"This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
The Pharisees and scribes criticized Jesus for welcoming sinners and tax collectors. Jesus answered them strikingly by addressing to them a parable about two sons and their relationship to their Father. But was this perhaps a naïve understanding, calling a sinner a son of any sort? Yet Jesus demonstrated that he was a realist with his deep understanding of the way that things were not well with this family in his parable. The Pharisees did not realize that God intended even sinners to be sons. But this did not mean that Jesus ignored the fact that those meant to be sons had indeed become sinners. Yet seeing this in light of the fact they were always meant to be sons meant living like father in the parable, ever waiting for their hearts to return to his home.
'Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.'
So the father divided the property between them.
A theme of sin that we see again and again is the desire to have our blessings for ourselves alone, apart from God, apart from his call to bear fruit, apart from his direction for our lives. This began with Adam and Eve in the Garden, desiring to determine for themselves what was good and what was evil. We saw it in yesterday's parables about the wicked tenants of the vineyard. And we see it here in today's Gospel were the younger son made a demand with the implication that he desired to consider his father dead so that he could enjoy his inheritance on his own and as he chose.
How many of my father's hired workers
have more than enough food to eat,
but here am I, dying from hunger.
Apart from the abundance of the father's house the blessings the son received could not last in a way that would truly sustain him. By demanding them he had all but wished his father dead. But by receiving them he had all but died himself, as the father would later confirm, saying "your brother was dead".
'Look, all these years I served you
and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
Things were also not well with the older brother who had not so explicitly and egregiously departed from his father. He seemed to only relate to him as a hired worker hoping for a wage. He did not enjoy the life of a son to whom everything the father had also belonged. But the life of a son was of course what the father wanted for him, and how he indeed expected him to live. Everything was already available to the elder brother. But to embrace it he would need to embrace a new relationship to his father, one willing to embrace in turn the father's priorities. This was a potential model for the Pharisees, who were now invited to celebrate the return of prodigal sinners to the heart of the Father, to not stand outside, aloof, and imagining themselves to have been slighted thereby.
Fortunately, by hard experience, the younger son was able to come to his senses, to realize what he had left behind by abandoning his father. He made the decision to return home to be a mere hired worker in the employ of his father. But as with the elder brother this was not the relationship the father himself desired and he would have none of it. He desired only to embrace both the elder and the younger, to welcome the both to the feast, to the music, the dancing, and the fattened calf.
Then let us celebrate with a feast,
because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;
he was lost, and has been found.'
In some ways we have all been the younger brother, demanding to enjoy our blessings on our own apart from God. We have all sinned and fallen short of his glory (see Romans 3:23). Like the older brother we sometimes slip into the mentality of a mere employee of God, and then become jealous when others whose work performance seems worse appear to receive greater rewards than ourselves. But the Father himself waits to welcome us into his feast, which is not a reward, but a gift for the sons whom he loves.
Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt
and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance;
Who does not persist in anger forever,
but delights rather in clemency,
And will again have compassion on us,
treading underfoot our guilt?
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