The Prodigal Father
Luke 15: 11-32
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 
Walter Francis Reilly Lockwood, my father, died 27 years ago at the age of 63 years from the ravages of a hard life and alcohol. I remember him today with great love.  My Dad was a deeply beautiful and deeply flawed human being.  He was uneducated and very intelligent.  He was sentimental and he was violent.  He was fun and he was scary.  He harnessed himself and his passion to a milk route to support his five daughters. When I was little I was afraid of him.

Even as a young child, life experience and the teaching of scripture posed a theological challenge for me. The image of God the Father was disconcerting to me. I couldn’t reconcile the God of Jesus with God the Father in my life.  I couldn’t see how God the Spirit was the same as a wrathful God of vengeance and violence.  I couldn’t understand a God of love who would lay down his life for others in Jesus and a God who would let innocents suffer. I know many who struggle with this today.

As I grew in years and experience, I found other images of father to set alongside my own dad, -- I found them -- in television (OK, I admit it: Robert Young in “Father Knows Best”), in teachers, in literature, in church “fathers”, in neighbors, and in friends’ families.

I also learned to add other names and metaphors for God from the Bible and Christian tradition and prayer: God as Mother, as mighty rock, as spirit, as anchor, as shepherd, as Wisdom....

But still, if I am honest, in the corners of my mind and heart, there lurked the image of the angry father God. The dominant language for God and the messages I received about God in church sustained this image.

As a youth, I learned how to use a metaphor worksheet.  “God is like a father:  God is ___ and a father is ____.  God is ___ and a father is ___. God is like a father, but God is not a father, for God is ____ while a father is ____,” and so on.  

I became convinced that no one name, no one image could contain God, or it would become a graven image, an idol.

Then, one day, I encountered the gospel story that Jerry and Brandon and Eun-Joo read for us this morning. And when I say that I encountered it that is exactly what I mean. You know how you can hear the same story told many times, and then suddenly you hear it?  That happened to me with the Parable of the Prodigal Son --- or, as I like to call it, the Parable of the Prodigal Father.

The word “prodigal” doesn’t mean wayward or lost... but rather, it means “recklessly spendthrift,” “wastefully extravagant.”  It means to “spend until you have nothing left.”

The youngest son lived wastefully ... and was left with nothing ... but it was the father who reached out with extravagantly wasteful welcome to hold again in his arms the son who had turned away from him.

I could identify with the fear of the younger son who was forced to return home in shame.  Shame I understood. The thought of having done something wrong, or just of coming home and finding an angry father was all too real.  Here was a son who had good reason to fear.

I could also identify with the elder brother who stood outside the feasting and rejoicing in self-righteous anger and envy.  Self-righteous I understood.  The practice of comparing just who receives what reward is a familiar one, as is the practice of measuring out love in careful portions.  Have you ever given one treat to two children – with the ground rule that one child is to divide and the other decide which half is theirs?  It can take forty-five minutes! It takes a very long time to divide and decide with a sense of scarcity.  And we can spend a lot of time in our lives in similar measuring.

But when I encountered this parable for the first time, after hearing it hundreds of times, when I read with open eyes and soul the stunning and wondrous moment when the younger son was met not with judgment, but with extravagant love, it turned my life around.

Love ... without limits. The experience of arms stretched out in welcome instead of fists clenched in anger.  Fear, shame and trepidation transformed into a welcome feast.  That is the reality of this prodigal God’s love that does not count cost. That is the experience of being loved, right here and now, exactly as we are.  Wastefully, extravagantly loved into new life.

I’m old enough now – fifty-six years old – to know that all parents, especially me, and all human beings are deeply beautiful and deeply flawed.  

This parable, like all of Jesus’ stories, is not a simple allegory, or a paint-by-number metaphor.  In this parable the realities of family life, social expectations, and patriarchal practices are thrown down beside each other to awaken us to new possibilities and new realities beyond our imagining.

While he was still a long way off his father saw him and was moved with pity...He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him...the father came out and began to urge the elder son to come in.....

If even a patriarchal father, a flawed parent, a wounded human being, longs for the return of a child, rejoices in restoration and reconciliation, embraces and hosts a wastefully extravagant and joyous feast.... How much more so does our God long, rejoice, embrace and welcome?  God’s prodigal love is a radical reorientation to generosity and grace.  

Henri Nouwen, in his meditation on Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal,” asks:  

But what of the father?  ... It feels somehow good to be able to say: “These sons are like me.”  It gives a sense of being understood.  But how does it feel to say:  “The father is like me”?  Do I want to be like the father?  Do I want to be not just the one who is being forgiven, but also the one who forgives; not just the one who is being welcomed home, but also the one who welcomes home; not just the one who receives compassion, but the one who offers it well?

I miss my dad.  I long ago came to understand how fiercely he loved his five daughters in the best ways he knew how.  I have been awakened by a parable to the prodigious love of a prodigal father who loved his sons without limit.  And I celebrate the prodigal God who forgives us and loves us and holds without counting the cost.  Alleluia.