The Ashlad

Propers: Laetare Sunday, AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

A man had two sons, Jesus tells us: the elder one responsible, reliable; the younger a gadabout, a good-for-nothing, what the old sagas used to call an ashlad. One day, in an act of astonishing arrogance and chutzpah, the younger son demands his inheritance. He wants half of everything his father has, in effect wishing the old man dead.

Now, this is the sort of thing that could get a kid killed in the ancient world. Roman or Jewish, you did not disrespect your father. This son is either stupid or absolutely spoiled rotten. Imagine Jesus’ audience gasping at his brazenness. But what comes next is even more ridiculous, more scandalous: the father gives it to him. The father gives him half of all he has. And what does the younger son do? He liquidates it. He sells it all off and spends the profits on freedom, fun, and fortune.

He travels. He parties. He drinks. He squanders it all in record time on “dissolute living,” whatever that entails. And having blown his very last farthing, our boy is now dead broke. So what does he do? How does he survive? He takes whatever job he can find, of course, hiring himself out to the pagans, to the gentiles. And he gets a job slopping pigs. For a good, religious, observant Israelite—such as the people to whom Jesus is addressing this parable—it doesn’t get any lower than that. Pigs are unkosher, unclean, ungodly.

And our prodigal son is now so desperate, so hungry, so indigent that he envies even the pigs! He wishes he could eat as well as they did. And here’s his come-to-Yahweh moment. Here’s where he realizes that he has hit absolute rock bottom. “My father has servants,” he says to himself, “who have bread enough and to spare, more than they can eat. And here I am slopping pigs, growling with hunger?” Oh, Lord. Time to eat some crow. He understands now what he’s going to have to do.

He has to go back. He has to go home. But is there still any home to which he can return? “My God,” he thinks, “I wished my father dead. I ruined half of all he had. How can I go back there? How can I face him—the shame of it all?” If this kid is lucky, maybe they’ll just stone him. He has renounced his sonship, recall, burned up his inheritance. He’ll have to go back as a servant, as a hireling, hat in hand, and not as part of the household. But at least then he’ll have bread.

So he’s going to go back, and throw himself on his father’s mercy, and beg: “Father, I have sinned against both God and you. I am not worthy to be called your son. Treat me as a hired hand; I will serve and work for you.” This is repentance, of a sort. But not quite where it needs to be. He’s willing to face the music. He’s willing to fess up to his sins. But at best he’s looking for a little quid-pro-quo. He’s hoping for justice, not mercy. He knows he doesn’t deserve it.

If this were the Brothers Grimm, then the younger son, the ashlad, would surely go back and scrape and serve and deal with the slings and slander of all the household which he so richly deserves. And maybe one day, after years of penance, years of suffering, maybe then he might find a way back into his father’s graces. That would be poetic justice. That would be most satisfying, most edifying, for us as readers, in a moral and narrative sense.

But this is no German fairy tale (for as much as I do love those). This is a parable of Jesus Christ our Lord. And if all of His parables are holy, which they certainly are, then this one we read today is surely the holy of holies, His greatest teaching. For while the son is yet far off—there stands his father scanning, searching, yearning for the wicked boy who vanished years ago. And when he spots him on the horizon, the father does what no ancient head of household would ever do: he runs!

He sprints out to that boy, and before he can say a word, he snatches him up in his arms and kisses him and will not let him go. And the son tries to say something, tries to get out his well-rehearsed confession: “Father, I have sinned against—” But the father gives him no opportunity to get it out. “Fetch a robe!” he cries. “Fetch sandals and clothes, the best we have, and put a ring on his finger! And slaughter the calf and prepare the food and proclaim a feast, now! Right now! Go!”

Is this man a fool? This child cost him half of everything! This child wished him dead! And when he was indulgent enough, ridiculous enough, to grant him this request, what did his son do? He blew it all for nothing but some pig slop stains. And the father doesn’t just admit his son; he runs to him. And he doesn’t just forgive him; he kisses him. And he doesn’t just feed him; he feasts him. And he doesn’t just clothe him, but he adorns him in beauty and honor and glory and wealth, all of which screams, “This is my son! My beloved! My child!”

It’s the most ridiculous, profligate behavior that we can imagine, far more prodigal than any prodigal son. And it never fails to make me emotional: the grace we dare not ask for, the superabundance of it, the foolishness of it, flipping our world around. It reminds me of the story of Jacob, who spent his whole life fleeing from his brother, fleeing from Esau, whom he had twice cheated out of his inheritance. Above all things, Jacob feared his larger, stronger, faster brother’s revenge. Esau was his bogeyman, the sins of Jacob’s past finally catching up to him.

After a lifetime of guilt and fear and flight, Jacob at long last has to face the brother whom he wronged. A wounded hip insures he can no longer run away. And as Esau ominously approaches, Jacob is just throwing gifts at him, throwing bribes at him, anything and everything, in the desperate hope that oh, please, God, don’t let him kill me, don’t let him pull me apart with those sasquatch arms of his.

And then there’s nowhere left to run, and no more tricks to play, and Jacob lies utterly helpless and exposed before the brother who has haunted his dreams—when suddenly Esau runs to him, embraces him, kisses him, and weeps upon his neck.

It is one of the most beautiful reversals the whole of Hebrew Scripture. Esau cares not one whit what Jacob did back in the day. Such wrongs have long since been forgotten. The intervening years have healed old wounds and cooled young rage. And all that is left to the two sons of Isaac is Esau’s joy at finding the little brother whom he’d lost half a lifetime ago. Jacob feared justice and received instead only love.

Esau was the God-figure in that tale of two brothers, just as is the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But we’re not done yet. Jesus has more to His tale. For there is of course a second son, is there not? The older, responsible brother. He’s out in the fields when he first hears all the commotion. Something’s going on at home, something no-one has bothered to tell him. And what’s this? Of what does one of his father’s servants inform him?

That lazy, shameful, good-for-nothing, pain-in-the-tuchus younger brother of his is back, has come home—and their father’s throwing him a party? Are you kidding me? You can almost feel the elder son’s indignation, his exasperation. “Aren’t I the good kid? Aren’t I the dutiful son? And you’re holding a fiesta while I’m out here in the field—for my brother? That loser? Oh, the nerve! The unmitigated gall!” And so he sits there fuming, refusing to come in.

Once again, the father is abandoned by his son. Once again, the old man comes out himself to beg his child, to plead with him, to just come home, come in, come join the party. But no, he will not. Not if his brother is there. “Haven’t I always done what you’ve said?” the son snaps. “Haven’t I always worked so hard, so dutifully, for you and for this family? And this is how you thank me: by feasting my worthless runaway brother? Where in the heck is the justice in that?”

And the father—still meeting disrespect with grace—responds: “My son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. But we have to rejoice, for your brother was lost and is found; he was dead and now he’s alive.” Such is a father’s love. One son left the old man for self-indulgence, the other for self-righteousness. Yet here their father remains, abasing himself, humiliating himself, throwing honor completely to the wind, just to get his boys back home, together.

There’s your God: right there. I don’t care what anyone else tells you; I don’t care what the Bible itself says; if you want to know what God is like, then read this parable and look to Christ. God is a fool in His love for you, a fool upon a Cross. And He will give everything He has, everything He is, just to bring you home in Him; yes, even you, who wielded the hammer; you, who drove in the nails. God loves you all the way to hell and back. Nothing can change that. Nothing can stop Him.

And so now the only thing there’s left to do, is to accept that He loves everyone just as much as He loves you.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.