WHO's LOST?

If your church  chose the Mothering Sunday options last Sunday, you’ll have missed the opportunity to reflect on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the appointed Gospel for Lent 4. Its familiarity can make it difficult to preach on  or think about– we all know what it means. But it repays re-visiting.

It’s now normally called the ‘Parable of the Lost Son’; but I would rather think of it as the story of two lost sons. We usually concentrate on the younger brother as a paradigm of repentance (though in the parable his return seems to be motivated as much by self-interest as by compunction!),And obviously we reflect on the remarkable father, who ignores convention by not only welcoming his errant son back, but running to meet him. That’s still worth pondering as an image of God’s amazing graciousness.

 But the parable ends with the older brother, which suggests to me that Jesus intends us to think about him. Traditionally we regard him as a negative model – an embodiment of Pharisaic self-righteousness and resistance to grace. But that misses the point. For he too is ‘lost’: unsure of his standing and his father’s love. To understand Jesus’ purpose, and gain the full benefit of this parable, we need to glimpse this son’s pain and confusion.

That can also save us from the dishonesty of condemning this ‘bad brother’, when many of us really, if secretly, sympathise with him. Indeed if we go deeper, we may find we actually identify with him.

We know what he is feeling. He has been the good son; he’s always done his duty and never really felt his father’s love.

 Perhaps he privately envied his younger brother, who had escaped from the demands of responsibility and respectability, and gone offer to experience ‘life’ and adventure. Of course doing that was selfish and uncaring  – and it all ended in tears. At least it should have done, but the returning wastrel is not just allowed to crawl into the servants’ hall, he is welcomed home by his father and invited to a party.

No wonder the older boy is angry! He’s angry with his brother, whom he won’t even acknowledge, and with his father, who seems to have shown unfair generosity. But isn’t he also angry with himself – for not having had the courage to break free, for never having asked for anything? The younger son had taken risks, and explored his desires – even though they were not worthy ones. The older son has been too hesitant, closed in on himself.  He had never even asked to have his friends round for a meal, and now nursed a deep resentment – against himself for his reticence, and against his father for not suggesting that.

C.S. Lewis somewhere wrote that it can be better to desire the wrong things than to have no desires at all. God can transform our misdirected passion, but is powerless if we don’t admit to having any. We see something similar in Luke’s account of Jesus at the house of Mary and Martha. Martha (like the older brother) becomes resentful that her sister is less constrained by convention, and so is freer than she is, and able to express her longing for closeness with Jesus.

It is interesting that in that narrative, and in this parable, there is no resolution. Did Martha accept Jesus’ gentle reprimand and join her sister in sitting at Jesus’ feet? Did the older son acknowledge his father’s love, and his own need and longing for affection, and so go into the feast?

So in both cases we are presented with a challenge. Are we satisfied with our relationship with God? Or can we dare to discover a desire for a closer relationship with God, a hunger and thirst for more intimacy? Can we take the risk of letting go, and letting God fully into our lives?