The Ninth Sunday after Trinity
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Luke 15: 11-32
Father Jeffrey L. Baker

A Jewish business man in Chicago sent his son to Israel for a year to absorb the culture.  When the son returned, he said “Papa, I had a great time in Israel, By the way, I converted to Christianity.”  “Oh no,” said the father, “What have I done?”  He took his problem to his best friend.  “Ike,” he said, “I sent my son to Israel, and he came home a Christian, what can I do?  “Funny you should ask”, said Ike.  “I, too, sent my son to Israel, and he also came home a Christian.  Perhaps we should go see the Rabbi.”  They went and explained their problem to the Rabbi.  “Funny you should ask,” said the Rabbi, “I too sent my son to Israel, and he also came home a Christian.  What is happening to our young people?”  They decided that they should pray and ask God about their sons.  As they finished their prayer, a voice came from the heavens, “Funny you should ask,” said the voice, “I too sent my son to Israel…”

Well, today’s Gospel reading of the portion of Scripture that has become so famously known as the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’ may not seem like it on the surface, but it actually has a lot to do with Israel.  You see, when Jesus tells this story, the Jewish religious leaders, or Pharisees, were listening very closely to what he had to say.  And although around him was gathered a large group of tax collectors and sinners, in many ways, he was speaking directly to these eavesdropping Pharisees. 

Perhaps a bit of Biblical background can help us to understand the historical and theological foundation upon which Christ builds this parable.  It might even be good to go all of the way back to Genesis Chapter 11, and that great story of the Tower of Babel. You will remember that fallen mankind in its wickedness had banned together to create a great city, complete with a tower reaching into the heavens.  God, seeing the sheer intensity of evil that a united sinful humanity could produce, broke the whole of mankind into smaller pieces.  He did it by using the greatest of all borders between people, language.  He created smaller groups or ‘nations’ of people by giving each group a different language.  And as we all know, there is no barrier quite like a language barrier.  This may have seemed like God’s judgment in action, and it was.  But from another perspective, this action by God was actually very gracious.  God knew what great evil mankind could bring to the world and to itself, so he minimized their ability to do so by breaking humanity into smaller groups.  We see God’s mercy even in His judgment.

And so there mankind was.  Fragmented and broken and alienated from one another and from God.  But, as He always does, God took action, redemptive action.  He commenced a plan that would someday put back together that which had been fragmented at Babel.  Immediately after the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, God chose one of those smaller groups created at Babel, and made them into a special group, a chosen nation.  With this group God would make a ‘covenant’, a special union.  He tells Abram in the very next chapter, Genesis 12, that he has been chosen to be the ‘father,’ or leader of this specially chosen group.  God tells him that He will bless this nation and make it great.  But God also tells Abram something very important, something that has great bearing upon the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  He also tells Abram that through this special nation, all of the families of the earth would be blessed.  In saying this, God introduces a very important concept about His plan of redemption.  His plan for putting back together that which was broken at Babel would be through this special covenant nation.  And so we see two groups of people emerge after Babel; Israel, God’s chosen conduit, through which He would communicate His truth to the world, and all the other nations of the earth, together known as ‘Gentiles.’

Well, of all those groups after Babel from which God had to choose, not one of them was perfect.  In fact, they were all full of sinful people.  And Israel was no exception.  And as often happens with God’s people, over the next few thousand years of their history, they went through patterns of sin, repentance, and restoration.  In fact, the Old Testament chronicles this pattern happening to Israel over and over and over again. 

And as it often happens, they frequently forgot that they were chosen by God’s grace, and not because of their own goodness, merit, or righteousness.  At times they would forget that God had a much bigger plan, a plan that would recover all of those nations created at Babel to Himself.  This plan would be executed through Israel, but it was not just about Israel.

And so the Old Testament writings are replete with reminders of a future day when all of the nations of the earth, not just Israel, would be recovered to God.  It is also full of prophecies and predictions about the Messiah, the One who would someday come to make that restoration possible.  And since Israel had all of this information plainly presented to them in the Old Testament, one would think that they would be eagerly anticipating the day in which the Messiah would come, and the Gentiles would be gathered in.  But strangely enough, when the Messiah finally came, they did not recognize him. And as for their reaction to the Bible’s teachings about the Gentiles becoming a part of God’s covenant family, we can see that very clearly portrayed in today’s Gospel lesson, the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

The storyline of the parable is quite familiar to most of us, I’m sure.  A father has two sons, the younger of which comes to him and asks for his share of the inheritance.  The father graciously obliges, and the younger son proceeds immediately to a far off land, where he parties away his money, and ends up homeless, and sleeping in a pigpen.  When he comes to his senses, he realizes how foolish and selfish that he has been.  He rushes home in order to beg his father to take him back, not as a son, but as a mere slave.  Anything would be better than where his sin had taken him, he no doubt reasoned.  To his great surprise, his father, who had been keeping a lookout for him, rushes out to meet him.  He embraces his filthy, smelly son, and to the young man’s astonishment, wants him back, not as a slave, but as a son in good standing.  The father instructs his servants to kill the prized beef, and organize a celebration party for his young son, who by this point must have been in a state of shock at his own good fortune, and the graciousness of his father. 

Well, if Jesus had stopped at this point, this would have still been a wonderful parable about the value of repentance, and the forgiving nature of our heavenly Father.  But he did not stop there.  There was also the matter of the older brother’s reaction.  The older brother is furious, complaining bitterly to his father, claiming that he had perfectly served his father, never breaking his rules.  And why, he asked, had he never received such a celebratory party?  Why it was flat out unfair!  The father’s reaction is again gracious.  He tells his older son that he will always be a part of his family.  He then reassures the son that it is indeed a good thing that everyone is so happy over his brother’s salvation.  And Jesus abruptly ends the story there.

In the parable, the father represents God, of course.  He perfectly embodies God’s nature, which is always to have mercy.  The younger son represents the Gentiles.  Jesus makes a special point during the story to place the young man in a pigpen, making sure that everyone present knew exactly which group of people that he represented.  For no self-respecting Jew would have been caught dead in and around swine, and everyone listening to the parable knew it.  The older brother, of course, represents Israel.  Jesus had the older brother claim that he had been perfectly obedient in his father’s service, never breaking his commandments.  This simply could not have been true with the older brother, and it was not true with the group he represented, Israel.  One doesn’t have to read very much of the Old Testament to realize that Israel did not perfectly keep God’s commandments.  As a matter of fact, God had to send prophet after prophet to preach a message of repentance to them.   The older brother should have been happy that his erring brother was brought back into the family, but he was not.  Israel should have been happy that the wayward Gentiles were through the work of Jesus Christ being restored to God’s covenant family, but sadly, they weren’t exactly thrilled about it. 

Jesus had a wonderful message about repentance and forgiveness to those tax collectors and sinners who sat at his feet that day, but he had a very different message for those Pharisees who listened in the background.  For them, it was a strong rebuke for their misunderstanding of God’s overall plan to save all people, Jew and Gentile alike.

There are also in this parable important messages to be found for us today. 

First, there is the glorious message that now the barrier that once existed between Jew and Gentile has been broken down.  Now God’s covenant people consists of both groups.  Now people of all ethnic backgrounds come into God’s family the same way, through faith in Jesus Christ.  That which was broken apart at the Tower of Babel has been put back together.  All of those nations, so alienated from one another by God’s judgment, can now have fellowship with one another again by the power of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus.  The Church, the new Israel, is made up of people who would otherwise never be united together.  This is the great message of the parable of the prodigal son.  The family has been put back together, and the younger brother has come home, by God’s grace. 

However, there also is found within this parable a stern warning to anyone within God’s family who forgets that they are there by God’s grace, and that the Good News of Jesus Christ is for everyone, regardless of ethnic or socio-economic background.  You see, we too can develop what a friend of mine has dubbed as the “older brother syndrome.”  After we have been a part of God’s family for a while, we are always in danger of forgetting that it is by God’s grace that we were adopted into it in the first place.  None of us deserve to be here, but are here because of God’s gracious forgiveness through the work of Christ on the cross.  And like Israel of old we too can forget the ‘big picture’ of what the Church’s mission really is.  We are expected to reach out to the world with the Gospel.  And the branches of the Church that forget and neglect that mission, the Lord himself will prune that branch and replace it.  One must look no further than to that which is happening to the Episcopal Church to see just that happening before our very eyes.  Amen.