Does prayer change things? Or us? Or both?

The Two Lost Sons

Mar 17, 04:06 PM

It must be the most dearly loved of all of Jesus’ stories, which makes preaching it both exciting and intimidating. This past Sunday I tackled the Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, as the story in Luke’s Gospel is often called.

Now, the day after my sermonizing, I wonder what meanings it might promise for how I pray.

I climbed the steps into the pulpit realizing that most church-goers know the story, that most at least faintly recall the rough outline: how a father aches over a reckless younger son who demands his share of the inheritance and shambles out of town, bringing shame on the family name. When things go sour for the boy, he goes back home in desperation and sorrow. He cannot be sure how he will be received, but even before he arrives, as his father sees him stumbling toward home from afar, the father runs out to embrace him.

No wonder we warm to story—its hope for those who wander but then "come to their senses," realizing their need for forgiveness. It dramatizes how new beginnings are possible. How the lost can be found.

But as I mentioned in the sermon, there’s a twist, a surprising layer to the story, and a hanging ending.

Here is what I mean: This story is the third in a series Jesus tells of lost things: Just before we’ve heard of a lost coin and a lost shepherd. And now, in the passage I preached about, a lost son. And that’s where the surprise comes in. Because we also hear about another son.

"A certain man had two sons," Jesus began. In his own way, this second son also is lost. The parable demonstrates two ways to be alienated from God, then. Two ways to experience distance.

And I find an insight for me to ponder today for my own praying.

For we soon see the other—the older—son find his own ingenious way to create distance between himself his father. He does it more subtly. He does it in perhaps less socially scandalous ways. But if the first does it by his riotous living, the older son does it by his righteous living, or at least he takes in it.

As his young brother comes back, gets the royal treatment, the older brother is fuming. He’s put out.

The son you’d least expect to be a problem, never having left home, is the one who ends up outside the family circle. Which helps answer a question I heard someone raise recently. Rereading this parable he asked himself, why have the older son in the parable at all? Isn’t it enough to have the prodigal’s return home? The cranky older brother’s appearance in the drama dampens the mood. Why not have a happier ending? Why put him in to suck the life out of the welcoming party?

To understand what is happening here I remember who Jesus was speaking to.

The first group of his listeners, those who flocked to Jesus, resembled the younger brother. They had left the traditional morality of their hometowns and families for some first century L. A. or New York or Vegas. It wasn’t going like they’d thought. They knew they needed help and mercy. So they came.

But the immediate reason for telling it, remember, was the religious leaders’ complaining. The Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, "This guy welcomes sinners and eats with them." They were scandalized.

So not only does Jesus have to tell a story of the wayward being found, explaining why repentant notorious sinners could receive a place at the table, he also has to get at the religious leaders’ conceit and contempt.

For the older son, the one who swore that he had always done his father’s will, curiously seems like the religious leaders: "Now [the] elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on." When he hears, "became angry and refused to go in." (Luke 15:25, 26, 28)

Just like the Pharisees and religious leaders, he holds himself back from the celebration. He’s out in the field, where the drum and lyres of the party are distant strains, not because the father doesn’t want him at the party, but because of his pride in his accomplishments

"Listen!," he complains to his father, "For all these years I have been working like a slave for you; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends." So he hangs back.

In that time, biblical scholar Kenneth Bailey tells us, at any social event, the household’s male members had to shake hands with the guests, even if they didn’t stay. To stay aloof, to avoid the gathering, was worse than bad manners, it was a personal insult to the head of the house, and to the guests. And we see, incredibly, the father again insulted—now twice humiliated.

Word of the older son’s pouting refusal to come in would have spread in hushed tones throughout the banquet hall. This older son, the one who never left to go off in search of himself, is rebelling in his own way.

So those in the banquet hall now must wonder. What’s the father going to do? For the second time his response defies expectation: "his father came out and entreated him." To put it in plain English: he begged the second son to come in.

Is there no end to his patient love? A searching, seeking compassion that aches for the sinner and the self-righteous alike, saying to both, Don’t stand back! Don’t hang on the outskirts of the family home and the grand reunion!

But unlike the part of the story with the younger prodigal son, there’s no resolution to this segment of the story. We’re left hanging. It’s what one scholar calls "a missing climax."

Will the older son continue to insist that he be recognized for his accomplishments? Or will he realize that he, too, needs his father’s overflowing compassion?

Will I, when I pray, I who more or less all of my life have been close to some church, realize that it is only through mercy that I too come?