Radical grace

Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2025: Joshua 5:9-12; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32; Psalm 32

Today we hear again the familiar parable of the prodigal son. I can’t remember when I first heard this parable, but I cannot remember when I did not know the story. Most of us are familiar with it, and it’s sufficiently merged into the zeitgeist that someone can refer generically to a prodigal son/daughter, or the return of the prodigal son/daughter. How do we make such a familiar story new again? It is useful to remember that it is a parable: that means the simple message is not the only or main message: it’s complicated.

We start with the story: a man has two sons, and the younger asks for his portion. As a younger son, he will not inherit land, so his portion is money or goods. He takes his portion and goes to the city and spends his inheritance on “dissolute living”. Desperate, he gets a job caring for pigs, but he does not have enough food: the pigs eat better than he does. So he returns to his father’s house, repenting of his wasting, asking his father to hire him as a servant, because his father’s servants live better than he does keeping pigs. But when his father sees him, he calls for a party, providing sandals for his feet and “the best” robe, and killing the fatted calf. The older son, coming in from the fields to see a celebration underway, is shocked by the generous welcome of his ne’er do well brother. And he rebukes his father, saying in effect, “I’m here all the time working, and you never gave me anything so I could have a party with MY friends”. And his father told him while the whole property would come to him as the older son, the son who had been “dead” has returned and is alive, and that is something to celebrate.

It is easy to read the father as God, graciously forgiving us for our sins. And that is part of it, but it’s not the only thing. This is, after all, a parable.

Years ago on a vestry retreat, we worked with this story, and I was struck that all of us identified not with the prodigal, but with the older son who had stayed at home and worked with his father. He worked hard, and felt underappreciated. As I read the parable this week, I started thinking that this was a problem. And it’s a problem for two very different reasons. First, the older son is not generous: he seems entirely unmoved by the return of his younger brother. He is so wrapped up in his own self-righteousness and his grievances against his father that he seems blind to the impact of his brother’s return.

But the other problem with identifying with the older son is his resentment of the radical grace and generosity of his father. Those of us who follow the rules, who work hard, often have little sense that we need the radical grace the father gives his errant son. The younger son knows that he’s messed up, that he has hit what we would now call rock bottom. He wants to eat the pigs’ food, for goodness sake! The older son is self-righteous, full of his own virtue. And he has not hit rock bottom, so he can think he does not need mercy. He does not think of his lack of generosity as a sin. Yet his sense of superiority, unaware that because he will inherit his father’s land he is in a different place from his brother, is a sign of self-absorption. It turns out we all need the extraordinary grace and forgiveness that the father shows.

Every Sunday we confess our sins. We acknowledge sins done and left undone. How do we notice the things we have not done? Do we? The older brother seems unaware that they are significant. It is often easier to remember what we have done than to confront what we have not done. The confession reminds us that both are important.

Paul tells the Corinthians that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them“. And the psalm begins by reminding us that “Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away!” In Jesus, all our transgressions are forgiven.

In the week ahead, may we all remember that we all benefit from the radically generous grace of God in response both to what we have done, and what we have left undone. And may we give thanks that, like both the younger and the older sons, we are all welcomed and forgiven by God.