The son was lost because he chose to be lost, because he got himself lost in a mess of self-centered self-destruction. And this story reminds us that sometimes before someone who decided to get themselves lost can be found, they have to want to be found. Which says something to those of us who are trying to draw boundaries and live in a healthy way with people who have a pattern of harmful behavior – if someone asks for forgiveness but isn’t willing to change, is trying to defend what they did – or if they don’t ask for forgiveness at all, well, then, that doesn’t make forgiveness impossible, but it does make it more difficult, and it is important information as we try to figure out how to move forward.
But, of course, what makes the forgiveness possible in this story is that the father says “even though you’ve broken relationship with me, I haven’t broken relationship with you. Even though you’ve turned your back on me, I haven’t turned my back on you. Even though you have failed to love me, I have always loved you.” That’s how God loves us. And, that’s what is necessary for forgiveness to happen – we have to be willing to say that the relationship is more important than anything else, the one who is forgiving must offer love even bigger than the hurt, than the harm that was done. That’s not always easy – it can hurt a lot. And it’s often risky – because you might get hurt again. That’s what forgiveness costs – and it’s fair to weigh the risks, to wonder whether it’s wise to put yourself in the risky position that comes with throwing open the doors to your heart and allowing someone who has hurt you to come back in.
But, at the same time, without forgiveness, no relationship is possible – because all of us hurt each other, over and over again. We are human, we are frail, we don’t realize the consequences of our actions, and sometimes we are just selfish. Without forgiveness, no marriage, no friendship, no relationship will ever work. We are all of us, always, dependent on forgiveness to get us through.
The older brother in this story – and the way he ends the story in pain, out in the cold, because he won’t forgive – is also a reminder that forgiveness has power, not just for the person who is forgiven, but for the person who forgives. Our readings from Romans and Proverbs remind us of this. Or, think of the classic line about how “holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” The older brother is so mad, so unwilling to forgive, that he misses a party, that he sits there in the cold, choking on his own bitterness. In other words, sometimes forgiveness is NOT about saying that the bad things people did to us – or to someone else – are OK. It’s saying “I’m not going to let you keep controlling how I feel, I’m not going to let our past make me feel resentful all the time, I’m going to let it go” – it’s as much about releasing ourselves from the power of the past as it is about releasing others from it.
And, again, fundamentally, it’s all about God – it’s all a gift from God. We are able to forgive because God first forgave us. If forgiveness is loving someone – and reaching out to them in relationship – even after they tried to burn those bridges, cut you out of their life – even after they did you wrong – well, friends, that’s the story of the Jesus. In the cross and the resurrection, in the life and death of Jesus, God enters into our world, and says “even though you have run away from me, I’m not going to give up on you; even though you seek to kill me, I offer you life.”
Forgiveness is a gift that comes from God. It’s not something we can do on our own. It’s an invitation to a party where wounds are healed, relationships are restored, and we are all invited into the presence of God, together.
