Lent 4: Relationships, Year C
The Rev. Ajung Sojwal

Sunday March 18, 2007

Luke 15:11-32

I don’t know about you, but for me, one of the most difficult things to negotiate through in life is the relationship I have with my family. Now that my family has extended to include my husband, children and a hoard of in-laws it has become even more complicated and colorful! Family is often the source of great joy and fulfillment, as well as the source of deep and unfathomable pain. Being part of a large complicated family has given me the opportunity to reflect upon my own relationship with God and others.

One of the hard lessons I have also learned in life is the fact that some form of dysfunction or the other defines every earthly family. And it is mostly within that dysfunction that God’s pure love and redemption can be seen.

Jesus in his great wisdom draws a parable from the one thing that involuntarily defines us, which is the relationship we have with our family. Within the example of that relationship He turns our attention to God’s eternal capacity to love and to hope for his children. Parables in their simplicity belies many layers, and this particular parable continues to mesmerize us precisely because it captures the complexity of human relationships and the pain and hope that surrounds them. Whether we fall within the realm of the dutiful but disgruntled elder son or the wayward and wasteful younger one, we know what it means to hunger for unconditional parental love and hope for us. As parents we also know what it means to be saddled with wayward and jealous children, and one single sermon is not going to do justice to the depth of this haunting parable. So today I want us to look at just one aspect of the story, the father of the two sons. I do hope that you will go home and meditate more on this story.

A few weeks ago, I went on a retreat with about twenty or so women. The retreat was focused on the love of God the Father for us His children. Our prayer leader described the prayer experience like that of being able to climb unto our fathers’ lap. Later on, one of the women came to tell me just how difficult it was for her to think and understand God in terms of a loving father on whose lap she could climb on. Her own father had left her mother, herself, and her sisters when they discovered that the mother had multiple sclerosis. Over the course of the conversation, she also expressed anger at God for many things in her life. I was filled with righteous indignation at what her father had done but I felt the need to help her see that the relationship God chooses to have with us is unlike any relationship we have on earth. Our disappointments in our parents may not be the outcome of such abandonment, nevertheless, we deal with plenty and more disappointments and hurts in our relationship with our parents. Apart from the disappointments we deal with in our relationships, we also long for many things within relationships, which often have to do with making us feel accepted, finding deeper happiness, peace and of course fulfillment.

During Jesus’ time, and even today in many eastern cultures, sons can claim their inheritance only after the father dies, furthermore, the oldest son in most cases inherit a bigger portion of the family wealth. The younger son in our parable by asking for his share of the inheritance while the father is still alive is in effect expressing his wish for the fathers’ death. This request is just about as atrocious as it can get in that very patriarchal society. It is undermining everything the family and the society stands for, family honor, hierarchy, status of the patriarch, privileges of the sons, security, relationships, so on and so forth. In other words the offence of the younger son is grievous, punishable by total excommunication or even death as in the case of King David’s son Absalom in the Old Testament, who was ultimately killed by David’s men for daring to usurp the throne while David was still alive. Against all societal norms, and one would think against the better judgement of any parent, the father agrees to the younger son’s request. The son has shown his questionable character already by asking for the inheritance, so predictably he squanders all that he had. However, when the son returns after having spent everything, it is the father who recognizes him from a distance. It says, “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”

In our relationships with people there are many times when others hurt us and when the hurt is intentional, it is very difficult for those that are hurt to be forgiving and even more difficult to pursue the relationship even after apologies. One would think that the father should at least wait for a proper apology from the son before embracing him. But from this description of the father’s reaction to the son returning home we see clearly that his joy at seeing the son return home was much greater than the pain of not only being wished death but also the loss of a son. The overwhelming emotion portrayed here is compassion. Compassion is the least likely reaction expected from the father in this situation, because he is the victim. However, it clearly says, he was filled with compassion. Compassion is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, which means moving beyond selfish desires and needs, it is the sympathetic consciousness of someone else’s distress together with a desire to alleviate it. The question of apology does not even come up because the father has already forgiven the son right at the start when he gave the son his part of the inheritance. It is amazing how the mood of the story does not linger on the offence of the son, rather it is on the joy of having him back. This is not to minimize the son’s offence, rather the father’s degree of joy is so much more poignant in light of the seriousness of such an offence.

Now this story is not done without a look at how the father deals with the seemingly dutiful elder son. The elder son is of course angry and jealous, which I would have been too if I was him. Jesus says, “His father came out and began to plead with him.” And then there is this barrage of accusations from the elder son against his father, filled with the emphasis on …as against “your” son, referring to the younger son. It is very interesting to find oneself in this conversation. How often do we land up describing relationships based on what suits us for the moment? I have often found myself referring to one of our girls as “your daughter” to my husband when they have not behaved appropriately. When things don’t work in the way we like in relationships we tend to disown any connection to those we have known. Remember even the Apostle Peter did that to Jesus, he refused to acknowledge his association with Jesus when he was being tried. We are inherently selfish but God our father wants us to realize that first and foremost we are His children and that He loves us and has compassion on us even though we turn against Him in our selfishness. The father turns to the elder son and reiterates his relationship to him by calling him ….before he goes on to tell him the cause for celebration. The father is trying to turn the elder son from his obsession in what had happened and instead to embrace the joy and hope of finding that which was lost. The father not only turns the attention to the joy of finding his lost son, he also puts the focus on the sons being brothers.

We tend to see values and joys in relationships within the realm of human definitions, how often have we been advised about friends and even family that cause us pain and sorrow to sever or put a distance to that relationship. But Jesus’ point here is very clear, compassion is warranted for those that are least likely to be together and sensible. God the father reached out to us not because we had it all right, but because we would definitely have been lost in our selfish and sinful ways. In order for us to understand God’s love and compassion, we have to move beyond our own expectations as well as that of the world. Like the younger son we undermine God’s love for us again and again, and like the elder son, we continue to reject God’s embrace of sinners around us but God never loses hope for his children. Instead He reminds us again and again that we are His sons and daughters and that we are brothers and sisters. Jesus’ emphasis here is the joy of the father at seeing his son again. The Love and compassion of God is ever present for us. It is His very essence, and the only way we can give something back to the God that is all sufficient is by going back to Him, and by acknowledging our belonging to God’s family of not only dutiful sons and daughters but also the many wayward children. God’s love and compassion, His willingness to forgive and heal and His blessings are all limitless, they cannot be confined to human terms, and He is inviting us to be a part of that great celebration of redemption of our broken and dysfunctional relationships.