Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on the fourth Sunday of Lent, “Laetare” Sunday, March 30, 2025, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which giveth life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: Joshua 5:9-12, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

The parable of the prodigal son is easily one of the most well-known, most beloved of all the parables, perhaps one of the best-loved passages in all of Scripture, and for good reason. There are few episodes with a greater range of emotion, greater depth of pathos, greater height of celebration, than this one, especially packed into so small a number of verses. For me, I’m always moved by the father’s response to his son, but maybe even more than that, I find myself moved by all that’s contained in the short phrase, “But when he came to himself.”

How long had the prodigal been out at this point, sowing wild oats? Months? Years? A decade or more? We don’t know, but it sounds like it was probably longer rather than shorter. Before that, what must this son have been like when he was at home? Insufferable, no doubt. No father, not even a generous or foolhardy one, would have sold half the farm and given the cash to one of his sons on the first request. How many years must that father have listened to this kid’s whining, his insistence that he knew better, that he could do better, that he deserved better, than so much farming? I’m sure by the time the father sends off his son he’s tried every other option, used every trick in the book, to get him to grow up. But then there came a point when he’d simply had enough, and he thought, fine, let him have what he wants, and off he went.

Really, it was an insulting thing to ask: the farm is the inheritance, after all. The prodigal son is essentially telling his father, “You’re only good to me dead, and even then only as so many dollar signs. Why should I care about you, your life’s work, what you’ve labored to build and create and care for? Why should I stay here, stuck with a crazy family and nothing to look forward to but livestock?”

In a sense, the prodigal son disowns himself: he has reduced his father to mere money, and leaves his family, his life behind. He is now a “free agent,” as they say, with not a care in the world, but a heavy purse in his pocket. Does he at least work diligently with it? Does he do something with it worthwhile? No. He’s so taken with the freedom he’s gained for himself that he spends every last penny in “dissolute living.”

It’s unclear what exactly Jesus means by this, but we can guess, we’ve all known prodigals in our own life; perhaps we’ve been one ourselves. However he employs himself, it’s no surprise to hear, the money eventually runs out, and he finds he has to work for a living. Without any marketable skills, however, he’s limited to the meanest possible labor, feeding pigs: an unclean animal, one Jews do not eat and would not have raised. The prodigal is far from home indeed.

Finally, we’re told, “he came to himself.” And this realization is what turns the whole parable: he remembers he is a son, that he has a father, that his own actions have removed him from that relationship. He remembers that his father has hired hands, all of whom have enough to eat and to spare. So he decides to go back and beg to be treated as one of those hired hands.

You know the rest: his father welcomes him with open arms; the older brother is resentful, the father tries to snap him out of it, and we’re left to wonder whether it isn’t the prodigal who’s more grown up than his brother after all.

There’s a reason we’re reading this parable in Lent, and it’s because we’re meant to see it as an image, a type, an icon, of what the church means when we talk about sin, repentance, forgiveness, even resurrection: it’s all inescapably personal, it’s all a matter of relationship. If the law is involved at all, it’s to indicate what’s right and wrong and to measure the degree of offense. But the substance is personal, the whole point is that the father welcomes home his son despite what the law says he deserves. The son demanded what was legally his, spent it all, and now has no legal recourse. Still his father embraces him. So it is with you and me. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that God treats each one of us with the same degree of compassion and tenderness with which the father treats the prodigal son, but nevertheless this is indeed what the church teaches.

Holy Week is not far now, only two weeks away. This lesson is perfect preparation because it reminds us that, if we read the prodigal son’s story more broadly, as the history of the entire human race, the point at which the Incarnation takes place is when the prodigal is in the pig pen trying to snatch a bite out of their slop. The incarnation, especially the Lord’s passion and death, is how the human race “comes to itself,” how we are suddenly able to remember that God loves us, and that there is a way back from the mess we’ve made of our life, from the wreckage of the inheritance we’ve squandered.

Consider what that little phrase, “he came to himself,” implies. He was not himself, and now he is. This is right at the heart of what the church teaches about sin: sin makes us a stranger to ourselves. What was the prodigal’s sin? Sure, it was whatever “dissolute living” means. But before that, at the root of the whole thing, was his decision to render his father into nothing but money, and to divorce himself from all family ties. We can only guess at the story he told himself, what delusions he must have entertained. But what’s painfully clear is that he did not appreciate, and perhaps did not even know, who he himself actually was. Among the lies he had bought into was that freedom meant creating his own identity afresh, by raw consumption of goods and services, without reference to anything  beyond his own ego.

Does this suddenly sound familiar? There are some people who call it “The American Dream.” But for all that it promises of freedom, empowerment, and personal agency, the prodigal’s choice is a trap that keeps people estranged from themselves, from their histories, from their neighbors, and from their world. It is not freedom at all, but a prison. 

There in the pig sty, the prodigal finally “came to himself;” and when he came home, this father ran to him on the road, embraced him, put a robe around him, put his own signet ring on his finger, and announced that his son, who was dead, was alive again. The prodigal’s life has been returned to him, and, having come to himself, perhaps he can finally see and recognize it for what it is: the freedom to be rendered not according to money or pleasure or deserving, but according only to love — with all its limitations, yes, but with all its possibility and promise, too.

This is freedom indeed, the freedom to make something, not just to consume; the freedom to be made, forged by the love of others, and to forge by love in return, not just to feed our appetites.

It’s also worth noting that, even while we are strangers to ourselves, the prodigal son is not a stranger to his father, not a stranger to the one he has despoiled and abandoned, whose love he has injured most. Whether his father considers him alive or dead, he never questions whether he is his son. The father refuses to sever the family ties his prodigal son had rejected.

Just so, you and I are not strangers to God. Everything that was true about us before, that we couldn’t or refused to see, remains true, even in the midst of whatever self-imposed exile or pigsty we currently inhabit. No matter how thoroughly we have refused the peace of God or the promise of life, no matter how often we have treated as disposable the people and creatures of God, there is something deeper that remains true of us: that we are made in the image of God, and for such as you and I, Christ came into the world: to make it possible for us to come to ourselves.

And here is an even deeper mystery: the moment we come to ourselves, the moment we recall the bonds we have broken, the love we have scorned, the moment we notice the wasteland we now inhabit; the moment our conscience quickens and we feel the first stirrings of repentance, then God opens our eyes: to see what till now we couldn’t, what we lacked the strength to perceive: that we never actually left the Father’s bosom in the first place. Whatever we have been doing, whatever enormities we have committed, whatever destruction we have caused, whatever departures we have made  whatever wanderings we have went, whatever rage we have indulged, we have done right there, in plain sight, in his lap, the whole time; and all that’s left is to make a tearful embrace of the One who has seen it all and holds us anyway.

Our culture teaches us that responsibility, that the prudent exercise of power, that a certain amount of well-earned affluence, and other such grown-up things are the marks of maturity and wisdom, of a life well-lived. We are taught to put away childish things, to stop depending on the love and care of others, especially of our parents, and ideally to not need anything from anyone. 

I suppose that’s a good way to make sure we fill up our 401k. But oh if we had eyes to see, as the prodigal’s are finally opened: the Love that made us will not let us go, does not let us go, and we are only finally fully grown in that we remain a child at home.

I don’t know what that looks like for you. Chances are the details are different than what it looks like for me, but I’m sure the overall shape is the same: Your task this Lent, O soul, as always, is to learn to let God love you. Whatever else you do or give up this Lent, whatever other good work you attempt, whatever virtue you try to cultivate, whatever grief or shame you hold, whatever sin your conscience carries, you must learn to let God love you. Like the prodigal’s father, that is all he wishes to do; it is God’s whole will and intent. 

The moment you come to yourself, in that moment, a name, a history, a family, a life, will be restored to you, which perhaps you did not realize was yours in the first place. And when Christ rises from the tomb, it will be for us as the sun rising for the very first time, on the world’s very first day.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.