Sermon, March 21, 2004
4th Sunday in Lent, Year C
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Fathers and Sons

I want to look at today's story of the Prodigal Son through a particular prism as a story of a web of misunderstandings between people who are deeply connected to each other, but who get trapped in each other's distress. The three become frozen in their own isolated contexts, and each of them needs the others in order to become untangled and truly free. This is not the only way to interpret the parable of the Prodigal Son, but I hope it holds meaning.

Looking at this story from this other perspective, we have a story of a father who has failed each of his sons. Part of the issue is the question of how he handles his power and authority. If he handles it well, the integrity and health of both sons is nurtured. But that's not what happens. One son sows wanton chaos and the other lives in deep resentment.

How does that happen? No doubt the father loves them both. How does a parent who loves his children and wants only good for them end up enabling their distress? Part of the reason seems to be that he gives too much affection and freedom to one son, and too little affection and freedom to the other.

How many favored children have been given too much too early and become lost in a false world of entitlement and unearned privilege? How many have been handed what others worked for, and then never developed their gifts of competence and discipline? The younger son was robbed of his right to risk his own becoming through the maturation of his gifts when his father said "yes" to a demand the young man was not yet ready to manage.

How many unfavored children have worked and struggled unhappily trying to earn the affection and acceptance that should be their birthright? How many have been trapped in a hopeless treadmill of trying to be good enough, only to find their sweetest accomplishments disappearing into the air like a bite of cotton candy? The older son was robbed of his right to risk his own becoming by a father whose neglect kept him trapped in a hunger for parental blessing.

They've all hurt each other. The younger son's immature demands show selfish disrespect of both his father and brother. The elder son's compliancy is fed by his resentment toward both his father and brother. The father stands pitifully by the front window mourning the son who is lost, leaving no emotion for the other son who labors outside the back window.

When the prodigal returns, the pattern is simply reinforced. The father again showers lavishness on the favored child, even bestowing the signet ring which conveys the family's power of attorney. The younger son thoughtlessly and without a word accepts this extravagance as if he were entitled. The elder gives voice to his outrage at the injustice. The father has misused his authority once again, creating division in the heart of his home. Could any two people be farther apart than these two when the aggrieved son cries, "You have never given me even a young goat..." and his father answers, "All that is mine is yours"? They are experiencing completely different worlds.

How do these three escape? ...caught in each other's distress, each somewhat responsible for the other's entrapment? Their resolution is likely to come through one another. Usually, our journeys through our deepest hurts demand that they have a healing that comes from their source.

The father needs some of the elder son's anger to take responsibility for the damage of his younger son's enabled absence. The father himself may need to experience his own failure and be willing to admit his own misuse of affection and power. He may need to see himself lost as desperately as his prodigal once was, and he too needs to come to himself.

The younger may need to learn the elder's awareness that their father can't provide a ready-made competence. That young man needs to learn to stand on his own without resorting to rebellion or unearned privilege. The elder could use some of the younger's capacity to disentangle from his father and live with more freedom and less compulsion. They all need each other to untangle from their web of misunderstanding.

And where is God in all of this? I imagine God equally close to each of these three, intimately involved with each, yearning as each struggles, holding hope equally for each to reach his potential for abundant life in community -- to live forgiven, loved and free. God knows their lives are intermingled, and that for one to win, all must win; for one to find peace, all need to be included in that peace. God seeks union not disunion. No one is chosen if it means another must be dismissed.

Therefore, the father and the two sons must help each other. We all need each other. I think this parable has something to teach us about our relationships and hurts. It speaks to the dynamics and dysfunctions in our families, sure. But beyond that, it has something to say to every triangle of conflict. It speaks to our struggles in the church and in the world between the attitudes of superior and subordinate, haves and have-nots, nation and nation, religious persuasion and religious persuasion, in-group and out-group, the included and the excluded.

We've all been hurt, and we've all dished out hurt. Some of us have misused power and authority, we've blessed one and ignored another. Some of us have wantonly abused our unearned privilege. Some have suffered with compliant rage. All of the aspects of this unhappy trio are part of our communities. God yearns for us to exercise wisdom, compassion and courage -- first, to accept our contribution to the webs of misunderstanding that entangle us, and then to seek with one another a resolution to our distress.

There is another ancient Jewish story about two brothers. These brothers were in the flour milling business. One of the brothers was married and had children, the other was single. They were equal partners in the business, and they made an agreement that at the end of each day, they would take any extra flour that had been milled and divide it into equal shares, and each brother would take his share home and put it in his storehouse. But one day the single brother began to think, "Here I am, unmarried with the only myself to care for, and my brother has a wife to support and children to feed. It isn't fair to divide the flour evenly. My brother should have more of the flour. So that night, he took some of the flour out of his own storehouse and so as not to embarrass his brother, he went under the cover of darkness to his brother's storehouse and secretly left the flour.

It just so happened that at that very same time, the other brother began to think, "Here I am with the richness of a family. I have a wife. I have children, and my brother has no one to take care of him when he gets old. It's not fair to divide the flour evenly. My brother should get more." So he to took some of his flour and under the cover of darkness, slipped it into his brother's storehouse. Every night, unbeknownst to the other, each brother did this, always amazed the next day by the mystery that somehow the level of flour in their storehouses never seemed to diminish. Until one night, their arms laden with sacks of flour, they met each other in the darkness and realized what had been happening all along. With tears of loving joy, the two brothers embraced there in the darkness.

According to the old tale, when God s saw this, he touched that spot on the earth and said, "This is where I will build my house. For my house must always be a place of great joy."

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