The Extravagant Son

When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. (Luke 15.20; The Message)

Easy Recognition

The beauty of Jesus’s parables resides in their earthiness and accessibility. His characters are made of clay—flawed, unfinished, and often thickheaded. Whether central figures or supporting cast members, if they’re not exactly like us, we know someone like them. And our easy recognition of the characters, including those whom Jesus introduces as surrogates for God, enables us to enter His parables from many angles. No matter how many times we’ve heard these stories, we can always discover something new and revealing in them.

The parable in Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 15.11-32) is usually called “The Prodigal Son”. Since “prodigal” isn’t a word common to modern English, we’re apt to infer its meaning based on the son’s behavior, rather than seek out its true definition to see what Jesus wants to show us. We assume “a prodigal” is rebellious, ungrateful, devious—in short, a spoiled brat, which invites our condescension toward this character. But that’s not what the word means, nor is it what Jesus describes. Jesus’s word (asótós) doesn’t even address the son’s character. It merely portrays how he lives—loosely, wastefully, in wanton debauchery—after he leaves his father’s house, his pockets spilling easy money, with no compass for his life. A better word would be “extravagant,” and when we substitute it for “prodigal,” the story gets really interesting, because we realize the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Blanks

We don’t know what fires the son’s urgency to leave home. All Jesus tells us is he’s the younger of a prosperous farmer’s two sons. He asks his father to advance his inheritance, which totals cash equal to one-third of the father’s holdings. (According to ancient custom, the eldest son is entitled to twice what his younger brothers receive. Unfortunately, sisters don’t inherit directly from their father’s largesse; they’re given a dowry and married off to other families, who agree to support them in exchange for bearing children.) While it’s not unheard of in Jesus’s day for fathers to advance their legacies before death, it’s not how things usually go. By design, this couches a lot of blanks in the first act of the story, as Jesus withholds telling details about the nature of the father-son relationship.

Is the younger son the favorite? So it might seem, given his dad’s consent to honor his request and the older brother’s outrage when he returns home. On the other hand, their relationship may be troubled, and the father relents out of frustration, hoping some real-world experience will help his son figure things out. (Which is how the story ends.) Then again, the father’s confidence in his son may be so sure that he’s unworried about how he’ll spend his fortune. There’s also the possibility the father—like many others—sees a chance to live out his own dreams of being footloose and fancy-free through his son. Although there are many potential explanations for their rather unusual arrangement, they all lead back to two facts: the father loves his son supremely and, however the story goes, the father has a hand in its outcome. It is the father’s will—in the strictest legal sense—that enables the son to leave home.

So the son is not a rebel. He’s not greedy; he only asks for his share. He’s not deceitful; unlike Jacob in the Old Testament, he doesn’t trick the father into handing over what he doesn’t deserve. All we know is something inside him wants to break away. Maybe he’s just tired of living on the farm and wants to see the world. Maybe he’s lonely and longs for relationships he can’t find at home. (As we discover, his brother is not his friend.) Maybe he has delusions of grandeur and runs away to become a rock star. Maybe he’s a rich kid who’s curious about how the other half lives. In the end, his reasons for taking off don’t matter because the story is really about how he squanders his gifts and how that leads to reconciliation with his father.

A Tale of Horror

Once the son leaves home, we see that he and his father are more alike than they realize. They’re both extravagantly generous. They both enjoy a good party. Neither of them seems overly concerned about onlookers’ opinions, as decisions they make are likely to raise eyebrows and draw criticism. Both are undaunted by risk. In permitting his son to leave, the father risks not having a second child to care for him in his old age. In throwing his inheritance to the wind, the son risks not being able to provide for himself. And that’s what happens. Once he blows his fortune on extravagant living, it’s as though the universe turns on him. Famine descends on his newly adopted land. The friends his money bought are gone. He gets work tending pigs and stares hungrily at the swill he pours into their manger.

It’s here that Jesus’s story turns into a tale of horror that chills His listeners to the bone. The Jewish taboo about eating pork means not one of them owns a pig and very few, if any, have even seen one. Pigs are monsters—filthy, ravenous beasts that endanger their health and their faith. In the eyes of Jesus’s audience, landing in a pigpen is worse than hitting rock bottom. “That brought him to his senses,” Jesus says. The son reckons, “All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death.” Deciding to return home, he prepares a repentance speech, confessing he’s sinned against God and his father, begging to be taken on as a hired hand. And that brings us to the story’s final twist.

Lavish Love

The father never loses hope that he’ll be reunited with his son. “When he was still a long way off, his father saw him,” Jesus tells us. “His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him.” This means the father kept waiting and watching for his son’s return. The son starts his repentance speech. But the father cuts him off before he can offer to hire on as a common servant. It’s time to celebrate! The father starts issuing orders to the staff, planning an extravagant party, and moving quickly to restore everything the son surrendered: the best robe, i.e., the finest garment from the father’s own closet; the family ring, empowering the son to exercise his full rights as an heir; shoes, instantly differentiating him from the barefoot household slaves; and a grain-fed heifer, which the father set apart from his pastured cows, with the intention of breeding better stock or perhaps offering it in sacrificial worship.

The father’s lavish love won’t be denied. Naturally, this angers the older brother, who’s remained faithful the whole time. We get his resentment and refusal to join the extravagant reunion. While his brother’s been living the high life, he’s shouldered a lot of heavy lifting. He’s had to deal with his parents’ anxiety, neighborhood gossip about where the father went wrong, and servants’ concern about job stability after one-third of the household assets disappeared. “What are you doing?” the older brother asks. “He wasted a fortune on prostitutes and you throw him a party? I’ve never given you a moment’s grief and you’ve never done that for me!” Oh yes, we understand the older son. Yet that’s why we’re wise to doubt the reliability of his accusations. Left alone, he’s crafted a hateful fiction about his brother’s behavior. To some degree, it’s likely to be true. A windfall can make people do crazy things. What’s missing from his fantasy are the hard times and degradation the extravagant son encountered. He never stops to ask, “What went wrong to drive my little brother back home?”

The father doesn’t ask, either. It’s irrelevant to him. All he cares about is that his lost son has returned. Listen to his response to the elder son’s protests: “Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!”

Never Far

How can we not love this story? We can enter it from virtually all sides, as the son, father, elder brother, servants, and off-screen characters—neighbors and onlookers, foreigners who sap the son’s fortune, even the audience who heard the parable for the first time. It is the story of repentance writ large in bold print, the greatest comeback tale of all time. But if we leave it at that, I think we miss a central truth Jesus wants us to see.

Regardless how far we stray from home, we are never far from God. We are, in every way, God’s children and we carry God’s traits with us wherever we go. That is God’s ultimate gift to us. The extravagance of our misbehavior is a distortion of God’s extravagant goodness. The generous nature that often leads us to wastefulness comes from our exceedingly generous God. Our compulsion to take risks is inherited from a God Who is willing to risk everything in order to restore us to right relationship. And while we are away from God, abusing our privileges and channeling our godly traits in wrong-headed ways, God never stops waiting and watching for our return. How low we sink—how horrible our lives become—is a matter of choice. From the moment we leave, the door stays open. Whether anyone else appreciates the bond we share with our Maker is irrelevant. We can always come home.

Jesus gives us a story riddled with blanks about the characters’ motives and attitudes. But He does this on purpose to lead us back to His parable’s defining truth. Just as the father tells the older son, God says to us, “Everything that is Mine is yours.” Wherever we may be in our lives—if our feet are firmly planted at God’s table or if we’ve skipped town and landed in a pigsty—that truth will never change. Everything that is Mine is yours. That’s reason enough to party.

No matter how far we stray from home, regardless how low we go, God waits and watches for our return.

Unique? Yes. Special? No.

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and God will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10.13)

The Compulsion to Feel Special

Because I work mostly from home, I’m privy a universe that many daytime commuters may never discover. It’s the world of afternoon television, a thing wholly unto itself. On the chat shows, smug has-been and not-quite celebrities bemoan the peccadillos of more current and famous stars. On the judge programs, ex-lovers, former friends, and fractured families drag each other into court demanding redress for slights and slander. On “Dr. Phil”, regular-looking folks lay their dysfunction at the good doctor’s feet for all to see. On the news stations, prattlers and howlers truck in hyperbole and speculation.

To the bank teller at home with the flu or the snowed-in schoolteacher, picking through TV’s midday buffet can be an eye-popping experience. It’s a feast of every kind of crazy. What could possibly induce people to behave so ridiculously in front of millions? Anyone regularly exposed to afternoon TV knows why. Celebrated or unknown, TV’s workaday denizens think they’re special. They believe their woes and outrage set them apart. At first, that would seem to be the case. But over time, a more sorrowful reality emerges. They are not special. For every betrayed spouse, there are another hundred queued up with similar stories. Every neighbor suing for property damage falls between dozens who’ve already been there and dozens more to come. Every star break-up boils down to the same foibles that have ruined relationships since the dawn of time. Today’s political kerfuffle will make way for tomorrow’s flap. In this regard, the surest way to prove how ordinary you are is to broadcast your “specialness.”

I paint this picture not to lament the pathetic state of daytime TV. It is what it is. Rather, the armchair sociologist in me is fascinated by how accurately it mirrors the compulsion to feel special. We’re all driven by a desire to set ourselves apart. Many of us set out to accomplish this in a constructive manner that can lead to overachievement and false pride. Just as many of us are convinced that our tests distinguish us from everyone else. Either way, these self-portraits we create are striped with the supposition that God should somehow love us more for being “special.” Sunday’s readings, particularly the New Testament (1 Corinthians 10.1-13) and Gospel (Luke 13.1-9), issue reality checks that charge us to recognize we’re not as special as we may suppose. While we may not be pleased to hear it, when we absorb what the texts say, they deliver really good news.

This Notion of “Deserving”

In 1 Corinthians, Paul revisits Israel’s wilderness trek, noting though the people’s needs were met, their grumbling caused many to be destroyed. Jesus picks up this destruction theme in Luke, where he recalls Roman atrocities against the Galileans and the deadly implosion of a tower. “Do you think these things happened because the victims were worse sinners than you?” He asks. “No,” He answers, saying, “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” When we unpeel this onion down to its core, we uncover a message of sameness. We all cross dry deserts. Any one of us can be random targets of violence and casualties of disaster. Our tests aren’t reliable indicators of our singularity, as victors or victims.

These texts yank this notion of “deserving” off the table. We neither deserve special favor because we’ve done well nor special consideration because we’re unable to do better. Whatever we’re dealing with, good or bad, opens avenues for God’s grace to reach us. Individuals who appear to have everything going their way need God’s grace. Those who can’t seem to buy a break need it, too. This is the crux behind Paul’s admonition that “no testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and God will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10.13) Whatever we face, we are not the first to confront it. Nor will we be the last. No one is singled out to suffer. No one is selected to succeed. Tests come to everyone. And they are given for one purpose only: to teach us our God is faithful.

What’s Unique About Us

This is a tough idea to digest. We want whatever we go through—whether the price we pay for success or burdens we bear at great personal expense—to say something extraordinary about us. But what’s extraordinary in this context is that God remains true regardless what we go through. Our specialness isn’t defined by our circumstances. What’s unique about us is located in our making—in the specific gifts and flaws placed in each of us to engender reliance on God’s grace. Because I was born gay doesn’t entitle me to harbor resentments or indulge in self-pity. Because someone else is burdened with wealth doesn’t grant license to feel superior or exploit privilege. Wherever we fall on life’s continuum, we will be tested. And the only way to survive our tests is by turning to God. “Unless you repent…” Jesus says.

Many times I’ve heard people quote Paul’s admonition about life’s trials and stop at “God will also provide a way out.” That’s magical thinking that ultimately defeats the purpose behind our tests. To accept this teaching, we have to ride the text out to the end: “so you may be able to endure it.” God’s faithfulness is proven in times of testing, not in helping us escape them. It’s who we are—not what we deal with—that makes us unique. Our trials are fundamentally no different than everyone else’s. The good news about not being special is found in the discovery that, regardless who we are, our God is always the same.

Tests and trials offer no indication of how “special” we are. In fact, they confirm we’re no different than anyone else. Our making—the gifts and flaws specific to each of us—is what’s unique.

On High Alert

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58.6)

It’s Ash Wednesday. Once more we find our way to an altar, where we bow in humility and rise from our knees bearing a visible sign of repentance. As always, there will be a lot of thought and conversation today about what we’re “giving up” for Lent. We will leave the Ash Wednesday rite with the best of intentions and spend the next few weeks struggling to honor them.

To be sure, there is merit in self-denial. It teaches us discipline and retrains us so that we can master unhealthy reflexes and habits. Yet what’s supposed to come out of fasting? In Isaiah, we discover that it’s less about what we elect not to do, and more about relearning what we must do. In Isaiah 58, God says our piety and ritual—our subscription to religious obligation—mean nothing if they don't alert us to sacred obligations to those around us.

Sacrificing meat or candy bars or TV is, at best, a start. We do these things to keep us mindful that fasting is, above all, an act of faithfulness to a God Who desires meaningful change in our attitudes and behaviors. Yet if Lent starts and stops with what we’re “giving up,” we’ve not gone far enough. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God warns. “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?” (v4-5)

There’s a break in the text, making room for us ask, “If there’s more to this fasting thing than getting off our high horses and wallowing in our guilt, what can it be?” The answer is remarkably simple and direct: God expects our fast to focus on doing better in the here and now—not feeling sorry that we haven’t done so in the past or pledging improvement in the future. Listen very closely to God’s definition of an acceptable fast (quoted at length, because its emphasis cannot be overstated):

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindication shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

If we enter Lent’s desert intent only on adopting an ascetic mindset—grappling with self-denial and its attendant temptations, distancing ourselves from others to relish the benefits of solitude—we fall short of God’s demands. The Hebrew word for “fast” literally means, “to cover one’s mouth.” Thus, it stands to reason if we refuse to placate our hungers, we have more to give. What are we to do with our excess—this food we don’t eat, this extra time we have on our hands, these comforts we sacrifice? God tells us: we surrender them to others in need.

We enter Lent on high alert, extremely conscious that our wilderness adventure will open opportunities to share. Indeed, if we’re doing the real work of fasting, we seek out the less fortunate, the hungry, the afflicted, and the oppressed. We create the means of practicing Lent’s discipline. We look for distressed families we can feed. We extend ourselves to overworked parents and provide them respite by offering to sit with their children while they recharge their batteries. We seek out solitary coworkers or churchgoers and sit beside them. We find the senior who needs help cleaning up the house or running errands. We make time for the sick and grieving among us, assuring them they’re not alone. We embrace the ridiculed and misunderstood. We speak kindly to ears bruised by insults and cruelty. We touch the untouchable and love the unlovable.

We are surrounded by fasting opportunities.

We leave our comfort zones, because fasting should make us uncomfortable. It thrusts us into a desert of strangeness and uncertainty. It tests our wills and purifies our motives, leading us beyond the desire to be holy so that we become holy. Fasting has very little to do with what or how much we “give up.” It’s all about what or how much we give. And if we center our Lenten experience intent on caring for others, our wilderness will explode with new and abundant life.

Your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58.10-11)

Crazy

When His family heard it, they went out to restrain Him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of His mind.” (Mark 3.21)

Psychology

We’re often more frustrated by what the gospels don’t tell us than trying to decipher the mysteries they set before us. As modern readers, we expect them to filter Jesus’s life through a psychological lens: focus first on His thoughts and feelings, then show us how they play out in His behavior and accomplishments. But the writers come at biography from the opposite angle. They concentrate on Jesus’s words and deeds as evidence of His ideas and emotions. So little is said about His inner workings that Mark 3:20-35 (Sunday’s Gospel) catches us off-guard. The passage is one of very few to consider the psychology behind Jesus’s actions. Even then, it’s not about what He thinks. It describes what others think of Him—their suspicions about what makes Him tick. And their conclusions aren’t flattering. Those closest to Him (His family) believe rumors that He’s gone crazy. Those most threatened by Him (theologians) believe He’s possessed. Not flattering.

The strangest aspect of this episode is that Mark doesn’t go into detail about what brings it on. He gets Jesus up and running right away: no preface (like John) stating his views of Jesus, no detailed account of Jesus’s birth and lineage like we find in Matthew and Luke. In Mark, John the Baptist declares, “Prepare the way of the Lord” and—boom!—there Jesus is, fully grown and ready to get started. Mark dashes off a few high points: the baptism, wilderness temptation, assemblage of the disciples, and a few exorcisms and healings, a couple of which upset the religious establishment for occurring on the Sabbath. But we don't find much insight as to what's going on in Jesus's head, or why people think He's insane.

Jesus Makes Sense

The crowds around Jesus keep growing. By the time we reach the third chapter, verse 20 says they’re so large that Jesus and His followers can’t even find a quiet place to eat. Up to this point, Jesus doesn’t say very much in Mark. So what follows comes out of the blue: “When His family heard it, they went out to restrain Him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of His mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons He casts out demons.’” (v21-22) In a time when the countryside runs riot with healers and exorcists, we wonder what makes people say Jesus is crazy. Why would they flock to Him if they truly thought He’d lost His mind? What causes His family’s concern—to the point that they would rush to pull Him away from His work? Do they believe He’s crazy, too? Why would learned religionists theorize that He’s doing the devil’s work by relieving people of vexing spirits? None of this makes sense until Jesus opens His mouth. Then we get it. People think Jesus is crazy and/or possessed because He makes sense. The surest way to sound nuts during nutty times is to speak soundly, sensibly, and assuredly to the situation. Which Jesus does.

What Mark and the other writers don’t tell us (as it need not be told to their intended readers) is that Jesus has come to people stranded in an upside-down world. The land God gave them has been stolen—again. While they await their King, they live under Caesar’s thumb. Their synagogues ring with psalms of God’s goodness and provision. Yet the soundtrack of their lives is replete with dirges of sorrow and hunger. Corruption, injustice, and poverty have warped their minds. Despair has dislodged hope. They substitute religiosity for faithfulness. Nothing is as it seems or what it should be. Deceit masquerades as honesty; virtue is met with suspicion. If we didn’t live in similar times, it would be difficult to conceive how jaded and unhealthy Jesus’s world is. Since He is Truth and Life, however, He speaks truth and life. So, of course, people think He’s crazy, as His words and actions don’t conform to their daily reality.

We get a taste of just how twisted things have got when the scribes—the most learned leaders of their day—assume that freeing people of diabolical influences proves Jesus is possessed. How crazy is that? Yet it makes sense to them until Jesus dismantles their logic. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” He asks. “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” (v23-24) He cautions against attributing His work to “an unclean spirit,” saying such a sin is unforgiveable. That’s when His mother and brothers show up and insist that He stop talking and leave with them. In this topsy-turvy culture, the family unit is the only stable institution. Rumors that Jesus has gone mad are shaming His family. Their demand must be honored. Yet instead of submitting to His kinfolk’s crazy fears and insufficient grasp of Who He is, Jesus redefines family. He looks around at those nearest Him, who find eternal truth at the heart of His puzzling statements and demeanor. “Here are My mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother,” He declares. (v34-35)

Believe the Good News

So where are we in this story? Well, that depends on what shapes our psyches. If we allow this crazy, mixed-up world of ours to control how we perceive others and ourselves—if we surrender to its oppressive ideologies and suspicions—then we belong with the backward crowd: amateur critics, learned fools, and fearful family members. But if we set our hearts on being like Christ—if we refuse to yield to uninformed opinions, religious nonsense, and loved ones’ pressure to conform—we will speak truth and life to those who long for hope and healing. We will see the world not as it is, but as it should be. We will heed the first words of Jesus that Mark records: “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1.15)

In Romans 12.2 we read: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Do we know that people say we’re crazy to believe God loves us, regardless where we come from and who we are? Of course we do. Are we aware that many religious folks attribute our pursuit of faithfulness to satanic delusions? Sure we are. Do we have friends and family who put more credence in what others tell them about us than what we know to be true? It’s highly likely. In this Gospel, Jesus serves as living proof that conformity to the world’s upside-down ways is not His way. Succumbing to group pressure, cynicism, and fearful mindsets won't lead to transformation. The kingdom of God is near. Leave the crazy nonsense behind. Believe the good news.

The truth of Christ sounds crazy to a crazy, mixed-up world.

Postscript: “All That I’m Allowed”

This song is new to me. I recently heard it in a supermarket and stopped in my tracks. I can’t quite articulate how it connects with this post, but somehow—for me, at least—it does. Perhaps it’s because Elton John also gives witness to the power of speaking truth and life to an upside-down world. “I always hoped that I’d do better, that I’d come out on top for once,” the song says, adding, "The barriers get in the way, but I see hope in every cloud." And when we forego conformity to nonsensical opinions and fears, that’s what happens. We come out on top.

May we all be thankful for all that we’re allowed.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/06/10/crazy/