Texts: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Years ago, I came across another version of this story; it goes as follows:

Fable of the Forgiving Father: Feeling foot-loose and frisky, a feather-brained fellow forced his fond father to fork over the farthings. He flew far to foreign fields and frittered his fortune, feasting fabulously with faithless friends. Finally facing famine and fleeced by his fellows-in-folly, he found himself a feed flinger in a filthy farmyard. Fairly famishing, he fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from the fodder fragments. "Fooey, my father's flunkies fare far fancier,” the frazzled fugitive fumed feverishly, frankly facing facts. Frustrated by failure and filled with foreboding, he fled forth-with to his family. Falling at his father's feet, he floundered forlornly, "Father, I have flunked and fruitlessly forfeited family favor. . .” But the faithful father, forestalling further flinching, frantically flagged the flunkies to fetch forth the finest fatling and fix a feast. The fugitive's faultfinding frater frowned on the fickle forgiveness of former folderol. His fury flashed--but fussing was futile. The far-sighted father figured, “Such filial fidelity is fine, but what forbids fervent festivity? For the fugitive if found! Unfurl the flags! With fanfares flaring, let fun and frolic freely flow. Former failure is forgotten, folly forsaken. Forgiveness forms the foundation for future fortitude.”
Hmmm….easier said than done, I think. Forgiveness is a real problem for most of us. But before we look at the forgiveness dimension, let’s just look at the story again, and this time, let’s try to hear some of what the first hearers would have heard. Because although you all didn’t probably think of forgiveness when you saw the sermon title, what the original hearers heard in this story was as shocking to their ears as the other f-word is to our ears.

Once, when the news media brought up to Prince Charles the prospect of his ascending to the throne of England, he stopped the conversation cold when he said, “Gentlemen, you are speaking of the death of my mother.” And so was the younger son in this story, although he doesn’t seem to have Charles’ scruples about discussing it. In the Middle East, the request from the younger son would be a thorough rejection of his father and indeed of his entire upbringing. Presbyterian scholar Kenneth Bailey who was an expert in Middle Eastern culture writes, “For over 15 years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of the son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same…the conversation runs as follows:
Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?
Never!
Could anyone ever make such a request?
Impossible!
If anyone ever did, what would happen?
His father would beat him, of course!
Why?
The request means—he wants his father to die.”

Bailey further explains that in Eastern culture, even if the father did give the inheritance to the son while he was living, the father had the right to live off the proceeds as long as he is alive. So for the son to leave, and not just leave the household, but to leave the community and go to a far country – he is not just going off to see the world. And this is more than personal rejection. It is throwing aside everything he has been taught, and the larger community of which he was a part. So the son’s offense is not only against the father, but against the community as well.

Noticing this is a great reminder to us that most sin has a social as well as individual dimension. When I was studying Catholicism about 25 years ago, the priest told me that in the Catholic practice of individual confession, the priest is not an intermediary to God, as most of us have thought, but is a representative of the community. Indeed the traditional Catholic prayer of confession is: “I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault. In my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do; and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God. May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.” .

Similarly, steps 4 and 5 of the 12-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are:
* Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
* Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Chicago psychologist and writer Eugene Kennedy wrote in a 1992 Chicago Tribune column about the misdeeds of some famous people at the time: “Our sins may have a material surface but they are essentially spiritual…The spiritual realm is not that of séances, crackpot preachers or political consultants. It is the everyday setting for our lives with each other, the reality that is ignored by those who claim innocence ‘as long as nobody else is hurt.’ The truth is that, on this invisible plane, we constantly affect each other, that we leave fingerprints on each other's souls all the time, that we either help or hurt one another even in our slightest exchanges, and that these all register inside us. Lying leaves marks on the one lied to even when it is skillfully done. So too does cheating even when it is disguised as modern finance. There is never an instance in which ‘nobody else is hurt.’”
We are connected to one another. For better and for worse, it is a relational world. And this is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ – that loving God means loving one another too. Some people focus on loving God, and aren’t very drawn to loving people. Others are good at loving other people, but can’t really relate to loving God. And yet the God of Israel and Jesus reveals to us again and again that faithfulness includes both of these; that we only discover our full humanity as we love God and other people.
Moving along in the story—the younger son, called prodigal because of the way he spends the money: extravagantly, wastefully, without any thought for the future. And who knows, perhaps it would have worked out for him, except that there was a famine, too. Our lives are not entirely of our own making, after all – the circumstances in which we find ourselves also impact us (another reminder that we are not little islands). And so he takes a job feeding pigs, which would have been another degree of shame in that culture, since pigs were unclean. And while feeding the pigs, he realizes just how desperate he is, and so determines to go home, beg his father’s forgiveness and ask to be treated as a hired hand. He is quite clear that he has forfeited any right of sonship.
And so he goes to his father’s home. While he is still some distance off, his father sees him – and runs to greet him. This is the second shocking piece in the story for people in the Middle East, because in Ancient Palestine, adult men did not run. And, running would have exposed the legs, a second shame, equivalent to someone dropping their pants in our culture. This is so shocking that Bailey found no Arab translations of this passage would translate the running – since it is clear in the passage that the father symbolizes God, it would be inappropriate for a God-figure to be running. And yet, the father does run – taking on shame as he rushes to welcome his son home. One thought is that by running to meet and embrace him, he is protecting his son from the reactions of the people of the village who would not welcome him. And as the father greets him, he does so with an overflowing love – he doesn’t merely formally welcome him. He doesn’t wait for confessions, promises, or explanations – his love for the son springs from his own heart, not as the response to any statement or action on the boy’s part. His love and joy are poured out generously, he is the prodigal father who loves extravagantly and freely. And, by calling for someone to bring a ring, which was a sign of sonship, and sandals, which only free men wore, not slaves, the father is signifying in front of everyone that his son has been restored to full family status.
Racing on ahead, in the middle of the huge party that he has thrown for his younger son, he becomes aware that the older son is not there. So, as he went looking for his younger son, he also goes looking for the older son. And when he finds him, we know how it goes. The older son is resentful, as any of us might be. But he misses the point, as we so often do with the love of God. He feels that his faithfulness should have earned him a party, but of course, the celebration was not a reward for the son – it was an expression of the father’s joy. How interesting that it is the one doing the forgiving who experiences the deep joy. And this is the joy that Jesus invites us to as he beckons us into this forgiven and forgiving community, a community shaped by the Lord’s prayer that identifies us as the forgiven people who forgive. And Paul, in the first reading, reminds us that we are all called to this ministry of reconciliation. Jesus tells his disciples shortly before his death, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” This is the joy we see in the father of the two sons, and it is the joy to which we are invited.
There is an old story of two Buddhist monks who were on their way to the monastery. They come upon a woman who is stuck, unable to cross a stream. The older monk picks the woman up and carries her across the stream and the two monks go on their way. The younger monk is disturbed and frets the entire journey. When they reach the monastery the younger monk asks, “How could you carry that woman across the stream when our vows forbid us physical contact with women?” The older monk replies, “I put that woman down on the other side of the stream, yet you have continued to carry her all this time.”
Forgiveness is something we do for ourselves. It is releasing ourselves from grudge-holding, from anger, from resentment, from a sense of entitlement. When we’re concerned about getting our fair share, when we’re worried about what we deserve, when we’re comparing our lot in life with other peoples’ we will never find our way to joy. Forgiveness is simply releasing ourselves from the past, its injuries and disappointments, and being open to all the possibilities of the future – the possibility that others might change, the possibility that we might change, the possibility that we can be OK despite the wrongs that have been done to us.
The father didn’t stay stuck in the past where his son had rejected him – he chose to be more than a rejected father. He didn’t define himself by the failures of his son, nor did he limit the possibilities of his son’s future choices. The father chose to live out of his capacity to love, and that love gave him joy. The forgiveness was his choice, not his half of a transaction with his son. So too, God isn’t defined by our failures, but continues to live in the joy of loving, and to grant us the possibility of making different choices in the future. God’s forgiveness of us springs from God – it is not God’s half of a transaction that we initiate. So too, we can choose to forgive others, whether or not they ask for forgiveness, and whether or not our feelings are still angry – forgiveness is a choice we make, not a feeling we find ourselves experiencing or not.
The other complicated dimension of forgiveness for us is accepting forgiveness – especially God’s forgiveness. At every church I’ve served I’ve run into people who were uncomfortable with the word “sin” and with the unison prayer of confession in the worship service. “I’m not a bad person,” they say, “I don’t think I really have a need to confess.” Often, these folks are the ones who have the most difficulty also with the reality of God’s love, for which they also don’t feel much need. And, while these folks are content, often successful, and don’t feel that they’re missing anything, they don’t seem to have the joy that I see in people who have let themselves accept God’s forgiveness and love, and pass it on. Like the older son, they are successful, but are missing the joy.
Jesus came to feed us where our need is greatest – to receive what he brings, we need to acknowledge our hunger. He healed people who were ill, taught people who were confused, challenged people who were self-righteous; but to most of us the primary gift is love, for we were made for connections with each other and with God, still, we are afraid of that kind of interdependence. Yet, if we had never experienced thirst, we wouldn’t know the joy of cold water; if we don’t feel the need to be part of the forgiven and forgiving community, if we don’t understand that the world is relational and that we are connected to each other, then we won’t know the joy of giving and receiving that love so freely. This parable isn’t teaching us to hang our heads as the prodigal son, or scolding us for being the older brother – it’s inviting us to choose the joy of being the prodigal father, spending love freely... because we know ourselves to be fully loved. Thanks be to God. Amen.