Departures and Arrivals

Leaving Home, Leaving Our Self Behind

The third week before Lent is always the Parable of the Prodigal Son (that is why I’m posting this today). It is often regarded as the crown jewel of The Parables. There are many suggestions that it be named the Parable of the Loving Father, the Parable of the Prodigal Father (who wastes his money on his deadbeat son), the Parable of the Elder Brother, etc. But so far The Prodigal Son is still the name and instantly recognizable even though the other suggestions do reflect parts of the parable that are major themes.

I think “the Prodigal” sticks because who has not been a sinner and tried to repent (to various degrees of success)? Fewer have been an Elder Brother and it’s harder to self-identify as one because wellll, if we’re right, we’re right and it’s hard to find a “sin” in being right and obeying God. Anyway, after sinning (not kinda just), and repenting (kinda), and being right on and off (and getting righter and wronger at different times over different things), my “take” on the parable has changed over the 55 years I’ve been reading it, mostly because I’ve changed. And because I’ve changed, my understanding of the Father has changed.

The obvious reading and most common is the Prodigal sinned against great blessings, realized it, repented, humbly returned home burdened with guilt, and his Father graciously forgave him and welcomed him back. His obedient Elder Brother felt unappreciated and refused to come to the party even though his Father was begging him to come in. (Kind of a definition of self -created hell in the house…)

But in my decades of sinning (not kinda just) and repenting (kinda) I don’t think the “simple, obvious reading” really reflects how we, (at least I…), really sin and repent. And, because I believed my own lies about my real spiritual life, I lost a greater understanding of the truth of the Father’s love and who I am as a child of God.

So, many of my sins are kinda “down the block” or in the alley behind the house sins. Walking distance and home by supper. But, I have been in a “far country”. Like, biblical character far. Far enough to get excommunicated from God’s house. And it was the right thing to do because I wasn’t cast out of the house, I had left it. They didn’t send me packing, they just acknowledged I had moved away on my own volition and let everyone in the house know I wasn’t there anymore.

And this is where it gets complicated.

Did I repent? Well, that depends on what you mean. Did I feel guilty? Hell yes. Was I sorry? Well, yeah, kinda but thirty two years later not sorry enough for the things I should have been sorry for. Did I change my behavior? Yeah, I never did that sin again… physically. Did I give up my passions? (The Orthodox word for all the internal motives, weaknesses, character flaws, obsessions, pride, vanity, falsehood, manipulation, fleshly and ego desires and fake piety). Yes, but no. I knew (kinda) some of them that led to my sin, but I didn’t overcome them because it would take decades for me to even know what some of them are and how I live in them and what it really takes to suppress or get rid of them. So I knew that even though I knew they were the “reasons” for my sin, I also knew they were still alive and well and influencing everything I did, including how I repented.

Which now brings me to the Prodigal Son in the far country.

The parable says, “he came to himself”. Our colloquialism is “he came to his senses” so we basically identify that as his “moment of repentance”, his self-realization and change of direction toward home. The Greek says, “he arrived at himself”. He arrived at his inner house, the home within his heart that influenced and informed everything he did in his life up to now that got him in the far country, and would also inform and influence his plan to get out of it.

What did he arrive at in himself? The same person that left the Father's house: Self-interested, manipulative, and clueless about his Father. And those things would direct his plan to get out of the mess he got himself into. He changed… he stopped feeding pigs and picking up whores (maybe not totally voluntary but because of spent resources). He knew he needed to preserve himself and the only way he knew to do that was to go back to some semblance of his old life. Bad breath is better than no breath at all. He asked himself, “What’s my plan?” And himself, his only self he knew, made one:

"I'm starving. Dad has food. If I grovel in guilt and shame I know I'll at least get a room and 3 squares. He's a soft touch, I've seen him forgive a hell of a lot of his servants... I mean, he gave me my inheritance up front and didn't hassle me about what I was going to do with it. I can probably make it there if I put in some effort because I’ll look better than the slacker servants and I know the ropes."

The Prodigal set toward home. He hadn’t even arrived at the end of the driveway and his definition of his true self ran to meet him. Who he really is was enveloped in his Father’s arms and being washed by his Father’s tears before his old "false self"could utter a word of his well-crafted, rehearsed, humble elevator speech. Even then, even encountering who he really is, a son, in his Father’s heart, his old self still defaulted to the only way he knew how to “be himself”: he tries to begin his speech but his Father cut him off, he didn’t get a chance to finish it because his Father was yelling for a ring, a robe and a party. His Father did not respond to nor acknowledge a word he said, nor did He ask for an accounting or confession. He just threw a feast for the ages unto ages.

The Prodigal found his real "true self" in relationship to his Father's true love for him just for being his son, not for the quality and depth of his personal realizations, new moral character, negotiations, self-assessments, shame, guilt, or bargains. He was always loved for who he is even in the far country.

Sometimes we miss the point of the embrace of the Prodigal a long way off on the road: We don't need to manufacture feelings of failure, put it on public display and try to spiritually hype it up within ourselves so we can feel more spiritual or close to God. We have the false notion that we must approach God with a pious self-awareness of what a sinner and how pitiful we are and if we can feel that, God sees it, and that assures us of His love. In a sense we are more dependent on OUR sense of and self-definition of what repentance looks and feels like to be forgiven than we are on the love of God. If we read the Gospels and see who gets forgiven, dined with, healed, raised from the dead, it’s a lot of people who are desperately going out on a limb for a glimmer of hope as a last ditch chance Jesus is for real. There’s not much that looks like the “pious true repentance” we try to engineer.

For we who don’t sin so bad, as the Elder Brother thought, the love of the Father does not depend on our self-awareness of our "goodness", our sticking close to home, being responsible with our blessings, our obedience, the correctness of our service, doing our duty and the hard work. Home is not a place we buy or keep as a reward for our service to our Father. It is home because of who we are. Both sons had the fatted calf. The Prodigal in the far country still had one in his Father’s field. The Elder brother had his in the same field. It was not a reward because neither “earned” it.

You see, both got the Father wrong: This is not a "morality tale" about the superiority of the Younger Brother's coming to himself vs. the Elder Brother's judgmentalism and self-righteousness. They were both self-defined, self-centered and deluded. Both thought their home and assurance of being allowed in their Father's house was based on a commerce with God, and the currency was hard work, getting it right, guilt, shame and groveling.

But the tale is about love: God's "commerce" is not an exchange of our stuff for His (or Him), nor is it His RESPONSE to what we bring to Him. He IS love, He doesn't respond to us in love.

The Father's love is just Him being a Father to His children. Fathers sometimes just sit with us in His home. Sometimes Fathers run to us to welcome us home. And his driveway is really long, and he has good eyesight and strong legs. In either case we find our true self only in the truth of His love for us, his children.

Illustration by: Grace Carol Bomer