Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
March 14, 2010

Lost and Found

The writer of the Gospel of Luke is fond of “lost and found” allegories. In this chapter alone, we have three – the story about the shepherd who has 99 sheep safely in the pen and goes to find the one who is lost; the story about the woman who sweeps her house until she finds the lost coin; and the familiar story which is the lesson for today, the story of the prodigal son.

Jesus tells these stories in the context of a lot of grumbling by the Pharisees and scribes. They complain that Jesus is spending too much time with sinners – and, furthermore, that the sinners are heeding him, which is likely part of the problem for these religious leaders. So Luke is making the point that Jesus has come for the lost, just as he declared in the synagogue in Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry, when he opened the scroll of Isaiah, and read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

In the first two stories it’s clear what is lost and found – a sheep and a coin. God is like a shepherd who looks for us when we are lost, even us, and God is like a woman who turns her house upside down until she finds what she has lost. (Imagine God a woman, a non person in that society. No wonder they crucified him!) On the surface, then, we can assume the prodigal son story is about God who loves us and welcomes us home, no matter what. And it is – but there’s more to it than that. Reading the text over and over, it began to feel like a dysfunctional family case study, and as family therapists tell us, “dysfunctional family” is an oxymoron – we’re all dysfunctional. It’s only a matter of degree. Furthermore, I wondered, in the case of this family, what was lost and what was found. Clearly the prodigal son loses his innocence and his arrogance. What about the others?

There are four family members, three who speak and one who is silent: the young son, the older brother, the father – and the mother. Where was she? There had to have been a mother; what was her role in all this? Usually, we look only at the boy who squanders his inheritance and the father who welcomes him home. Today, let’s look at everyone.

First, the prodigal. He’s young, full of himself. It’s all about him and what he wants. So what, if the ancestral land he is to inherit is sacred land, passed down through generations as God’s gift. So what, if he is shaming his father by asking him to sell land in this land-based economy, and fork over the proceeds. So what, if he is diminishing the entire family.

It’s all about greed – and “I want it now.” He must have been a teenager, the “me” generation. The world is his oyster, and it revolves around him. We know about teenagers – we were teenagers and we, many of us, have raised teenagers. And we know adults who are still stuck at 15,...

So the prodigal son packs up his things and goes off to find his fortune. It’s the stuff of fairy tales. He squanders everything he has on wild living, and when his money runs out, and he goes to look for a job, the economy in this far country has been hit by famine and is in recession. The only work he can find is working for gentiles, on a pig farm, no less, and he a Jew! This is insult added to injury! He comes to his senses; that is, he grows up. And he realizes what he has lost, that he is lost, he sees himself for who he is, and he wonders if it is too late to make amends, to have some kind of reconciliation with the father he has shamed.

The older brother has been the dutiful son. He was the first-born with all the responsibility that first-born children carry. Many of us are the oldest children in our families and take leadership seriously. It’s all about the job, taking charge, and holding the family together. I wonder what it was like for him to watch his younger brother growing up. Was he pushed aside when the new son was born? Jealous? Did he resent that his brother was pampered? Got away with things that he had not been allowed to do? Perhaps he was secretly glad when his brother left: good riddance! Maybe he even had seeded the idea, led him on, encouraged him. In his heart of hearts, however, I wonder if he felt guilty.

And now the brat has come home, looking like he’s been living in a pig sty! Mixed emotions. Jealously that his younger brother has gotten to do all the things they had dreamed about, lying in the hayloft on warm nights. How come he has had all the fun – and comes home to a royal welcome, regardless? But perhaps he feels relief that he is safe? I wonder if he can admit that he colluded in this, that he bears some of the blame for his brother’s leaving, that he’s not so innocent after all. Thirty-five years later, I still look at my former husband, should I run into him, and wonder what blame I share for our divorce. Someone confessed to me a few days ago, “I regret that I slapped my kid, I regret that I left her alone, I regret,...” No one of us is squeaky clean....

But his father to carry on like this? Life is not fair...! He has worked night and day on the farm, year after year, being the “good” son, doing what was expected, honoring his father, supporting the family. Lots of us are like the older brother – miffed that someone else is successful, resenting it, in fact. Life is a contest, and we’re out to win!

Where is the mother? There’s always a mother. Was she in the women’s quarters? Relegated to the kitchen? Did she miss him, long for his return? Perhaps she treasured a dove that he had carved for her when he was 10, a crudely shaped thing he had made for her with love. She would take it out when she was alone, to caress the memory of him as a little boy, bright-eyed, excited with generosity. If she had seen him coming, would she have hiked up her skirts and gone running down the dusty road to embrace him? Had she dreamed of such a possibility?

Or perhaps she – a beloved wife – had died in childbirth, bringing this new baby boy into the world. Maybe that’s why the father coddled him, was so generous with him – instead of disowning him. After all, he had his mother’s eyes, and he would give his kingdom to have her back!

Where is the mother? In his painting, Return of the Prodigal Son, Dutch master Rembrandt, painting in the 17th century, shows a young man kneeling at the feet of his father, old and heavily bearded, bending over him. His hands are splayed on the boy’s back, pulling him toward him. Look closely: One of the hands is a man’s hand, and the other, a woman’s hand. Rembrandt had great empathy for the human condition, and was known as one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt understood that the love of God can be understood as a father’s love – but also as a mother’s love for her child. Remember Jesus’ parable of the woman who sweeps until she finds us; God is like that....

Finally, the father – who is, for all intents and purposes – a prodigal himself. He has been robbed of the land he has tilled all the years of his life, shamed by a son who forsakes him for loose living, left in his old age without the comfort of the child of his heart and precious grandchildren on whom he might dote. Yet, he, too, squanders his love lavishly on the son, giving out of his abundance everything he has for this lost one who has returned home. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost and now am found,...”
Who deserves the father’s lavish banquet? Not the young son who has been blind but now sees.... Not his self-righteous older brother who resents the extravagance.... You see, Jesus’ story is not about right and wrong; it’s not about what’s fair and what’s not fair; it’s not about human standards and conventions. It is about love: In God’s world, mercy trumps justice; forgiveness trumps sinfulness; the extravagant love of God trumps all expectations.

We humans “dumb” God down to our own narrow-mindedness and selfishness. In the hymn, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” one stanzas is left out of our hymnal:

But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own.

Jesus’ parable presents the truth of a God who loves us – lost and sinners all – a shepherd who searches for us through the dark until he finds us, a housewife who sweeps herself frantic for us until she finds us, a father and mother who forgive us and long to bring us home, with a love that we cannot begin to comprehend and that multiplies with each new one found. Whoever we are and wherever we are on life’s journey – Pharisees, scribes, tax collectors, fishermen, innkeepers, brick-makers, soldiers, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, God is calling us home.

And our spendthrift, prodigal God will throw a lavish party for us, and hire the best caterers, and bring out the best French wines, and bring in Susan Boyle and Bruce Springsteen, and invite all the neighbors and the street people and the people behind bars, and the people in barrooms and drug dens and mental hospitals. There will be feasting and music and dancing, and when the wine runs out, there will be more, enough for everyone.

Let us rejoice! Amen.