Prodigal and Scandalous, Grace and Mercy
- Ryan Heckman
- Apr 3
- 6 min read
Luke 15:11-32
Grace and peace to you all in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Put yourself into his shoes.
You’re out in the fields working hard, nearing the end of the day and you start to smell fresh cooked burgers on the grill wafting over to you. Unsure about where it’s coming from, you consider that it might be coming from your own yard…? but there wasn’t a barbeque planned for this evening….
You finish up your work in the field and start making your way back to the house to put away your tools. You’re hot, tired and thirsty. As you get closer, the smell gets stronger, so your mouth is watering, you hear music and laughter and you are now certain that there’s a party going on… at your own house!
You’ve probably guessed it by this point, but the person who’s shoes you’ve been occupying belong to the Older Brother in our parable that Jesus tells us. The brother who, in contrast to the younger “prodigal brother,” lives at home and apparently works his daily grind in the farm fields as his custom and culture told him was right to do.
As we continue in his shoes here, I want you to pay attention to how you feel being in this older brother’s shoes, so please play along for a moment more as I tweak the narrative ever so slightly to hopefully get our blood pumping… So, let’s get back into his shoes… – you return from the fields, hot, thirsty, tired and hungry, and you step into the house and it’s warm, like the oven’s been on all day, and fragrant with the smell of a big meal and then… you see him. Your younger brother sitting pride of place at the table, he’s wearing what you recognize as the best clothing in your father’s closet, he’s got the beautiful gold ring on his finger that’s been passed down from generation to generation, and he’s got a plate of the best produce that you – the working farmhand - just harvested last week. And he’s got a cup filled with delicious ruby red wine. You can tell that it’s the bottle you’ve seen in your parents’ wine cupboard that has been saved for years just for a special occasion. Laughter and joy surround your younger brother.
You flood with rage over the scene. That brother disrespected your father by demanding his inheritance before your dad even died! He took it before it was his, then sold it and skipped out of town! Everyone heard the rumors and knew what he was spending the money on… he blew it all! And now he’s back, and he’s being treated like a king, eating the produce you spent your days growing and now he’s eating it all up to his heart’s content! Oh, and you weren’t even invited to the party! You were left out in the fields while all the food was prepared, while all the guests arrived, while the music started and now you come home to a dinner party and its half-eaten. You were totally forgotten.
You then tell your dad, “I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.”
This is not fair. It’s not justice. It’s a huge and scandalous shame on the household!
Are you feeling agitated yet? Have you sufficiently stood in the Older Brother’s shoes to join him in his frustration? In his rage about this completely unfair situation? I hope so.
His anger is justified because the younger brother had totally cashed out of his inheritance. That meant that everything left in the estate would have legally passed directly to the older brother at the father’s death. So, this younger brother is now back taking what belongs, not only to the father, but to the older brother!
So, the older brother has a completely legitimate complaint. What’s happening is totally unfair. My Old Testament teacher at Luther Seminary, Rolf Jacobson, said a sermon title for this text might be: “Yeah, I’d be mad too!”
The older brother is correct to think this party for the younger brother is a scandal. Because it is. It’s scandalous because our day-to-day world has a penal justice system. In a penal justice system, the younger brother already received his due and is living his penalty, he was prodigal – that is frivolous, or wasteful -with his inheritance and he is getting his “just desserts” by spending the rest of his days subsisting at a dead-end job feeding someone else’s pigs.
However, Jesus gives us a glimpse, I think, of the Kingdom of God in this passage. The father is a personification of God, The Father, who does something scandalous from our human frame of mind. He heaps grace and mercy onto the prodigal, onto the one who deserves it least. And I think the Father is doing this, not for the younger brother, but because the Father wants it for himself. The Father wants to celebrate his own joy at the return of the son! I think this parable tells us that God throws a party for all of us, because God’s joy overflows at our arrival and God wants to let that joy loose in celebration.
It is a scandalous party because the prodigal son doesn’t deserve it. This kind of grace and mercy falls outside of our human systems. But we can catch a glimpse of it every once in a while, and perhaps be totally overcome with God’s grace and mercy when we do see it. Let me give you an example to close.
In October of last year, there was a road accident that involved a car and an Avon High School student on a bike. Many of you have probably heard of this accident. I want to give a small content warning before I proceed, but the background is helpful for those who may not know. A teenager, Liam, was accidentally hit by a car in the late evening. Though this was an accident on a busy street in the twilight hours, the driver didn’t stop but made a terrible decision, to drive away. The driver was terrified by this accident and had a woman and small child in the car with him and so panicked, he made this wrong choice. After about four miles, the driver noticed that Liam had been hit hard enough to be flung on top of the car. The driver then made another terrible decision. He pulled over and pushed the unconscious Liam off the top of his car and drove away again. Reports later share that this driver was terrified of his situation, was acting in a panicked state because he was afraid of incarceration in the face of his responsibility to raise his own child. The driver did later call the police to turn himself in. Liam survived and returned home this past winter, thanks be to God.
Now, I share this background because in October I had a conversation with Will A. a high schooler here at St. Matthew who is in the same grade as Liam, about this accident. I have checked with Will to see if it’s ok for me to share this and he gave me permission.
During our conversation in the back hallway while we were getting ready to lead worship that Sunday, Will asked me, “What do you think God does with people like the guy who hit Liam? Will he be punished for what he did?” We had a conversation about our penal justice system, as flawed as it is, this system holds people accountable with things like incarceration and other penalties. The penal justice system has held the driver accountable to his decision making in the moments following this accident.
Then we talked about God. That the whole basis of our Christian practice is that Jesus died for all the sins in the world. In the context of our story today, God throws a big party even for the ones who least deserve it.
Will pressed on this idea saying something like, “Forgiveness is even for those who are so bad that they run someone over and drive away?”
I said to Will that Jesus didn’t seem to make any carve-outs or caveats for extra bad people. [In the week following this sermon, I learned from someone in the congregation more about the background of the driver. This person was panicked, and made bad decisions out of fear. If I could preach this again, I wouldn’t categorize him as “extra bad” because he is not. His situation was incredibly stressful and he made wrong choices in the moment, but this does not ultimately make him a bad person.]
Will then said, “So, God would want me to forgive the driver too…?”
We stood for a moment in silence. And then Will said something incredible, something scandalous, something that showed me that the abundant grace and mercy that Jesus talks about in this parable today is revealing itself right here within our midst through the members of our church, through the young people of our church. Will said:
“I forgive him."
Praise be to God.
Amen.
Rev. Ryan Heckman | Fourth Sunday in Lent | March 30, 2025
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