(Preached on Sunday, March 14, 2010)
And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: ...
-Luke 15:2-3
Forgiveness. It is one of the most difficult things we ever do as human beings. Preaching professor, Tom Long, tells a story that illustrates this truth. He was standing one day at the circulation desk of the library at the seminary where he taught when a friend, a professional pastoral counselor, approached carrying a bulky stack of books. Watching him struggle under his load, Professor Long asked him what he was doing, teasing him a bit in the process, “What’s a pastoral counselor doing with all those heavy books?” Undeterred, his friend quickly answered, “I’m doing some research on forgiveness.” He shoved the books across the desk toward the librarian and dusted off his hands. Surprised and puzzled Professor Long asked, “Research on forgiveness? What are you trying to find out?” His friend thought for a moment, then replied, “I guess I’m trying to find out if forgiveness really exists or not. You know, I see so little evidence of it in my work.”
The Pharisees and scribes were having trouble with forgiveness as well, so Jesus told them a parable. It is a familiar story, perhaps all too familiar. It is one of those stories we start to hear and immediately nod, “Oh yes, I remember this one. I know how this one goes.” But these parables of Jesus are always sneaky. Clarence Jordan said a parable is like a Trojan Horse; it looks harmless, you let it in, and then – Bam! It’s got you. How might this one get us?
Well, the familiar title, for one. We know this parable as The Prodigal Son. We forget there is no title actually attached to the story in the text of Luke’s gospel. Nor is the term “prodigal” actually used anywhere in the story. That title was attached to the story much later in Christian history. But the familiar title suggests that the main character and the main focus of the story is the younger son. But that approach makes the other son, the older brother, and his almost half of the story, an afterthought. What about the father? Is he simply a plot device?
Then there is the fact that the section of the story focused on the older son is not finished. The story is fairly complete as it relates to the younger son and the father. But we are left at the end of the story not knowing the final resolution as it relates to the older son. Did he finally go into the party? Did he ever accept and forgive his younger brother? Did he stay mad and nurse his anger? What did he do?
In reality the story is about all three. It is about a family and the relationships within that family. The section about the older son is not an afterthought, but an integral part of the story. Think of the first audiences for the story. There were the Pharisees and scribes mentioned in Luke’s gospel. Then there were those people already part of the Christian movement who would have been reading Luke’s gospel. Both of these groups of people would have identified clearly with the older son, the brother who was faithful to the father, the one who was trying to “do everything right.”
Perhaps the story is incomplete on purpose? Perhaps Jesus left it incomplete, to leave it for his listeners, the Pharisees and scribes, to complete? Perhaps he, and Luke, are suggesting that the hearers of this story need to write their own ending? Perhaps they are raising the question, “How will you respond to the prodigal younger brothers, the tax collectors and sinners with whom Jesus was communing, who are being welcomed back into the family of God?”
Perhaps the story does the same thing for us? Are there people we have trouble accepting as being truly welcomed into God’s family? Or, are there people in the church family, or in our own personal family, or in the sphere of our lives, we have trouble forgiving for some wrong? After all, this is a parable about forgiveness. It is a parable about family relationships. It is a story about “Prodigal Love.”
I keep saying this is a story about forgiveness, but what is forgiveness? Like this parable, forgiveness is one of those concepts which everyone assumes we all understand. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, and if we look at how we struggle with being forgiving, then we have to admit that at times we have trouble understanding the nature of forgiveness.
Perhaps it would be easier to start by identifying what forgiveness is not. Forgiving does not mean denying our hurt. If we suppress and deny our pain, then we have no real sense of being wronged and therefore no real sense that anything needs to be forgiven. Nor is forgiveness resigned martyrdom. It does not mean placing the other person on probation. To forgive is not to excuse unjust behavior. Finally, to forgive is not necessarily to forget.
So what then is forgiveness? One author suggests the following definition: “To forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who has wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be.”
That is quite a definition. Notice first that forgiveness is a choice. It is not something we have to do, nor is it natural. It is a choice to leave behind our resentment and our desire for retribution – to truly let it go – however fair such punishment might seem. It is in this sense that we may speak of “forgetting” – not that the actual wound is ever completely forgotten, but that its power to hold us trapped in continual replay of the event, with all the resentment each remembrance makes fresh, is broken. Someone has said: “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
Notice also that this definition does not lessen the seriousness of the offense. It does not suggest that “oh, it’s okay, it was nothing.” It takes the offense seriously. But forgiveness involves excusing persons from the punishment they deserve to suffer for their behavior. The behavior remains condemned – what they did was wrong, it was hurtful – but the offender is released from the effects of that behavior as far as the forgiving person is concerned. For the one who forgives this is usually costly – both emotionally and spiritually. But that is the nature of prodigal love. It is costly love to the one offering it.
Frederick Buechner identifies this costly nature of forgiveness in one of his reflections. He writes: “To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, ‘You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.’ To accept forgiveness means to admit that you’ve done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride.”
To forgive is to participate in the mystery of God’s love – a prodigal love. Since that term “prodigal” means “wastefully extravagant,” the word applies just as well to the father in this parable as to the younger son. Sure, he was prodigal in his approach to life. But the father was prodigal in his approach to both his sons. He was wastefully extravagant with his love. He does not hold any grudge against the younger son for the disrespectful way he treated his father, his inheritance, even himself. He also does not hold any resentment toward the old son for throwing a wet blanket over the joyous celebration thrown to welcome home the younger boy and to rejoice in the reconciliation of the family. The father dips into that vast source of unlimited grace that defines a parent’s love. In the same way that there is not less love for the first child when a second child is born, there is no limit to the amount of compassion and forgiveness available to both sons. There is more than enough love to go around.
None of this is easy. But perhaps a starting point for us to move closer to embracing this “prodigal love” is offered by this reflection from Henri Nouwen which I offer in closing. Nouwen points out that we are all “In the Parable.” “I want you to know that you are the younger son, that you are the older son and that you are called to become the father who loves unconditionally. There is a younger son in you that needs conversion, and there is an older son in you that needs conversion. There is also a father in you that needs to be revealed to you so that you can receive the younger and the elder sons that ‘return’ to you day after day. Somewhere at the end of it all God wants all of us to be present at the banquet. The banquet is not only because the youngest returned, but it is for the eldest too, and for the father. Together. … So, claim humbly the ‘younger son’ in you, and claim the ‘older son’ in you. And strive to claim the God in you who receives and forgives your straying child within.” Let us embrace God’s prodigal love for ourselves, that we might join God in showing prodigal love for all those around us.