March 30, 2025
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord; my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
“That’s not fair!” All of us will have heard that at some point in our lives. And said it, too. Sometimes with good reason. Sometimes without. But always – always – because someone thinks the rules are stacked against them. That they’re getting the short end of the stick.
And I want us to have this in the back of our minds today – because with the parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus is saying something really important to us about the relationship between rules and fairness in the Kingdom of God. What ARE the rules in God’s kingdom? And what does fairness look like?
It’s vital to understand the context for this parable. Jesus has sat down time and again to eat with tax gatherers and sinners. People who have been excluded from the religious community because they’ve broken some of the cardinal rules about how the Jewish community is going to live. How they will honor God and each other. And the scribes and Pharisees think this is wildly inappropriate behavior on Jesus’ part. How dare he, they ask, provide a measure of acceptance for what these people have done by associating with them?
Jesus’ reply to them includes this morning’s reading – the Parable of the Prodigal Son. And this parable is a doozy. The Prodigal Son is … well, if you looked up “sinner” in the Pharisees’ dictionary, this guy’s picture would be next to the definition. Let’s count the ways he’s broken some very important rules within the Jewish culture of Jesus’ time.
• Honor your father and mother? Hardly. Asking for his inheritance early is effectively saying “Father, I wish you were dead”. This was a serious act of rebellion in a society that stressed obedience and family relationships.
• You shall not covet? The Prodigal Son goes way beyond coveting. He demands – and receives – one-third of everything his father owns – including animals, money, and land.
• The father was supposed to manage the son’s inherited assets and receive profits from them until his death. But the Prodigal Son has apparently broken this rule, too, and sold all the assets – depriving his father even of their income.
• You shall not commit adultery? You shall keep the Sabbath holy? The King James Version tells us that the Prodigal Son went off to a foreign land and squandered everything in “riotous living”. Enough said.
I could go on. But this is some serious rule breaking in the eyes of Jesus’ listeners. The Prodigal Son would have been an outcast among even the outcast.
But after everything falls apart and the son takes a job feeding and caring for pigs, this serial rule breaker can’t stand it. Expecting that his rule breaking and his outrageous choices will have serious consequences, he decides to simply throw himself on his father’s mercy. But even the humiliation of being a slave in his father’s household would be better than yearning to eat leftover bean pods and mush.
Jesus tells us that the father sees this Prodigal Son coming from a long way off. And his father’s heart isn’t angry about his transgressions. Or his long absence. Or the insulting way his son has treated him. No. The father’s heart is – as Jesus says – filled with compassion.
The prodigal son can’t even begin his groveling speech about how he deserves nothing more than slave status before the father has wrapped him in his own finest robe and placed a family signet ring on his finger. “No”, the father says with these actions, “I won’t receive you back as a servant. I’ll only receive you as a son”. The son, it appears, cannot stop being a son no matter how many rules he breaks.
In the father’s sprint to greet his son – in God’s sprint to meet us – we don’t see the closed fist of punishment. We see the open arms of scandalous grace embracing the son. Embracing us. It’s the same scandalous grace we find in Genesis when Esau forgives Jacob for stealing his birthright or when Joseph forgives his brothers for selling him into slavery. Scripture tells us over and over again that repentance is met with grace.
So the joyful party begins with music and dancing and the finest of foods. Except one person refuses to join in. The older son. This faithful child has remained at home and followed the rules. He’s “slaved” for his father the whole time his younger brother has been living riotously. He refuses to rejoice – let alone show any amount of compassion – referring to the Prodigal Son not as “my brother”, but “as this son of yours”. Consumed by jealousy and resentment, he now threatens to become lost in his own way just as his brother returns. Because he can’t accept his father’s decision to prioritize grace as a rule above all others.
The father never questions the elder son’s faithfulness – “you are always with me”, he says. The similarity is clear – Jesus never questions the faithfulness of the Pharisees. What he says, though, is that they fail to understand what matters to God. Yes, the Law is important. But God has promised in Leviticus to keep the covenant with those who confess their guilt. In God’s kingdom, Jesus says, mercy triumphs over justice. And that can only be accomplished through grace.
The primary rule of God’s kingdom is scandalous grace and unbridled rejoicing at our repentance. The challenge, though, is that is this grace isn’t just for ourselves. It’s for our brothers and sisters, too. Even the ones who we don’t think deserve it. Even when we think it’s horribly unfair. Because God is inexplicably rushing to embrace them, too. Just like the Prodigal Son, it appears none of us can lose our place in God’s family.
The power in this story is that Jesus leaves this parable unfinished. Our brother is inside already. He’s claimed his unfair reward of scandalous grace and forgiveness. Our Father stands in the doorway, awaiting our company. Will you look with God’s eyes of compassion, or with the Pharisees’ cold stare of jealousy and resentment? Will you accept that God’s scandalous grace is for others as well as yourself? How will you write the ending? Amen.