19^th March 2013

Rev Clive Skewes at St John's UCA Mt Waverley, Victoria Sunday 10 March 2013

Lessons - Psalm 32; Joshua 5:9-12; Luke 15:1-3,11b-32

[Drawing on Kenneth Bailey's studies on the background of the parables in Luke.]

The Church's ministry suggests a parable of a father with two sons. One son has heeded too much the theme of our culture: liberate the individual from the oppression of family, church and custom, then people will be free and autonomous.

However, weakening the bonds of family, church and neighbourhood does not bring freedom. It brings alienation, loneliness, disorder and crime - even the rise of the totalitarian state. So many such sons and daughters are living as spiritual orphans. The other son has persevered with the family and the farm enterprise, but he still wonders why. Both offspring need to be embraced in the Church's ministry.

Yet putting up a building with a sign that says 'WELCOME' and sets out a list of attractive programs does not mean people beat a path to our door.
In fact that is not our primary objective. Our aim as Christians and as Church is to meet people where they are, journey with them and model for them in word and deed that the arms which stretch out to embrace the prodigal have always been stretched out, even when there is no one within their embrace.

Yet modern perceptions are far removed from what Luke's parable tells God is like. So if we are to recognise God and minister to people we need to allow our understanding to be shaped, not by modern distortions, but by the original story itself. We miss the real cutting edge of this parable if we read it with the spectacles of our individualistic culture.

Jesus told the story to a Middle Eastern audience who well understood the cultural nuances which we no longer recognise. The story was told in response to a challenge from the Pharisees: 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.' Jesus proceeds to show them what sort of fellow he really is.

Something we need to understand from the outset: in Middle Eastern culture the most important virtue was honour and the most dreadful crime was to incur shame.

The parable begins with a son asking his father for his inheritance while his father is still alive and in good health. In that culture the request is outrageous. The inheritance should not be transferred until the father approached death. The son's request meant 'Dad, drop dead'! A traditional Middle Eastern father would have struck the boy across the face and driven him out of the house. The cultural expectation was that the father would refuse.

But surprise! This father does not behave as a traditional Middle Eastern patriarch. He gives the son freedom to own his part of the estate. And what a substantial estate, for this family owned fatted calves, goats, servants, slaves, a banqueting hall and the means to employ professional musicians and dancers. This father was a highly respected community figure.

Now the son sells his part of the family farm. That always brings heartbreak to our farming communities, as seen in the distress of Goulburn Valley farmers now facing this prospect. Well, in that Middle Eastern culture the act of selling even part of a farm was horrendous. It meant the family had broken down and was shamed in the eyes of the community.
First century Jewish law did not permit such a sale. But again this father departs from the norm. He grants the inheritance and the right to sell, enduring the ignominy and the shame. Jesus is not using an oriental patriarch as a model for God. Rather he is creating an image of the father which breaks all such bounds, for no human is ever an adequate model for God.

The younger son sells quickly. He has to. Anger against him would be rising in the village.

As he leaves he would be aware there is one thing he must not do. He must not do anything which would incur a ceremony of the times called the 'qetsatsah' ceremony. Any Jewish boy who lost the family inheritance to Gentiles would be confronted by this ceremony should he ever return home.
He would be met by a group of villagers carrying a jar filled with burnt nuts and corn. They would break it in front of the boy and shout, 'So-and- so is cut off from his people.' From that point on the village would never have anything to do with that person. So as the boy left town he would know he must not lose the money among Gentiles.

But he does. In the far country he lives among Gentiles and they own pigs!

We do not know how the money was wasted. (The older brother made accusations but he would not have known. He would just want to exaggerate his brother's failure.) Well, the money goes. Where will the boy go now?
Home?

Naturally. Ah, but he's broken the rules. What waits him at the village is the 'qetsatsah' ceremony. So he must recover the money. He tries feeding pigs for a living. The plan does not work. People will tell you that when you are down there are plenty of people ready to exploit you. The boy does not get paid for his demeaning work.

So he tries one last roll of the dice. He will go home. Get job training.
Earn his way. But to be accepted for job training he needs the father's endorsement. How can he convince the old man one more time? At this point the parable explains 'the boy came to himself'. A lot of preachers will tell you it means the boy repented. It does not. In some of the Arabic versions, closer to that time, it reads 'he got smart', 'he took an interest in himself', 'he thought to himself'.

He prepared a speech calculated to sway his father: 'I have sinned against heaven and before you.' Sounds right. But it is borrowed. And the Pharisees listening to Jesus would recognise whom he borrowed it from. It came from Pharaoh when he wanted to manipulate Moses into lifting the plagues. And Pharaoh was not repenting. He was trying to bend Moses to his will. The son is doing the same. His problem is not just 'no funds', but estrangement from the family. His solution is job training.

He will work as a paid employee - one of the hired servants - and save the money. He will have to live away from the family for the present. But after the money is paid back he can discuss reconciliation. Meanwhile he needs the father's backing. He does not consider his father's broken heart, the agony of rejected love his father has endured.

The son steels his nerves for the humiliating 'qesatsah' ceremony at the village entrance. A son who leaves the family temporarily or permanently is expected to return with generous gifts for the family. This son returns empty-handed and in failure after insulting his family and the village at his departure. He will endure the painful road back for one reason; he is hungry. The bottom line is 'I am dying of hunger'.

What of the father? He knows the son will fail. Day after day he stares down the village street to the road along which his son disappeared. The father realises how the village will respond to his son's return in failure. So the father prepares a plan. He will reach the boy before the boy reaches the village. He will achieve reconciliation with his son in public. Then no one in the village will dare suggest the 'qetsatsah'
ceremony.

The father sees his son at a great distance. The distance is more spiritual than physical. For if the son thinks he can earn money to solve his relationship problem, he is still very far away. Isaiah says God is one who offers peace to those who are 'far off' and 'those who are near'.
Through a dramatic gesture the father will offer peace to one who is far off. Again he breaks the traditional mould. He runs to welcome his son.

To do that he must take up the bottom edge of his long robe, the sign of his status, and forget all about walking slowly, a sign of his dignity, and run down the road. He falls on the neck of his pig-herding son and kisses him before the son gets out his well-prepared speech. Out of his own compassion he empties himself, assumes the form of a servant and runs to reconcile the estranged son. The boy, utterly surprised and overwhelmed, can only utter the first part of his speech: 'I have sinned.
I am not worthy to be called your son.' He leaves out the rest, thus admitting he has no bright ideas for mending their relationship. The Prodigal, in the embrace of the father, has changed his mind. In a moment of repentance he accepts to be found.

Traditionally the father would have sat in splendid isolation in the house, waiting to hear what the boy might have to say for himself. The mother would be the one to run out and shower the boy with kisses. In both Old and New Testament God is a father who acts like a mother. Indeed so like a mother that he gives birth to believers. Who is this father? He has evolved in the story into a symbol of Jesus.

The Pharisees had said of Jesus, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.' Jesus introduces himself in a story of a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son, and in effect says, 'Indeed I do eat with sinners. But it is much worse than you imagine. I not only eat with them, I run down the road, I shower them with kisses, and drag them in that I might eat with them.'

By the end of the story this father does what Jesus does. Jesus has taken a known symbol for God and quietly transformed it into a symbol for himself. Once reconciliation is assured the father orders a banquet. 'Let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.' Note, he does not say 'has come home' but 'is found'.

Who found him? The father. Where did he find him? At the edge of the village where he was still lost and dead. Just as the shepherd had to go out and pay a high price to find his sheep, and the good woman sought diligently for her lost coin, so the father, in a costly demonstration of unexpected love ran down the road to find and resurrect his son.

Now the older son comes in from the fields. He hears the music and calls to a 'pais'. Our versions usually translate that as 'servant', but the Syriac and Arabic versions translate the word as 'a young boy'. That makes better sense. The servants would have been occupied inside serving the banquet. Young boys were not old enough to recline with their elders. They would dance boisterously outside to the music from inside.

The youngster acts like a chorus in a Greek drama who interpret what is happening. 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he received him with peace.' The banquet celebrates the father's successful efforts at creating reconciliation - peace, shalom - and the community has come to join in the celebration.

The boy's explanation recalls what the Pharisees said of Jesus: 'He receives sinners and eats with them.' But when the father comes out to him the elder son offers a different interpretation of the banquet: 'You killed the fatted calf for him!' That is the opposite of what the father said and also what the young boy said.

Is the banquet in honour of the Prodigal and his successful effort in reaching home? Or is it a celebration of the father's costly efforts at creating peace? Will the guests congratulate the Prodigal or the father?
The answer affects our understanding of Baptism and Holy Communion. Who is at the centre of the celebration?

Traditionally the older son would have expected a conference on the Prodigal's status in the family where he would have presented his view.
But the words of the young boy mean, 'It is all over. The issue is settled. The father has already reconciled the boy and without him paying for his sins.'

That is what makes the older son so angry that he insults his father. He refuses to go into the banquet. He is rejecting the reconciliation the father has achieved and he is breaking his own relationship with the father. Culturally the father would be expected publicly to ignore the insult, go back to the banquet and deal with the older son later. Then there would be an explosion of anger and a thrashing ordered for the public insult.

But again the father humiliates himself in public. He goes down and out to find one more lost sheep, coin, son. This is a picture of God, whose goodness, love, forgiveness, care, joy and compassion have no limits at all. Jesus has taken all the imagery his culture provided for presenting God and at every point he transformed it.

Now we approach the challenge for us. If the older son accepts the love now offered him, he will be obliged to treat the Prodigal with the same uninhibited love with which the father welcomed the pig-herder. The older son will need to be conformed to the image of the compassionate father who comes to both kinds of sinners in the form of suffering servant, offering undeserved, costly love. Is he willing?

We are not told. For by this time, you and I are on stage and we must decide for ourselves.

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Rev Clive Skewes is Assistant Minister in St John's Uniting Church,
Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia.

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