CAMINANDO WITH JESUS: A Father's Love
Fourth Sunday in Lent | March 31, 2019
By The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista
“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
“Then Jesus said, ‘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.””
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Much ink has been spilled over the parable of the prodigal son, but the title may need a little work.
Some Biblical scholars have called it “the parable of the two sons,” for it is a story that involves both the wayward son as well as the one who stays close to home. Others have called it “the parable of the Father’s Love,” since that seems to be the overriding theme. I am particularly fond of the latter.
Whether we are aware of it or not, we spend much of our time gauging people’s value—what we deserve; what they don’t deserve. From the moment we are born, we are taught to attribute that value on the basis of merit. The things done and left undone, after all, have an impact on the world around us, so it makes sense to judge people by the fruits of their labor. It is nothing if not reasonable to expect fair play and just desserts.
The parable, however, turns that logic on its head. It does not matter what you’ve done, the Father says, you are my son, my daughter; you are our sister, our brother. It does not matter where you’ve been, the Father says, you are my Beloved.
This is not the way of the world. But it is the way God sees you and me, and it is the path to which we are each called: to go out into this broken world and see everyone and everything in it through the prism of a parent’s unconditional love. To know ourselves as Beloved, and to see others in the same light.
Bryan Stevenson, the gifted civil rights attorney behind the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to serving the least of these in the criminal justice system, reflects his understanding of this in his book, Just Mercy. He writes that to love a person this way is to acknowledge that “[e]ach of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” However, it is not a matter of simply ignoring the worst moment in a person’s life and then tallying up all the rest to see if the good outweighs the bad. Rather, “[t]he power of just mercy,” he says, “is that it belongs to the undeserving.” The power of loving like the Father is that it is thoroughly a gift, not something that is earned.
The Apostle Paul understood this, too. “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he tells the church in Philippi, “I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had… I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ” (Phil 3:4b-9). To know ourselves as God’s Beloved is to let go of the need to prove our worth by virtue of what we’ve accomplished. It is to reject the world’s calculus and trust that our value is not determined by our past but by our inherent worth as creatures made in the image of God.
That does not mean, however, that we have license to do whatever we want at the expense of others. Rather, it frees us to do the kind of good we are usually too reserved to risk. What would you try to do, I wonder, if you had nothing left to prove? What kind of work would you undertake, what things might you risk, if you weren’t worried about what others thought of you?
I hope that you will go and do just that, and I hope that you will trust in the Father’s love, wherever the journey leads you.
The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista is the associate rector at St. Paul’s, Cary.
Tags: Caminando with Jesus
