Text: Luke 15:1-32
Speaker: Mark Rupp

In ten years of pastoring here at Columbus Mennonite, this must be the first time I have gotten to preach on these parables, because I am sure that if I had done so already, I would have forced you all to learn and sing the song I’ve included as an insert in your bulletin. This is a song we sang at the church camp I grew up going to that holds a lot of fond memories for me…so don’t mess it up, ok. A show of hands if anyone is familiar with it.

It’s a fairly simple tune, though the rhythm in the last line gets a little funky. The only tricky part is that its true beauty comes from being done as a round. You’ll note each line of music is a new part of the round, so we will divide into three groups [note where the divisions will be]. 

For this first time through, we will only sing the first verse you have on the insert, even as we repeat it as a round. This is how we did it at my camp. I will sing it through once while you listen. Then everyone will sing it through in unison one time. Then we will start the round with group 1 and have each group sing it through twice. When Groups 1 and 2 finish their second time through, you all can repeat the last line with the other groups, so that we all end in unison on the last line. And remember, just the first verse for this time through.

[Lead the song.]

Thank you for that. As I mentioned, this is a song that was certainly a camp favorite. As soon as any of the leaders would launch into it, something magical would always happen where the tone would shift. Even if we had just sung an upbeat or silly song shortly before this one, as soon as this one began, the group got serious. I have many memories of a sea of high school kids singing and swaying together, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, some even getting emotional as the music swelled around them. 

And it was certainly a favorite of mine as well, but it wasn’t until I was a bit older that I realized something never sat quite right with me about it. Something always felt unfinished. The singing of this song always felt a little emotionally manipulative in the way it had those groups of young people singing about being unworthy. This was the early 2000’s so maybe we were all just going through our own “emo phase” but we all seemed to eat it up. Our voices soared on the lyrics “And am no more worthy to be called thy son” and many of us would get all choked up every single time. 

The lyrics are taken pretty directly from the passage in Luke’s gospel, so it was hard to argue with the use of them in a song. But at some point I realized that my issue with the song was that it stopped in the middle of the story. It swelled to its musical climax on the son’s confession of guilt and shame and unworthiness, and it kept us there. With the son, we confessed our unworthiness through song, and we were left with THAT as the final notes died away. 

But as we’ve already heard today, that is not at all where the story ends. Nor is it truly where the parable begins. A few weeks ago Joel talked about how the naming of the parables in the Bibles we have–often in subheadings added by modern editors–can be a spoiler. “The Parable of the Good Samaritan” gives away the surprise ending, the part that is supposed to catch its readers off guard. Often our parable for today is filed under the heading of “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” Now, this naming of the parable is hardly a spoiler, not least of which because most people don’t actually know what the word “prodigal” means. 

Side note: If you are in that camp, let me fill you in that “prodigal” is an adjective that means wastefully extravagant. 

Calling this the “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is less a spoiler and more an unhelpful framing of what’s important about this parable. It perhaps sets us up to pay attention to the wrong things, to think that the point Jesus is trying to make is about the son that left and came back. With our focus on this wasteful, ungrateful, prodigal child, we end up thinking the point of the parable is for us to rehearse our own speeches of unworthiness, to practice our own guilt and prepare our own confessions of sin for our shameful return. 

“Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee…”

But that is neither where this parable ends, nor where it begins. And how we frame the story matters. Our Lent small group is reading the book Divine Gravity by Meghan Larissa Good, and in it she writes,

Every person…must live by some story of what is real or what is good, and every story has practical consequences. If your fundamental belief is that the world is composed of a scarce amount of good and that only the fittest survive, odds are good this story influences both your politics and what you’ll personally do to climb the ladder. If you believe there is a God who loves you deeply and despises your opponents, chances are your workplace and holiday table all show the effects. If you’re truly convinced that there is a God who is reliably generous, or a God who raises the dead, it alters the calculations of what can be shared or risked. (32)

The framing of these parables matters because it shapes what we do with them and what they do within us. 

So what is a more helpful frame? The way this parable is set up, and the way it concludes should give us some idea of what kind of story is being told. 

The so-called Parable of the Prodigal Son is part of this series of parables, which in turn comes after the writer of Luke’s gospel sets the scene by letting readers know how much the religious authorities were annoyed that Jesus was eating and fellowshipping so openly with tax collectors and sinners. These parables are Jesus’ response to the idea that he should not be associating himself with people who are so widely disliked, despised, and worthy only of being shunned. 

And the series builds on itself. The shepherd has 100 sheep but loses one, so he leaves the rest and searches relentlessly until it is found. And when he does, he rejoices and calls up friends and neighbors to rejoice with him. The woman has 10 silver coins and loses one. So she scours her home, turning everything upside down until she finds it. And she rejoices and calls upon her neighbors to join her in her rejoicing. 

And then there was a man who had two sons, the younger of whom demanded his inheritance and, after he had gotten it, left his family for a far away place. And it’s at this point that we so often shift our focus to this son. We see the foolishness of his actions and consider it a comeuppance when famine hits the land and he is left with nothing. Perhaps we feel compelled to identify with him as we consider our own sin and rehearse our own confessions in the face of the One we can only hope will allow us to crawl back into the fold. 

When the Prodigal Son is put at the center of this parable, it can easily center our own guilt and shame. Even if we know the rest of the story, we can sometimes focus too much on the son and end up feeling like the climax of the parable is an admission that we are “no more worthy to be called thy child.” 

There is a time for confession. There is a time for considering our sin; for being honest with ourselves, each other, and with God about all the things we have done and the things we have failed to do. Lent is a season for this type of contemplation. 

Yet as we take this Lent journey this year through the lens of these parables, considering what we are being “thrown alongside,” I can’t help but feel like perhaps the truly surprising thing, the thing that is going to catch us off guard is NOT more time spent wallowing, confessing, and feeling terrible about the state of the world and our complicity within this dumpster fire. Parables are meant to throw us off balance, yet in a world that already feels for so many of us like it is teetering, perhaps the thing that we need to hear is that we worship a prodigal God, a God who is wastefully extravagant with the love God has for us for all Creation. A God who waits and watches and runs to meet us while we are still far off.

Calling this the Parable of the Prodigal Son misses the fact that the focus seems to be on the Prodigal Father. Just like the shepherd and the woman in the first two parables, the Father is relentless in his waiting and watching, wasteful with his time as he spends his days scanning the horizon for any sign of the son that had been lost to him. Putting the Father back in focus can help us notice that he doesn’t just go out to meet the son, the text says he runs. What’s more, he sees him while he is still far off. The Father’s love is ever vigilant and patient and compassionate. 

The Prodigal Father doesn’t even wait for the son to give his entire rehearsed speech but cuts him off before he can finish so that he can call for a robe and a ring and give instructions about preparing a lavish party so that all may celebrate. 

One commentator I read this week summed this up beautifully when he wrote, “Grace lies at the heart of this parable–scandalous grace, grace that defies all earthly rules and conventions…The economy of such love and grace surprises, even offends, us in its extravagance. While the ways of the world suggest that yes, the son might be welcomed home, but reasonably so…the economy of God is such that rejoicing for the return of a child is simply not enough. Joy must be made all the more complete by abundance.” (Daniel G. Deffenbach in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2)

I have been heartened to find out that in the Common English Bible translation, which is what the new Anabaptist Community Bible utilizes, the passage for today falls under the heading: “Occasions for Celebration.” 

People here at CMC really seem to love Lent. Many of us love its quieter, more contemplative tone. We relish the ways it invites us into confession, naming the realities of the world and our places within it. We appreciate the chance to sing songs with a more somber tone and hear liturgies that reflect a world that so often feels far from the Kin-dom of God we long for. 

But this Lent while I consider what we are being thrown alongside in these parables, I find myself wondering whether the thing that might most unsettle us and throw us off balance is the invitation to joy. What if the story we place alongside our own is less about the prodigal son and his sins and his repentance and more about an occasion for celebration, about a God who is wastefully extravagant with grace and invites us to do the same? 

How might this framing of the story change what we do with it and what it does within us? 

Because the thing is, we can’t guilt or shame our way toward transformation and salvation, however we might define those. Only belovedness can transform us in a way that is truly everlasting. It is our joy that is revolutionary, not our self-flagellations or the well-rehearsed scripts of performative piety.

Lent can be a somber season. But we can also allow ourselves to be surprised by joy on this journey toward Easter, even if we can see so clearly the crosses that lay between here and there. As much as we love Lent around here, I also think a lot of us don’t quite know what to do with Easter, with resurrection. And that’s ok. It might be more odd if you felt like you had it all figured out anyway. But even if we aren’t sure what to make of the resurrection, I hope we can see the other occasions for celebration along the way, that we can find hope in a God who is wastefully loving, extravagantly compassionate. 

I pray that wherever we find ourselves on this Lent journey, we don’t tarry too long on any notions of our own unworthiness or linger on confession as if that’s the end of the story. The Prodigal Son song never sat right with me because it’s unfinished. So I wrote a second verse for us to sing today, one that ends on joy. As we sing it one more time, this time with the second verse, I hope that wherever you are on your own journey this Lent, that you can let joy surprise you; that you can find your own occasions for celebration, knowing that you are already held in the reckless, wasteful grace of a prodigal God.

For this time through, we will start with everyone in unison on the first verse. Then we will break into the round, with each group doing the first verse once through, and the second verse once through. Ending with everyone in unison as the first two groups repeat the final line as the others catch up.