Failure into Victory

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday March 14, 2010, the 4th Sunday in Lent.

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The story of the Prodigal Son, who doesn’t like the story of the Prodigal Son?

Well, I guess every “older brother” that ever walked the face of the earth. Every honest, hard working, home bodied, insufferable, stick-in-the-mud sibling that ever walked the face of the earth probably doesn’t like the story of the Prodigal Son. Well, today it seems that I am putting him on the spot for being such an unbearable over-wound fogey; but at least he will have company.

Let’s begin where the story begins, with a man who had two sons. In the beginning of the passage, all we learn about the man is that he is a patriarch of a clan with some land to call his own. He is blessed, as would be any father with two sons. Granted, in this day and time seven sons is a greater blessing, but he’s got two and that’s good indeed. In a way, it’s like Miss America, should the older son not be able to fulfill his obligations the younger will be able to take over. Soon, we discover that this patriarch is what the listeners to this story would call a patsy, but that comes later.

The younger son is the one we all know more about from this story. He must have been a real piece of work. “Oh Daddy, I wish you were dead so that I may have my share of you now.” Yeah, now that’s love. “Oh Daddy, I don’t want anything to do with the family business. I want to make my way in the world and for that I’ll need a third of all that’s yours to be mine, now.”

As repulsive as it sounds to us, in the time Jesus was telling this story it was particularly horrible. In an era where “Honor thy Father” was one of the “Heavy Ten” and not the title of a made for TV organized crime movie; in a culture where family and community always took precedence over the individual; the younger son’s request was insolent.

Now it wasn’t unusual for a father to distribute his property before his death, the marriage of a son was a common reason to expedite the inheritance, but for the younger son to demand an early distribution so that he could make his way in the world is disrespectful, rebellious, and foolish.

None of this would have escaped the listener when Jesus told this story.

So now we return to the Father. Surely the Father is blessed, and from the hundreds of times we have heard, read, and contemplated this story, we know him as the generous Father of grace, peace, and mercy. He is love personified. But this is not necessarily how Jesus’ listeners would have heard this story.

In the first century context, to those Jesus originally shared this story, the Father is the biggest failure in the whole tale! First of all, he raised a son who was so impertinent toward his family that he dared ask for his share of the family fortune just so that he could get out of the house and away from the farm. To make matters worse, the Father agrees to his son’s disrespectful request.

The Father further disrespects himself by waiting for the return of his son. Scripture doesn’t elaborate on this point, but according to our reading the Father sees his son returning while he was still far off. Obviously, the father was watching and waiting for the return of his disobedient spawn.

Establishing that the father not only waited but then saw the son coming home, the Father, the patriarch of this small but blessed clan, ran to meet the son who dishonored him. Patriarchs never ran anywhere. In the mafia movie “Goodfellas,” Ray Liota’s character speaks of the head of the family saying, “Paulie never ran anywhere. He didn’t have to.” This mentality was the norm for the fathers of Jesus’ day.

Then, just to put the icing on the cake, the father has the fatted calf butchered so that there can be a party to celebrate the sorry brother’s return. The calf that could have been used to honor the Lord at a religious festival is used to hail the irresponsible son’s return. Then to put the decorative flowers and the “Welcome Home” on the icing on the cake; the older brother is so angry that he refuses to enter the house so the father had to come out and begin to plead with him. The first century listener would have revoked the father’s man-card on the spot.
While this is not what we hear listening to this story, this would not have escaped the listener who heard Jesus tell this story.

While we’re on the subject of the older brother; he’s a piece of work himself, but not without reason. To suit his younger brother, Dad liquidates one-third of the estate. That obviously left the family in a cash crunch. Then when the younger brother comes home, it is entirely possible that little brother can be set up with another share of the estate. Doing the math, it is possible that the gadfly brother could walk away with over half of the father’s wealth.[1] I don’t think any of us would be any less upset than the older brother.

Yes, the Father will affirm that the property will not be split again. The father tells his older son “all that is mine is yours,” but he sure didn’t know that while he’s standing outside.

Still, reason or not, he lets his anger show disrespect to his father by hanging out under the olive tree hoping the whole thing will just go away. The culturally foolish father comes out and is raked over the coals by his devoted yet now disrespectful son. “You never did this for me. I worked my fingers to the bone for years, for you, and did I get any thanks? No, you gave this son of yours, notice it’s not my brother, but your son, gave this son of yours the fatted calf and I never got a pony, er… party.” Sure in the end the younger brother’s life in the wilderness turned out to be a punishment, but it’s the lack of discipline in the beginning of the story that the older brother loathes.

It may be hard for us to imagine, but the older brother might have been the most sympathetic character to the listeners of the story in Jesus’ day. He was the only one who is devoted to the traditional values of family and community, but you can’t get away from this story without thinking he needs to get off of his pity pot.

The “traditional values” part of this would not have escaped the listener when Jesus told this story. The un-sympathetic character portion might have.

Henri Nouwen, one of the great spiritual writers of the twentieth century, commented on the “lostness” of both sons in this story.

He wrote, “Did you ever notice how lost you are when you are resentful? It’s a very deep lostness. The younger son gets lost in a much more spectacular way—giving in to his lust and his greed, using women, playing poker, and losing his money. His wrongdoing is very clear-cut. He knows it and everybody else does, too. Because of it he can come back, and he can be forgiven. The problem with resentment is that it is not so clear-cut: It’s not spectacular. And it is not overt, and it can be covered by the appearance of a holy life. Resentment is so pernicious because it sits very deep in you, in your heart, in your bones, and in your flesh, and often you don’t even know it is there. You think you’re so good. But in fact you are lost in a very profound way.”[2]

I have colleagues that call this gospel “Luke and the Losers.” This story is a fine example of why. Jesus has a habit of turning failures into heroes in his stories, turning failure into victory. Jesus picked losers such as tax collectors to be his disciples and partied with people who everyone in polite and pious society would have considered to be failures on many, many of levels.

He didn’t seem to mind being pictured as a failure because he knew that was the only way that folks everyone else considered failures could come to him. This story was designed to invite self-righteous Pharisees and scribes to see how they had become the older brother, failing to experience the joy and celebration that God does when wayward sinners come home. But it is also designed to remind us all of the embarrassing lengths to which God, in the person of Jesus, would go to make that homecoming a reality.[3]

There are a lot of tensions in this story: grace over justice, disrespect over honor, and foolishness over traditional values. As this story invited the Pharisees to see how they have become the older brother, these tensions force us to examine the way we handle tensions in our own lives. They force us to examine how we have become both brothers in one way or another.

The final tension we have to explore is that the Father goes to each son. The father joyfully welcomes the irresponsible brother when he returns home from the physical wilderness. Then the father joyfully welcomes the responsible brother as he stands in his virtual wilderness. Foolish as this seems, it is the mark of the generous and loving father we have come to associate with the Lord our God. This is the sign and seal of God’s gracious love for us. This is the way our Lord turns what the world considers failure into victory.

Lent reminds us that the story of Jesus inevitably moves toward the cross, the ultimate picture of failure and disgrace. Jesus was willing to risk the embarrassment of being stripped, beaten and hanged naked to die and to be held up as a failure for the whole world to see on that Friday. It is through that failure that God chooses to save the world.[4]

[1] Traditionally, the younger of two sons could inherit one-third of the father’s wealth. According to homileticsonline.com, id=23050 the younger son could have left the first time with only 11% of his inheritance, but if he had been restored to the estate, he could have eventually taken up to 40% of the father’s estate. According to homileticsonline.com, id=40793 he could have taken one third of the father’s estate and then one-third again, or up to 56% of the original split. Retrieved March 8, 2007.
[2] Henri Nouwen, From Fear to Love: Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, (Fenton, Missouri: Creative Communications for the Parish, 1998), 13-14.
[3] Post Your Failure, HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040516, retrieved February 15, 2010.
[4] Post Your Failure, HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040516, retrieved February 15, 2010.