A TALE OF TWO LOST SONS
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So Jesus told them this parable:
“There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. 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. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
A TALE OF TWO CHURCHES, 2022
“All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable…”
In other words, in addition to Luke, we have the Pharisees to thank for this extraordinary glimpse into the Kingdom of God that Jesus is bringing into the world. Thank you, Pharisees! I take back all those critical things I’ve ever said about you. Well, maybe not all.
Because to mention the Pharisees is to send up a giant flare—here come the bad guys. And certainly their eagerness to eliminate Jesus plus Jesus’ bold warnings—Woe to you, Pharisees, hypocrites that you are!—have combined to make the Christian tradition regard the Pharisees as religion at its worst.
This is all well-known stuff, but we must also keep in mind this is not how they were seen by their contemporaries. Their fellow Jews by and large admired their goal, viz. to purify Israel and prepare for the Kingdom of God’s coming. How? By zealously, thoroughly, meticulously observing the law. They were the lawyers for whom the study of the law was equal to worship in the Temple. Those who didn’t share their pious zeal for the law they regarded as nominal Jews, in name only, hardly better than Gentile sinners.
Yet if there’s anyone in this parable who is simply lost--present tense, estranged from the heart of God, it’s the elder son, though he has never left home, never missed a day’s work on the family farm. The elder son sees the Father’s gracious welcome of his prodigal little brother as a great injustice, indeed even a personal disrespect to himself. “All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” This is what the Pharisees found unacceptable.
A review of the elder brother’s case against his Father shows the following progression.
- Upon hearing the news from a servant, he is immediately angry. Without a moment’s hesitation, he refuses to join the celebration; and is not shy about expressing his wrath directly to the Father.
- But this is not just a passing wave of anger; it is fueled by a sense of personal grievance. “I’ve been slaving for you!” That’s an interesting description of working in partnership alongside the Father, partnership being the correct word ever since the Father divided his assets between the two sons, as the younger already requested and departed with his share of the family inheritance. The remainder now belongs to the elder. Yet somehow this has been processed as . . . slavery. He feels disrespected, abused. Is this an obvious response to inheriting half the farm and working it with the family, alongside the Father?
- Despite this toxic level of grievance, he is not shy of boasting: ‘I’ve never disobeyed a single command of yours.’ Here, in brief, is the Pharisee’s great theme: keeping every jot and tittle of the law. The elder son contrasts himself with the failure of the younger, and his sense of moral superiority could not be greater. Yet it only fuels even more grievance and injustice—'Yet you’ve never had a party for me, not even a BBQ goat to celebrate with my friends.’
- Finally, we have come to the cause of this outburst—the father’s welcoming home of the younger brother, except he won’t use the word. “You slaughter the fatted calf for ‘this son of yours’ who squandered his inheritance on prostitutes.” Prostitutes? How does he know this? Did he look on his brother’s Facebook page? It’s simply slander born of malice, viewing his brother’s return through the prism of imagined worst things possible about his behavior.
This is the kind of religion, elder brother religion, that so utterly contrasts with the Father’s welcome of the younger and entreaty of the elder.
Is it possible to be more exact about what is wrong, what is missing in elder brother religion? If we judge it by its fruits, it hasn’t helped him seek or desire to reconcile with his brother; nor despite its boasted obedience, does it resemble the Father’s actions in the slightest. Something about the elder brother’s zeal for morality and religion makes him almost eager to terminate his relationship with his brother, makes him easily scold his Father within earshot of others, makes him quite untroubled about cutting ties with family rather than pursue a costly restoration.
AN ACUTE SENSE OF JUSTICE DEVOLVES
An acute sense of justice easily becomes an acute sense of perceived injustice. A passion for righteousness can fixate on the lack of righteousness in others, to the point of severing family ties. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, it can even justify the invasion of a fraternal nation next door. But this sense of grievance and injustice perpetrated by one’s family is an old story, as old as Cain and Abel, or more pointedly, Jacob and Esau. Jesus is retelling Jacob/Israel’s story in this parable, but he also offers it a different, redemptive ending.
Though an old story, it’s also as modern as World War I. Historians of this period will tell you there are many complex reasons for what led to the Great War, but the match that lit the fire was an assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a young Serbian zealot, someone who had recently felt disrespected when rejected by the army as too small and weak, who decided he would show the world his courage.
When that tragic war ended, the victors famously imposed the terms of the Versailles treaty on their defeated enemy. These terms involved a guilt clause that most Germans felt was a great injustice, for it made them accept full moral and financial responsibility for the war as theirs and theirs alone. This psychological and financial burden, coupled with a worldwide depression that soon caught them up, led Germany’s economy into a grotesque inflation and collapse, then the Weimar government’s collapse. And from this bitter ending emerged the National Socialists, who gathered up the wounded pride and collective sense of injustice that cried out for a reckoning for all its unfair treatment. Originally Hitler wanted to title his autobiography, Mein Kampf, (my struggle), Settling Accounts (Abrechnung). Germany, he complained, had been cruelly coerced into an unjust debt and payment, and it was high time for “justice” for the fatherland. His simmering anger at alleged mistreatment is the emotional tone of the entire book and arguably his entire career as Chancellor.
This sense of grievance against a historic injustice also explains why Sir Ian Kershaw, who wrote an outstanding biography of Hitler, says he doesn’t think Hitler suffered any pangs of guilt over all the invasions, all the treatment of Jews and other minorities. Not a bit of remorse, for he was convinced he was only settling accounts. The same psychological certitude applies to those who obeyed his orders, an entire nation sharing a sense of grievance and unjust treatment by the Allies. This theme was highlighted by Hannah Arendt in her study of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Regarding his organizing role in the vast network of concentration camps in Eastern Europe, he said proudly on the witness stand: I obeyed orders. A good soldier never asks forgiveness for obeying orders.
ORGANIZED SYSTEMS OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS
Moving into the post-WWII era, at the height of the Cold War between East and West which followed, another British historian, Herbert Butterfield, gave this assessment of what he saw as the primary danger facing the world: The greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness—each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked—each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.
Many of us have been scrambling these weeks to read about the background to the present crisis engulfing Ukraine, Russia and really all of Europe and the US. If you read the speeches and essays of President Putin over the past 10 or 15 years, there is a growing sense of grievance, alongside a personally felt sense of humiliation over a perceived injustice towards Russia by the West since the end of the Cold War. The time to settle accounts has reached a boiling point. For those of us who lived through the year 1989 and witnessed the great gift of Germany’s non-violent reunification, the emergence of Eastern Europe from out of the Soviet domination system, it’s very troubling to think how all this has been fumbled by the next generation.
Let’s go back to the parable, this retelling of Israel’s story of fraternal hatred. What is missing in the elder brother’s righteous indignation? Many things, but I focus on two. First, an absence of gratitude. Chesterton once said the test of all true happiness is gratitude. No gratitude here. There’s another absence, one that makes justice unjust and even cruel. Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, calls it the quality of mercy. That’s what’s missing in the financier, Shylock’s insistence on justice and only justice against his debtor. Shakespeare’s description bears repeating:
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Justice without mercy cuts us off from the worship of the true God and cuts us off from each another. Thomas Merton, the Catholic contemplative wrote: A Christian does not restrain his desire for revenge merely in order that he himself may be good but in order that his enemy may be made good also. (No Man is an Island)
As Jesus tells the tale, how does the Father share his goodness? Not by scolding the elder son; he doesn’t wait indoors on a big throne waiting for an apology; he goes out into the field and seeks to renew their relationship in a way that makes him vulnerable. You could say, to borrow the language of the Chinese philosopher, Sun Tsu, he goes out to build a golden bridge with the elder, as he’s already done with the younger when he interrupted the prodigal’s humiliating return in rags before the entire village, by falling on his neck and publicly welcoming him home. But that wasn’t the climax of the parable for the Father next goes out into the elder’s embittered world and builds a golden bridge for his son to return from his self-exile by reminding him ‘Everything I have belongs to you.” He speaks directly to his self-imposed exile with gentle words of invitation to join them for “This your brother was lost and now is found.” He offers a bridge for the elder to leave the inner prison of grievance where he feels like a slave so he can once again be a brother and a glad, faithful son.
How shall he respond? Will the elder brother participate in Jesus’ new creation of Israel? Jesus leaves the story intentionally open. And today, the parable seems no less relevant than the day it was first told. I don’t know if President Zelinskiy is a practicing Jew, but we know both Putin and Biden are active and public members of their respective Christian churches. Will they worship at the church of the elder brother or the church of the Father who intervenes with the unstrained quality of mercy? As for the rest of us, not many of whom are heads of state or ambassadors, may God help us not to just keep the story of the Father’s heart safely wrapped in ritual and sermons inside our sanctuaries but learn by grace to take it out into the streets and our homes and the public life of nations.
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