Over March, I have been preaching from the Gospel of Luke in this year’s Lenten journey. This culminated with a sermon on the Prodigal Son. A couple of things before going there. First, we must always keep in mind the religious leaders of ancient Israel mentioned in the Gospels did not behave for the most part the way the Gospels portray them. We get in these Gospel accounts a limited view of them, mostly set up as foils for Jesus’ teaching, authority, and activities. These devices are more rhetoric than pedantic history. To the extent that they reflect history, most of the religious leaders’ behavior is explainable by the fact that Jesus’ ministry is portrayed as highly disruptive to the religious order of the times. For a conquered people whose national and cultural identities were inextricably tied to their religious heritage, disruptions to their religion would have been not only understandably unwelcome but also potentially dangerous to the perpetuation of their people. When I read the Gospels as a minister and priest and put myself in the Pharisees’ shoes, I end up confessing more often than not that I would also be outraged at a number of things Jesus did, if he were to come to America and replicate those actions in the Christian churches of our day.
The Pharisees, for their part, were not always against Jesus. They made overtures to him on numerous occasions and sometimes saw him as an ally. Remember that Jesus believed and taught the resurrection of the dead. That issue was a main dividing line between the Pharisees and Sadducees, their main religious rivals at the Temple. Luke later depicts that this division was so sharp their arguments could grow violent, even murderous. The Pharisees were prepared to overlook much for someone who believed as they did about the resurrection of the dead. If only that person would permit their blessing and saction of their ministry. This Jesus would never allow.
In keeping with John the Baptist’s tradition, Jesus scrupulously avoided putting himself in a position of having either the Pharisees or Temple authorities or regional political authorities sanction his ministry. Every time they tried, Jesus rebuffed them — often rudely. He would call them names, pick fights, ignore customs, eschew good manners, etc.
Most of all, he would accuse them of institutional lack of compassion. He, on the other hand, had come as an agent of God’s compassion. He would heal people on the Sabbath specifically to call out the contrast. In Luke 13, the Pharisee in charge of a synagogue where this happened protested that healings were not to be done on the Sabbath. It was work. There are six days to come and be healed; come back then. Of course, this Pharisee was right from a certain point of view. Jesus could have performed the healing any other day of the week as easily as the Sabbath. Also, from the Pharisaical perspective, Jesus’ healing activities constituted medical practice. As it was unlawful to engage in the medical arts on the Sabbath, it must be unlawful for Jesus to do healings. But no, says Jesus. That lacks compassion! Why is it lawful to rescue an animal on the Sabbath but not heal a person? Of course, changing that dynamic would require wholesale changes to the very fabric of that society. Something Jesus well knew.
This comes up again at the start of Luke 14. A leading Pharisee — the equivalent of a regional bishop — invited Jesus to his house to dine on a Sabbath. People were eyeing him because one of the guests suffered from dropsy (an abnormal swelling of the body). Jesus demands of the ecclesiastical experts present, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath day or not?” No response. Jesus heals this pain-ridden, distended man and sends him away cured. He presses the issue: “Who among you, if your child or ox fell into a cistern on the Sabbath, would not immediately pull them out?” Still no response.
Many such meals reeked of politics because there was no separation of religion and state. Their national and cultural identity depended on that. We have these adversaries, then. Jesus and a leading Pharisee with the Pharisees out to sanction him — either in the positive sense of blessing his teaching and thereby exercise dominance or in the negative sense of finding avenues to silence him and thereby exercise dominance. Either way, they deemed it their duty, responsibility, and heritage dating back to the immortal scribe Ezra to exercise this dominance for the good of the nation. In their estimation, they could ill afford a rogue voice in a conquered land. There must be solidarity. Yet Jesus had no interest in solidarity. His was the greater voice. “This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him!” He would not permit their dominance.
In Luke 15 — still ostensibly at this meal — the tax collectors and sinners show up. The screw-ups. The public embarrassments. The butt of gossip and tasteless jokes. The sellouts. The locus of national ire. They show up to hear Jesus and what is going on. And Jesus stops talking to his VIP host in the VIP’s house where he is a guest — and starts conversing with “those people”. This VIP and his entourage start grumbling under their breath and complaining at the rudeness of Jesus’ welcoming “those people”. To be clear, it was the host’s job to welcome guests. But because they were “those people”, he had refused to acknowledge them. Now Jesus has had enough. In the rest of Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories that bring this issue to a head, culminating in the most famous parable of all: “The Prodigal Son”.
Calling the story “The Prodigal Son” would have us miss the point of it. Ultimately it is not about the one who ran away. It is about the elder son who stayed. Viewed in this way, God is the father of the story. The younger brother — the Prodigal — is the tax collectors and sinners. The elder brother is the Pharisees and scribes. In the telling, Jesus gave an extreme example of a screw-up. He demanded his share of the inheritance before his father died. In that culture, doing that was basically saying: “Just drop dead! I wish you were dead!” It was deeply insulting and damaging to the family name — the elder brother’s most prized inheritance whenever the father did die. Then he ran away from home. Another insult to the family. He wasted everything he had in crude licentiousness and dissipation. Another family insult, especially in an age in which moderation was prized. In the end, this Jewish young man hires himself out to feed pigs and wishes to eat their slop. Rock bottom. If anyone exemplified the tax collectors and sinners, it was this fellow.
The uncomfortable reality is “those people” exist. A group of them had been talking with Jesus just then. There is no avenue of denial. What happens? At rock bottom, this young man comes to his senses and decides to go home — not to be a son anymore. That was off the table, given how he had lived. Becoming a hired hand would be enough. And he sets off for home from this far away land with no money or food for the trip. There is no guarantee he will survive the journey, but he takes it, nevertheless. This is the most singularly dramatic depiction of repentance in the Bible.
The father sees this long-lost son while he is little more than a shape on the horizon. But it is his boy; of this there’s no doubt. Father runs out to him, flings himself on his son’s neck, and embraces him, overcome with compassion. “I have sinned against heaven. I’m not worthy to be called your son!” Father will have none of it. He stumbles over his words: “Bring out the robe — bring the best one! Bring sandals! Bring the family ring for his finger! Kill the fattened calf! Let’s celebrate. My son was dead but alive; lost but found!” And we weep joyful tears along with them as they go to the house and begin to make merry.
Now Jesus interrupts this dramatically touching scene. Elder brother comes home himself — from doing his duty in the fields. He has been about his father’s business; now he, too, has returned home. “What is all this commotion?” “Your brother has returned. Your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.” Elder brother is outraged that this “individual” has dared to show his face. He refuses to go in or acknowledge his brother. He makes his father come out to beg and plead with him to come in and rejoice. But he says, “I have slaved away for you for years and never disobeyed you; yet you never gave me a stupid goat so I could make merry with my friends! But as soon as your son returns who devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf!” An aside, the fattened calf was reserved for VIP or royalty. If the governor came to call, you killed the fattened calf. Father has given this erstwhile Prodigal royal treatment; and elder brother is envious of his younger brother. Father replies, “My son, you are here with me always. Everything I have is yours. But it was right to rejoice. Your brother was dead, but alive; lost but found.” And the story stops there unresolved.
In Luke, this story is the climactic event of Jesus’ ten-chapter pilgrimage from the sacred mountain to Jerusalem. It brings to a head this matter of compassion as a societal institution. Jesus had been using this theme to hit the Pharisees where it hurt them most. The accusation Jesus lays at their feet is they were envious of him. And they believed that if God showed compassion to “those people”, it somehow robbed them. Somehow, there was not enough blessing to go around. The blessing was for those deemed worthy of it. It was not for the screw-ups. This they had applied culturally and institutionally. In their zeal to protect their culture, in their zeal to guard their national identity, in their zeal to act as the custodians of their religious heritage — they had constructed a system that could only afford compassion six days a week for those deemed worthy of it. That was the charge Jesus laid on them.
That, I believe, is the accusation of the hour. One of the carryover spirituals from slavery to the Civil Rights movement talks about how “there’s plenty good room”. Why would they feel the need to sing that to America? Why did Langston Hughes pine: “Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table when company comes. Nobody’ll dare say to me, ‘Eat in the kitchen.’ Then.”? The question is, “Is there room at the table?” The Civil Rights movement, any movement of the oppressed or “those people”, anyone braving the rocky coasts of immigration — they all seek room at the table. To not have to scurry to the kitchen to eat when company comes. Why would they have to petition for that? Beg and plead and fight for that?
Is it not that we have taken William Buckley’s advice to heart? Sixty years ago, in a debate at Cambridge University, he warned in one breath: “If it ever comes to a confrontation, a radical confrontation between giving up what we (white people) understand to be the best features of the American way of life . . . Then we will fight the issue.” Fight it, he said, with all the energy of storming the beachheads of Normandy. Yet in another breath he joked that it was better to strike 65% of the white voters off the rolls in Mississippi than to give the vote to black people. Voting rights, of course, is the best feature of the American way of life. Who, then, was proposing a “radical confrontation” if not he himself? James Baldwin, his debate opponent that day, never asked for that. No, he would work and fight to have room at the table because there was plenty of room at the table. Better to close the table off to everyone than to lay out another set of china, says Buckley. (Here’s the link to the debate: https://youtu.be/dTEr7Cwc4cE?si=qI4on2XjQkksz0zV)
This is what we tell ourselves. We are the elder brother of the parable, it turns out. The prodigal has come home. How dare he show his face! He’s embarrassed the family. He’s ugly and filthy. He’s a screw-up. He’s nothing but the “wretched refuse of the teeming shores”. All he does is take, take, take! All he does is devour our inheritance with prostitutes. He may be the father’s son, but he is certainly not our brother.
Like the elder brother, we go out to the fields and “slave away” never disobeying. Always doing what is right in our father’s house. We tell ourselves and tell ourselves and tell ourselves this — for 16 hours a day on the news, across the radio waves, in the depths of social media. We fume in the fields should they ever get royal treatment. We make our father come outside and beg and plead for us to come and rejoice. How dare this “individual” show his face! How dare our father give them anything! We’re the ones who have “slaved away”. We’re the ones who always do right. When we want to celebrate with our friends, we don’t even get a goat. But this screw-up, this criminal, this pillager — wanders home and gets royal treatment! For 16 hours a day we tell ourselves this.
We are the elder brother. We make our father have to come outside and beg and plead for us to come and rejoice. To call our brother our brother. Our Father does come out to reason with us and plead with us: “You are always with me. Everything I have is yours. But it was right to rejoice. Your brother was dead but now alive, lost but found!” And there the story ends for us unresolved.
Leave a Reply