Profligate Love
I don’t know whether to love this parable or hate it. This parable pulls me in and disturbs me.
Jesus’ story of the prodigal son is profoundly evocative, even provocative. The story unlocks for most of us an entire world of perplexity, of pain and disappointment, of surprise, and even anger! It speaks of a profligate love that is flat out unfair. Why should the father welcome home the wayward son with lavish feasting? We are left to wonder if God’s grace flies in the face of justice.
The word from the gospel is provocative. God’s love does not obey rules—certainly not the laws of the land (it disregards, for example, the inheritance due to a second son, which was one third and was supposed to be received only upon the father’s death). God’s love apparently does not even obey the laws of our emotions.
Jesus’ story of a loving parent unleashes a universe of feelings about our experiences in our own families. Which of us does not have a story about feeling lost, ignored, or discounted? A story about competing for parental attention, or unequal treatment among siblings? A story about being assigned a role that wreaks havoc with our sense of self—“the smart one, the talented one, the failure?”
The Greek word parabole means “that which is tossed alongside,” implying comparison or analogy. Parables disarm and engage the listener. They arrest the hearer with their vividness and strangeness. Fred Craddock writes, like poetry, they evoke meanings and feelings; they put a burden on the listener that is not intellectual. They tease the mind to active thought. They cry out for interpretation. [i]
If this is what a parable is, then the prodigal son is an uber-parable, a parable par excellence. This simple story of family life evokes whole realms of feeling and association. Feelings of loss, longing, fear, and jealousy, and the deep need we all share to be loved no-matter-what. To be seen, not as the “dutiful daughter,” or the “wayward child,” but simply as beloved and belonging.
This story, which we commonly call the parable of the prodigal son, is situated between two others—the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. Each of these three parables speaks of the joy of finding something that was lost—the sheep, the coin, the son. It is interesting (isn’t it?) that we refer to these stories in the negative. “The lost sheep, rather than the found sheep, the lost coin, rather than the found coin; the prodigal son, rather than the loving father.” [ii]
Prodigal is one of those interesting words, that has two rather different shades of meaning. In both cases, prodigal means extravagant. But it can have either a connotation of wastefulness—as is the case with the young son squandering his inheritance on dissolute living—or a connotation of lavish abundance—as is the case with the father’s love for his child.
The fact that this drama about a father and his two sons is sandwiched in between two stories of losing and finding tells us what is important in the story. It is about the joy of finding a son who was lost.
The emotional wisdom and havoc of the story is unlocked when we read it from three different vantage points—that of the younger son’s guilt, humiliation, and shame; the older son’s steadfastness, entitlement, and jealousy; and the father’s love for both sons. It is ultimately, most deeply a story about the father’s love.
Parents are hard-wired to protect their kids. If you’ve ever momentarily lost sight of your toddler in a department store, you know the panicky feeling of separation and loss. The moment of fear and self-reproach rolled into a big ball of terror. And when they get older, it gets worse. If you’re the parent of a teenager and have ever spent late night hours not knowing where your child is, you know the feeling of desperation. Those moments are hard to forget. They connect with a primal place deep inside us that’s hard-wired to love and protect and stay connected.
But the father’s story in this parable is even more complex, because it is about adult relationships. How painful it must have been for the father to let his grown son go; to give him his inheritance and let him go his own way. The dad must have known that he couldn’t keep him—couldn’t compel the son against his will to stay at home on the family farm. He couldn’t dispel his son’s curiosity, or dismiss his need to see for himself, to discover the world on his own. He must have known his son pretty well, and feared for him—feared for the kind of foolishness or trouble he might get into. But the dad can’t wrestle the son’s demons for him. He has to let him go—to allow him to discover the world—both external and internal—for himself.
Is the father foolish to let his son leave home? Or is he simply wise enough to know that he can’t hold him; that he has to let go? That his son needs the freedom to make his own mistakes—even huge mistakes—and to discover who he is and what is important in life?
In the sixties my family spent summers in Colorado and I remember being very intrigued as a small child by the colonies of hippies living in the public parks in Boulder. Gorgeous women with flowing hair, long skirts and tie-dye, sinewy young men with eager faces and unkempt beards, and babies everywhere! I was fascinated by this lifestyle—living in the park, eating organic vegetables, drinking kefir, sharing possessions. It had immediacy and freedom that were quite appealing. My parents, both staunch, fifties-style Methodists (Hi Mom and Dad—love ya both!) were highly disapproving of this reprobate, profligate lifestyle. How, they asked, was it possible to even imagine raising children in such an environment?
Each of us knows that far-away place in our own family system, the place that will put us beyond the pale. The young son in this story ventures to a far away land, where he falls into a life that is utterly reproachable by the standards of his family and culture. What must the younger son have felt, as he walked homeward, full of guilt and shame, hoping against hope that he would merely find something to eat and a safe place to sleep? Hoping that he would not be turned away?
The parable suggests—powerfully—through both its emotional resonances and its linguistic structure—that there is a fate worse than death—and that is being lost. Lost in a wilderness of separation, out there in a far orbit—cut off from one’s people, a sense of belonging, even from one’s values or culture.
Twice we hear that the younger son “was dead and is now alive, was lost, but now is found.” Many of us end up feeling lost at some point in our lives. Maybe, like the younger son, because we have followed questionable impulses in search of something that will fill a void. Or maybe we struggle with self-worth, direction, or purpose and we’re longing for some clarity to emerge out of life’s fog.
What must the younger son have felt when he saw his dignified patriarch-of-a-father drop everything and run toward him with open arms? In a kind of flat-out sprint that is, frankly, embarrassing?
But there’s more to the story. It’s not just the reunion we see. We can guess that the father has been out every day, every day, scanning the horizon for the familiar form of his son. I suspect this for several reasons. First, I know what it feels like to lose someone, to suffer a painful breech in relationship, to feel cut off from someone you love, and not to know the way back. I know what that feels like. I suspect we all do. It leaves a hole that the psyche keeps coming back to. Almost the way the tongue searches inside the mouth for a tooth that’s missing. And reflexively, you explore that empty space.
There’s another reason, though, to suspect that the father has been out every morning at dawn and every evening at dusk scanning the horizon; that he’s been looking up reflexively from sowing grain or plowing, or tending the animals, looking up reflexively in the hope of his son’s return. The father recognizes his son when he is still just a distant speck.
The way Jesus tells the story, “while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”
The joyous reunion is a bitter pill for the older son to swallow—this profligate, reckless, embarrassing love of the father for the younger son. Okay, okay. Let him come crawling back. Let him have his old room back. Let him have his place at the family table. Fine. But the new clothes, the sandals, the ring—the adornment? And come on—the fatted calf? You’ve got to be kidding!
This is simply too much. The older son breaks down, Dad, come on! I’ve been faithful. I’ve been plowing the fields and tending the animals all these years and you’ve never done anything like this for me!
The father’s loving reception flies in the face of fairness. And we are left to struggle with this tension. It’s provocative. Outrageous, really—this love-poured-out, this extravagance that compels a grown man to race across the fields to embrace his errant son.
When the older son objects, the father responds, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
This parent refuses to choose between an abiding love for his older son, with whom he shares the nightly meal, and a profligate love for his younger son, who was lost but now is found. Extravagant, reckless, over-the-top love. Do we dare to say that such love is squandered? That such generosity and openness of heart is wasted?
The word from the gospel, the good news from Luke, is that God looks on each of us with a lavish loving-kindness. There is no place you can go—no distant land, no exile of folly or wrong-doing, of guilt or shame, addiction, pain or anger. There is nothing you can do that can remove you from God’s welcome embrace. God will not banish you to a distant-pig-trough of a place.
In fact, God is like the parent who is out there scanning the horizon, eagerly awaiting your return, ready to dash recklessly across the field, to scoop you up with open arms, and welcome you home with a profligate love. A love beyond all reason and fairness. Beyond all expectation. A love that says, “Welcome home.”
[i] Fred B. Craddock, Luke, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, (Louisville: John Knox Press), 1990, p. 108
[ii] Craddock makes this observation, p. 186.