Grace is hard to live with.
Take the story of the prodigal son for example. The word prodigal and the title of this parable comes from the Latin translation of the scripture, the Vulgate. It was the word used for excess and extravagance. It is interesting how the word prodigal is understood, we often think of it now as meaning lost or wandering or returning home. But the title of the parable means extravagant. It doesn’t necessarily mean immoral or promiscuous or debauchery, it means simple excess, gluttony.
Prodigal is an interesting word. It has much to do with grace and how hard grace is to live with.
We are all familiar with the younger son in this parable who takes his inheritance early, squanders it living large, prodigal living, and comes home begging for food, but is welcomed by the father running out and greeting him and throwing a huge party, a festive celebration for his homecoming. He was lost but now is found, was dead but now he lives.
Grace is like coming home and having a surprise party that we really don’t deserve. Grace is a humbling surprise.
But there is much more to this story of the prodigal than just this younger son.
The other half of the story is about the older brother, the resentful brother, who wants everyone to get what they deserve. He wants his own party for being faithful, or as he puts it for being a slave to his father. He wants his younger brother to be punished and accuses him of not extravagance but rather promiscuity and prostitution. He cannot rejoice for his brother. He feels like a slave, he’s been good and faithful, doing the right thing only because he had to, he didn’t want to lose his inheritance. His relationship with his father has no love, it is simply about getting what he wants. He finds his father…useful and he sees his father using up what he rightfully deserves. He accuses his father of excess, extravagance. He thinks his father is prodigal.
The older son is incapable of joy, love or thanksgiving. He is only capable of resentment. Grace is hard to live with.
Now here is the kicker. Which brother is lost? Which is prodigal, guilty of excess? Which is wasting their inheritance?
We could almost change the title of this parable to “The poor father with the two stupid sons.”
But there is a third character in this parable, the father.
The father who is extravagant with his children, lavishing upon them all that is his. The father who celebrates and loves his two stupid sons.
Actually the best title for this parable is the “Prodigal Father”, whose love never runs out, whose greatest treasure, whose true inheritance is the extravagant love he has for his children, the two children who just don’t get it. One is irresponsible and the other is resentful and controlling.
The younger son finally got it, he came to himself, he came home. At first he came home just to get some food but then he discovered his relationship to his father, the love, the ways of grace. He went beyond finding the world and his father as merely useful to him to being able to love someone else. He climbed out of that hole.
The big question hanging out there is whether the older brother, the good child, will come to himself as well, and be capable of loving his father for who he is rather than for being useful. He stands in the background, arms crossed, a warning to us all.
Grace is hard to live with. Grace is prodigal. Extravagant. It can’t be controlled or measured out or earned or deserved or used up. God is prodigal and Jesus is that extravagant love of God lavished upon the world.
Jesus is the inheritance of God pulling us out of that hole where we are enslaved to merely finding others useful, climbing out of that hole takes a miracle, it takes a grace that is prodigal, excessive beyond measure, lavished beyond reason.
Grace is hard to live with. We are all like those two stupid sons who don’t know what to do with this inheritance and are surprised by the sudden outbreak of celebration.
While we are trying to figure it out lets go dancing.