A Father’s Carelessness

Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“We had to celebrate and rejoice, the father said, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

In Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest, there is a famous scene where Lady Bracknell is interviewing the main character, Jack Worthing, who wants to marry her daughter. Now Lady Bracknell is an aristocratic snob, and so she is very interested in knowing Jack’s family background, but Jack tells her he is an orphan; as a baby he was found at Victoria Station abandoned in a handbag. Lady Bracknell is horrified at the thought of an orphan marrying into her aristocratic family, and she famously replies, “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

Jesus told a parable: A man had two sons, and both of them were lost. To lose one child may be regarded as a misfortune. There’s a black sheep in every family, after all. But to lose both children, Lady Bracknell might say, starts to look like carelessness. Maybe the problem in this story is not with the sons, but with the father.

This is a wealthy family, by the standards of the day – they have a farm, and servants, a fatted calf and fancy clothes saved for a special occasion. So the father is a successful man, and the oldest son is his conscientious and hard-working heir. You can understand the younger brother feeling that he was never going to be satisfied playing a junior role in the family business. So he asks his father for his share of the inheritance, to let him go off on his own.

But the younger son has neither the wisdom nor the discipline to properly manage such a large sum of money. The father knows what it takes to succeed in business, and he knows his son. So at some level the father must have known that this was a bad idea – but he agrees to it anyway. I suspect the younger son knew how to manipulate his father. And when, predictably, it all goes wrong, Junior’s thoughts are not about his grieving family but about his own hungry self. And when he’s almost home and meets his father, he starts his prepared speech, but he knows his father. He knows his father is doting, emotional, easily swayed. He will be welcomed home with good food and festive celebration, but has he really changed? Is he in reality still lost, still focused only on himself and what he can get out of his pushover dad? Time will tell, but nothing in the story Jesus tells is very encouraging.

And when the younger son arrives home, the father starts the party, invites the neighbors and friends, has the fatted calf cooked and prepared. He invites everyone, except that he forgot to tell his oldest son. Nobody said, “Hey, go out to the field and get my son, let him know the good news, make sure he’s here to celebrate.” But when the father is informed that the older son has arrived but refuses to enter, it suddenly dawns on the father that he has another child.  That he has not one lost son, but two.  When the oldest son complains that he has been overlooked and forgotten and taken for granted, he’s got a point.

To lose one child may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both children looks like carelessness. Perhaps it’s all the father’s fault. Perhaps he gives in too easily to the younger son, perhaps he does overlook and take for granted the older son. However it happened, the father’s relationship with both his children is clearly broken. And when all the children are lost, what’s a parent to do?

According to Luke, Jesus tells this parable because the Pharisees and the scribes were complaining that Jesus was sharing a table with tax collectors and sinners. Usually people think Jesus was saying the Pharisees were like the older brother, self-righteously insisting on the goodness of their works and refusing to acknowledge or have compassion on those who put their trust in the grace of a loving and forgiving God. Perhaps. But I detect in this story of Jesus a note of sympathy for the Pharisees – that Jesus wants the Pharisees to know that he understands where they’re coming from, that he gets why they’re grumbling.

The Pharisees see Jesus eating with the tax collectors – remember, tax collectors are not the charming-rogue sort of sinner; tax collectors are bullies, Mafia hit men, traitors who work for the Romans, people who profit off the misery of others. The Pharisees probably think, OK, if these tax collectors really repented, if they really were sorry and wanted to make amends, of course God forgives. Moses said it: “The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6). Any Pharisee would agree that, yes, of course God will forgive even the worst sinner who repents and returns seeking forgiveness. Their complaint is that Jesus has not demanded that the tax collectors and sinners change their ways before he will eat with them.

And so, Jesus tells a story of a son who has abandoned his family, who has wasted his inheritance, who returns home without really repenting and perhaps without reforming, who’s still probably manipulating his father. Even the son’s rehearsed speech – “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you” – is not necessarily sincere. In the book of Exodus, you remember when Pharoah in Egypt was refusing to let the people go and one plague after another befell Egypt. Well, in Exodus 10:16 it says that Pharoah finally summoned Moses and said, “I have sinned against the Lord and against you.” Just make this plague stop! And as soon as the plague stopped, Pharoah went right back to his old ways. Jesus puts the insincere words of Pharoah in the mouth of the younger son in the parable; Jesus is basically saying to the Pharisees: I know these tax collectors and sinners haven’t really repented, not yet. These people I’m eating with were lost and pretty much they are still lost. You’re right about that.

And if, like the older son, the Pharisees don’t want to join in the party – if the Pharisees rightfully are able to say that they have been hard-working and conscientious about their duties but feel Jesus is neglecting and overlooking them and taking them for granted – in this parable Jesus acknowledges that they have a point. That they too are separated from God, that after all their efforts to be faithful and live according to God’s law, something is missing, something is lacking, something is still not right about their relationship to God – Jesus says, in effect, I hear you. You feel lost, you feel abandoned by a God who seems to have more grace for the irresponsible and the self-centered than for you, and maybe there’s truth to that.

But what is a parent to do when all the children are lost? When the bonds between parent and child, the bonds between siblings, are broken beyond repair? Can a parent simply withhold love and grace until the children sufficiently repent and repair the relationships on their own? Or does it not fall to the parent to take some initiative to bring the fractured family back together again?

The father’s reply to the older son in the parable, then, is the response of Jesus to the Pharisees: Everything I have is yours; my love for you is steadfast. But your brother was dead and now is alive again, and when the dead return to life, what else can we do but to celebrate? And if there ever is going to be real repentance, if there is ever going to be real reconciliation, if the lost are ever going to be found, it’s not going to happen out here with the two of us arguing with one another. If it’s ever going to happen, it’s going to happen in there. At the celebration.

God looks upon a world where all of the children are lost. In different ways, perhaps, but all of them lost just the same. Where we are divided from one another. Where we are all fearful and where some act with terrible violence and grave irresponsibility toward others. Where we all think primarily about ourselves and wonder what we as individuals can do to get right with God – maybe by working hard at what we think are our obligations, maybe by mouthing some words of repentance with a questionable degree of sincerity. But all of us feeling disconnected and lost just the same.

And what’s a parent to do when all of the children are lost? In this parable Jesus tells us what he is doing, what God is doing: Raising the dead to life, because how can we not celebrate when the dead are restored to life, and hoping that at the table of celebration the lost children will discover together the way back to life as reconciled siblings.

Or, as Paul puts it in our second reading today: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” In Christ God gathers us at a table to celebrate the dead being raised to life, and everyone without exception is welcome to this table. Reconciliation and repentance and forgiveness are not the condition of entry to the table, if they were nobody would be welcome. It’s only at this table that we have any hope of making real repentance, receiving true forgiveness, being reconciled to one another, going from being lost to being found.

As Paul says, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”