The View from the Pigpen

In Nomine Iesu
St. Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
March 31, 2019
Lent 4C

Dear Saints of Our Savior~

It’s too bad it’s not Fathers’ Day today. For of all the fathers in the Bible, there’s none quite so amazing as the waiting father. It is the waiting father who stands at the heart and center of the parable we heard from Jesus today. This father endures everything—including dishonor, disgrace, mistreatment, and shame—all at the hands of his children. And yet this father never stops hoping, never stops enduring, never stops loving his wayward sons. He never disowns them. This waiting father rejoices in the return of his sons, is prodigal with his forgiveness, is quick to throw a party, and is outrageously lavish with his grace.

The parable begins with a scandal. The younger son tells the old man to drop dead. By requesting his inheritance early, the unspoken message is: “Dad, I wish you were dead.” Shamefully scandalous words—words that make the Fourth Commandment blush for shame. But incredibly, the father does just what his son requests—drops dead in a legal sense—divides his property between the boys—as should have happened only if he were six feet under.

As you might imagine, it rarely goes well for young men who suddenly inherit large sums of money. The younger son headed to a distant country with his newly acquired wealth and began to squander it in reckless living. And “reckless living” does not mean that he invested in the wrong mutual funds or occasionally forgot to balance his checkbook. No, one wordsmith explains reckless living like this: “He whored with the best of them. He swore with the best of them. He gambled with the best of them. He drank with the best of them.” All that he had been given by grace—the inheritance, a good name, a father’s love—all that he wagered and wasted and tossed out like yesterday’s garbage.

Hard times set in for the boy. Destitute and dizzy with hunger, the younger son took a job working in a gentile’s pig pen. I’m not sure where the closest hog farm is to Whitefish Bay, and I don’t care to find out. But in my limited exposure to hog farms, I can tell you that there’s little doubt when you’re in the vicinity of one. The smell and the flies are what start to give it away—especially after a rain on a hot afternoon. Working in such a place is about as bad as it gets for a good Jewish boy—for whom pigs were considered unclean in every way. About the time he started longing to eat what the pigs were eating, the young man finally came to his senses.

The pig pen has a way of doing that—of slapping sinners across the face and wakening them from their downward spiral. I’m sure we can all think of times in our own lives when we’ve found ourselves in the pig pen, so to speak—surrounded by a sinful squalor of our own making—far, far away from the forgiving embrace of our heavenly Father.

But this is actually one of the best things about our heavenly Father: He’ll often allow you to wallow in the mess you’ve made for a while, until you come to your senses and repent. Of course, our sinful nature doesn’t much care for this kind of fathering. We’d prefer to have Him swoop in and bail us out of every sinful situation we back ourselves into. In the pigpen you can either rail against your heavenly Father and blame Him for the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, OR you can simply go home to your Father with a repentant heart.

It’s that moment of repentance that you see depicted on the cover of today’s bulletin. The great artist Albrecht Durer shows us the prodigal son in the pigpen. Take a look at that engraving with me. Notice that the son is literally down on one knee with his hands

folded—the posture of repentance. It’s also worth mentioning that the prodigal son bears a striking resemblance to Albrecht Durer himself. Might it be that Durer has placed himself in the place of the prodigal? Don’t we all need to see ourselves there? Notice also that he’s looking off into the distance toward home—toward his father’s house. And doesn’t his father’s house in the distance look remarkably like a church? Don’t we all need to see this place as the Father’s house—the place where repentance leads—the place where we are welcomed and forgiven and embraced?

It’s hard to imagine the prodigal son’s journey back home—what exactly was going through his mind. I have no trouble imagining his journey from home down into the depths of the pig pen. But the journey from the pig pen back home—the journey of repentance—well, that’s a road less travelled. As the boy walked home, he planned what he would say to his father:
Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
Make me like one of your hired men . . . so that I can redeem myself, pay off my debt, and earn back your love which I have squandered.

That little speech is the way we expect the story to go. It’s certainly what Jesus’ hearers expected. They expected the young man to return home on his knees, groveling, begging, pleading with the father for a second chance, and promising to make things right.

But the last thing anyone would have expected is for the father to go running down the road, past the neighbors, to greet his wayward son. The last thing anyone would have expected is for the father to throw his arms around the boy and shower this son with kisses who still reeks of the pigpen. The last thing anyone would have expected would be for the father to listen to the son’s two-sentence confession of sin, but not even allow him to launch into that third sentence about how he was going to make things right by living like one of the servants. No, before he can even get to that, his father places the robe and the ring of sonship on the boy. He gives orders to kill the fattened calf and throw a party for this kid who was dead, but now alive—who was lost, but now is found.

The last thing the religions of this world expect is for God to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The last thing the religions of this world expect is a God who justifies sinners—while they are still sinners. The last thing the religions of this world expect is a God who shows undeserved kindness to sinners for Jesus’ sake.

It’s only once he’s already in the father’s embrace, as the father is kissing him, that the son squeaks out his little confession. And this is terribly important. He never gets to make a deal with dear ol’ dad—never gets to say that line: Make me like one of your hired men. Our God doesn’t make deals. He strikes no bargains. Our God drops dead to save sinners. This is the God who in Jesus Christ dies for His enemies, who seeks and saves the lost, who scans the horizon for sinners returning home so that He can meet them at the gate and gather them up in His embrace.

Like the prodigal son, we too have an older brother. His name is Jesus. He is the Son of God who left His Father’s home to join us in the pigpen of our sin and misery and death. Jesus did what the older brother in the parable did not do. He went out to seek us and find us, to rescue us from the slop of our sin, and bring us back home to the Father. Our older brother, Jesus, laid down His life as a ransom to save us, to buy us back. God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Jesus we might become the righteousness of God. He was executed as our sacred substitute, and reconciled us to the Father.

But before the music swells and the credits start to roll, there’s the matter of the older son, the firstborn son, who behaves like a lot of firstborn sons. He’s the rule-keeper—the serious, stressed-out, straight “A”, religious, voted most likely to succeed son. He can’t believe what a pushover his father is. “Lo, these many years I have served you, never disobeyed, yet you never gave me so much as a goat, let alone the fattened calf. But now this scumbag son of yours comes crawling back home after burning through your money with prostitutes and you roll out the red carpet.” To which the father essentially says, grab a glass and join the party. Your lost, dead brother is alive and found.

And there the parable ends. We don’t know what the older brother ends up doing. The more important question is what will we do? For we have walked in this son’s footsteps too. Will we get angry at the Father’s prodigal grace? Will be become religious, judgmental, looking down our noses at those who can’t seem to get it right, wanting them to be “good” like us before we permit them to join us? OR will we grab a glass and celebrate? Will we learn to laugh out loud at the grace of God who wants all of His children—the rule-keepers and the rebels, the first born and the last born and everybody in between—at His eternal party? Will we come to Communion rejoicing to remember that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them? Will we “get it,” that grace that’s bargained-for and earned and worked-for isn’t grace at all? Will we draw strength each day from the fact that we who were dead in sin will now live forever in Jesus? God grant it for Jesus’ sake.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.