Lent 4

Lent 4 So he told them this parable

More often than not people approach God from the place of rational analysis.

More often than not, people say things like: I haven’t decided yet what I think about God. I am still thinking about whether God exists. Sadly, most people most of the time are lost in thought, lost in the categories of rational analysis.

This is why Jesus so frequently used parables to communicate spiritual truth. A parable is a story with one main point.

A parable is not an allegory. All too often people attempt to recast the parables into the realm of allegory where rational analysis gives us the opportunity to impose our interpretation of the details of the story.

The underlying spiritual framework for parables is relationship. God does not invite us to analyze his existence.

God asks us to enter into an ongoing creative spontaneous experience of his presence in the world, in the church and in our lives.

This is not to suggest we should abandon thought. There is a place for rational critical analysis. That place is self examination. That place is self responsibility.

We can see all of the elements of meaning in the parable of the prodigal son.
The younger son rationally analyzes his situation, his family dynamic and his father’s temperament. He decides he wants his inheritance now while he is still young and can enjoy life. He sees how his older brother works hard on the family farm and decides that hard work is not for him. He sees how his father is loving and compassionate and how he can manipulate him to get what he wants.

The fatal flaw in the younger son is self indulgence. He wants what he wants and he wants it now. He uses his intellect to analyze the situation and to make the decisions he needs to make to get what he wants.

He succeeds only to fail. He gets everything he wants and very soon comes to realize he wants nothing that he has gained. He sacrificed his relationships with his family, his brother and his father for the money he thought would buy him happiness. He used his intellect to devise and execute a plan. His plan succeeded.

For a short time, he enjoyed the pleasures his money bought him. Then, he came face to face with a reality his careful plans and rational analysis could not perceive. He could not perceive the danger because he only focused on the immediate fulfillment of his desires.
Had he used his intellect in the proper way he might have asked questions. He might have asked: what happens when the money runs out? He might have analyzed the probabilities of the situation. He might have, but he didn’t.

He had a fine critical analytical mind but he used it to manipulate people to satisfy his immediate desires. He was, as Shakespeare once wrote, hoist by his own petard. He misused his mind to manipulate other people so he missed his opportunity to perceive and understand some basic principles about the world as it is.

In the end, the younger son lived in a fantasy world that other people were more than willing to indulge- until his money ran out. When his money ran out, his friends abandoned him, Reality hit him and hit him hard. From a life of self indulgent arrogance he suddenly found himself alone, starving, and broken.

As he hit rock bottom and literally wallowed with the pigs, he came to himself. He recognized the problem. The problem was his own irresponsible behavior. The problem was his own arrogance. He accepted the humiliation of his circumstances. He accepted personal responsibility for his choices. He began the long difficult process of repentance.

He had a long way to go. The journey back home was not easy. The distance was great. It was a long walk for someone weak from starvation. It was a tedious retracing of his entire belief system. Suddenly, the old farm looked pretty good. Suddenly, the older brother didn’t appear to be as stupid. Suddenly, his contempt for his father’s love and compassion began to change into appreciation and hope.

He had gained every thing he ever wanted and lost it all. He was slowly coming to the realization that relationships are more important than wealth and pleasure. He was slowly coming to the conclusion that the train of logic that led him to starvation was the inevitable result of a rational analysis blind to the underlying reality of life.

That underlying reality is personal relationship. That personal relationship is formed by love and expressed in love. As he approached his home he still wasn’t thinking clearly. He had the barest sense of the solution. It was the Father’s love and the brother’s resentment that completed the lesson for the younger son and for us.

The single elegant simple point of the story is the reality of love. Derivative points include the essential importance of personal relationships with other people and with God. A corollary to the importance of personal relationship is the principle of self responsibility and the limitations of rational analytical thinking.

As the father welcomed his younger son so God welcomes us. As the younger son rejected his father through arrogance and pride so we reject God. As the older son condemns his brother for his outrageous and foolish behavior so we tend to condemn those we perceive to be sinners.
The point of the story is the corrupting power of sin and the redeeming power of unconditional love.

Both sons still had a long way to go before they could fully embrace the reality of unconditional love. They could do it because the father first embraced them.

The application to our Heavenly Father’s Plan of salvation is direct and immediate. All people in our arrogance and pride reject God. All people redefine God according to our own needs. All people justify this redefinition by chains of logic and analysis that in the end only leave us impoverished, starving for meaning and purpose, humiliated by the recycled pain of shame and blame.

Jesus and Jesus alone is the solution. Jesus and Jesus alone came down from heaven to seek us out and to restore the relationship with God that we rejected. Jesus is really not interested in what we think about God. That is why he told stories to communicate truth. That is why Jesus never formulated systems or programs or lists of specific prohibitions and commands.
The reality of God is in the personal relationship with God. The reality of the relationship is Jesus Christ.

The father in the story reached out to both sons at the place where they were stuck in the arrogance of their pride and rebellion. Our heavenly Father reaches out to all of us, to each of us in that place where we are stuck.

God is patient and persistent. He waits for us to discover the folly of our insistence that we can define life, the universe and everything with rational analysis. He sends the Holy Spirit into our lives to communicate His great love for us in the ordinary events of our lives.

As Mother Theresa once said, God whispers to us in our pleasures but shouts to us in our pain. Whether it is a whisper or a shout, it is one simple elegant and powerful word: Jesus.
God invites us to participate in the truth of Creation by entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to offer this relationship to everyone. It is a gift and it is unconditional. Where ever you are currently stuck in your life the Holy Spirit is there with you inviting you back home to the loving embrace of the father. Always in every way possible, the Holy Spirit speaks the divine word of Creation, Redemption, and Transformation. That divine word is Jesus.