Prodigal Grace

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

March 18, 2007

The parable that we just read is so familiar to us that in our familiarity we either run the risk of overlooking some important details, or we make assumptions about the story that may not in fact be accurate. For example, we don’t really know the young man’s frame of mind when he decided to return home. We like to assume that he was filled with remorse for the way that he had squandered his inheritance. We like to think that maybe he had a spiritual experience that made him return home. All that may be, but in truth Jesus simply says that the young man "came to his senses."

There are other things that we might assume because of our familiarity with the parable. Even though we call this the parable of the prodigal son, did you know that the word "prodigal" doesn’t even appear in the text? Yet the truth be told, I have used the young man in this story as the definition of the word "prodigal." And so in that regard "prodigal" refers to a lifestyle marked by loose sexual morals, wastefulness, drunkenness, wild living. I don’t think I’m the only person who has used "prodigal" in these terms. Often when I hear people talking about their spiritual journey, they will refer to the "prodigal" years of their life when they had walked away from the church: maybe it was their college years, maybe it was a mid-life crisis, maybe it was disillusionment with organized religion, maybe it was simply a desire to sow wild oats.

Do you know what the word "prodigal" really means? Webster’s Dictionary defines "prodigal" as: (adj. 1. recklessly extravagant, 2. characterized by wasteful expenditure: LAVISH, 3. yielding abundantly: LUXURIANT; synonym: Profuse). As a noun its definition is (one who spends or gives lavishly and foolishly).

It’s enough to make one wonder, who is the true prodigal in the story? For as much as we know that the younger son has squandered and wasted his inheritance on loose living, is it not also true that the manner in which the father receives the lost son is equally prodigal, if not more so? Is it not so that the terms "recklessly extravagant," "lavish," "luxuriant," and "profuse," more accurately reflect the actions of the father than those of the son?

You see, Jesus tells this parable in part to express the unbounded joy that characterizes God when even one lost soul returns to God. Jesus tells this parable to demonstrate that we are received into the kingdom not on the basis of what we have done in our lives--in fact just the opposite, for the story relates to us the truth that we are received into the kingdom in spite of what we have done in our lives. Jesus tells this parable in order to describe the magnitude of the grace of God by which we are received into God’s kingdom.

And, truly, it is a prodigal grace.

The grace of the father--the grace of God--is a prodigal grace in at least three ways.

First, it is grace that grants us freedom, even to wander away if that is what we desire. When the younger son came up to the father and asked for his inheritance, it was as if the son had asked the father to drop dead. You see, an inheritance is something that one receives after the death of a relative. Only, the young son was not willing to wait for his portion of the inheritance, so he asked his father to advance his share to him. And you will note that the father did not resist. The father did not try to talk the son out of his decision.

My friends, the freedom that God gives to us is itself a manifestation of his grace. The fact that God does not force himself upon us, but gives us the freedom to choose whether or not we desire to be part of God’s family, is an extension of God’s grace. For if we are forced against our will to be in God’s family, then what kind of faith do we really have? And what kind of love for God will grow in our hearts?

Second, the prodigal grace of God meets us and embraces us even before we fully arrive at the gates of the kingdom. Did you notice that the father didn’t wait until the son had finished his journey home, but that the father ran out to embrace his son before the son even set foot on the family property? The father didn’t even give the son a chance to finish the speech which the son had been rehearsing. The grace of God is such that he will not wait until we have finished our journey by ourselves; no, God will come to us and embrace us and take us home.

Just before the telling of this parable in Luke, Jesus tells two other parables: that of the shepherd who leaves the flock to go and search for the one lost sheep, and the one about the woman who frantically searches for a coin that she had lost. Because that’s the kind of savior that God sent into this world, one who came to seek and to save the lost. And now, in this parable Jesus once again tells us of One who searches for that which is lost. The father waits for the return of his son, but it is not an idle waiting. It is a waiting filled with expectation and hope, a waiting that actively seeks out the lost.

In an effort to bring this parable into modern times, John Killinger retells the story in the following way:

After wasting his money, being forced to work in places he never knew existed, and finally coming to his senses, the younger son takes the few dollars he has made washing dishes and buys a bus ticket. He rides all night, rehearsing his speech every couple of miles. "Dad, you were right, it’s a tough world. I don’t know what I was thinking….Dad, you were right…."

At dawn the bus pulls up outside the bus station in his little hometown and he tumbles off, wrinkled, unshaven, and a little worried about how he will be received at home. And then a voice calls, "Son!" And there was his father at the station. "But, Dad, how—how did you know I would be here, especially at this hour?" And the agent working at the bus station that morning said, "Are you kidding, boy? Your old man has come down here two, three times a day, every day since you’ve been gone."

Don’t you see, the grace of God is not an idle grace that is there only if we happen to stumble upon it? It is a grace that scans the horizon yearning even for the first sign of our turning toward God in faith. It is a grace that searches us out so that we can be on the receiving end of God’s love and God’s grand welcoming home party.

Which brings us to the third demonstration of God’s prodigal grace, the grand feast that the father gave in honor of the son who was lost, but now is found. As the father embraces the son, he gives orders that indicate not only an unconditional reception of the son back into the family, but a full restoration as well.

Note what the father does. He orders that a robe--the best one--be put on the son. The act of putting on clean clothes says that the father was concerned about the shame that the son must have felt. In a very real sense, the father addressed the nakedness of the son. It sounds an awful lot like what God did to cover the nakedness of the first people ever to have run away from him: Adam and Eve in the garden. Then the father orders that the family ring be place on the son’s finger. It was more than just a piece of jewelry; it would have been the signet ring that accorded to the son all the rights and privileges of the family name, rights and privileges that the son had previously spat upon and forsaken. And the sandals were items that a son would wear, not a slave.

Reconciliation is complete. The restoration to original status is fulfilled. Prodigal grace has been extended even to this son who had rebelled and deliberately rejected the love and provision of his father.

But the story does not end at this point. For though the grace of God is generous beyond our wildest imagination, there are some who would claim that it is too easy, too generous. Not everyone is pleased when they witness the grace of God in action.

I’m reminded of the story of the Sunday School teacher who read this parable to her class of children. She took great pains to emphasize in her reading the displeasure of the older brother upon hearing of the grand festivities that were taking place in honor of the younger brother. After her reading of the story, she asked her class, "Now, who was not happy that the younger brother had been welcomed back home?" After a moment of silence, little Johnny raised his hand and offered an answer: "The fatted calf?"

Not everyone is pleased to see the grace of God administered in such a prodigal manner. The truth is, God’s grace offends the sensibilities of many, especially those who recognize that the grace of God extends even to those in our world who are the least deserving: the moral reprobates, the murderers, the thieves, the scum of the earth.

And so Jesus does not end the parable with the happily ever after ending of the party, but with the sour and resentful reaction of the older son, who could not comprehend how his father could so readily receive back into the family one who had squandered everything so effortlessly. And in so doing, Jesus is addressing those who came up to him at the beginning of the chapter, where Luke says, "...all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’" One person has noted that this would be as if the local ministerial association walked into the Waffle House and saw Jesus at a table with a drug addict, a prostitute, an abortion doctor, a young man with AIDS, a single mother on welfare with five children by three different fathers... And the members of the ministerial association shake their heads in disgust and wonder if Jesus really knew what he was doing.

I think Jesus knows exactly what he’s doing.

Don’t you know, it is not the righteous who need a savior, but the sinners? Only, the last time I checked I heard that no one is righteous, not even one.

With his wit and wisdom and scrappy attitude Andy Edington endeared himself to several generations of Presbyterians. For 21 years he served as President of Schreiner College, a fine Presbyterian institution outside of San Antonio. Edington loved the word of God, and he paraphrased the scripture into contemporary language to make it more accessible to general readers. It was Andy Edington’s version of the New Testament from which I read this parable earlier this morning. Edington also loved to teach the Bible, and it was his love for teaching the Bible that led him to approach the warden of a maximum security prison and seek permission to lead Bible studies among the inmates. Not just the general inmate population, but in particular the most violent of the offenders, those on death row.

The warden tried to talk Edington out of his notion. Because their fate has already been set, the warden pointed out that these were hardened criminals who don’t have any reason not to kill other people. Nevertheless, Edington persisted, and so the warden relented and allowed Edington to lead one-on-one Bible studies with the death row inmates.

Some might say that Edington was wasting his time on people that society had deemed a burden and had written off as useless. Some might even be offended that Edington would dare to provide an opportunity for such hardened criminals to hear the words "grace" and "forgiveness."

But I think that Edington understood that the grace of God is far bigger and far more generous than our sensibilities will allow us to consider.

I suspect that he understood something about the prodigal nature of God’s grace.

My friends in Christ, as we continue our Lenten journey toward Easter, we are called to consider the immeasurable love and grace that God has given to us in Jesus Christ. And surely you are willing to recognize that it is a grace and love that is generous enough to include you and me.

But how far are you willing to allow the grace and love of God to extend beyond yourself? When there is a party in the kingdom of heaven because one who was lost has now been found, will you be on the inside, rejoicing and celebrating, or will you stay away in protest?

Are you willing to admit that the grace of God is more prodigal than any of us is able or even willing to imagine?