“The True Inheritance”
Luke 15:11-32
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/6/16
Most of us can
find ourselves somewhere in this story.
Maybe we have
been the younger son – so incurably restless that we cannot see how deeply it hurts
those who love us when we abduct ourselves from their lives.
Maybe we know
how it feels to hit bottom. Vanity and pride choke us mercilessly. We feel life
slipping away. And just before losing consciousness, humility slips up behind us,
reaches around us, and with a strength that arrogance cannot muster, revives us
with a kind of spiritual Heimlich. From that point, life becomes precious and
new, so much so, perhaps, that we may risk everything to reconcile with those we
left.
Maybe we know
how it feels to be welcomed back, too – the breath-taking gratitude and relief.
It can be a bittersweet thing, though. Sometimes, it takes the experience of
being forgiven to realize fully all the pain we caused, and to grieve all that
we lost that can never be regained.
Maybe we have
known the father’s heart, as well – the parent who has done his or her
imperfect best for those who call us Father or Mother by no choice of their own
– nor of ours, conceivably. Urges and intentions fight for balance in this
life.
To feel the father’s heart is to
know the terrifying joys of Love. Our prayers for children to leave and to
stay, our prayers for them to be ready for the cruelties of this world with
both realism and optimism, these prayers shred our hearts. We pray and love,
but to hear our flesh and blood wish us dead, demand their due, and turn their
backs – we cannot prepare for that.
When they
return, if indeed they do, we may see on their faces details of stories they
will never tell. Still, in our throats there rises that same lump we felt when
they were born. Like the father in Jesus’ parable, we will almost surely brave
the hail of death-sentence stones aimed at the one who shamed and disowned us.
He has now returned, and we are helpless to offer anything but welcome.
Surely, there
is something of the older brother in us, too. So dependable and responsible as
to feel trapped. So focused on our righteousness that we indignantly judge
everyone else against ourselves.
You may feel none
of this, or more than I describe. But perhaps the thing that draws us into this parable
is not how true the story reads, but the fact that it does not end. The
conclusion of the parable is simply the beginning of a story Jesus does not
tell. It is up to each reader to enter this parable and to write entirely new
chapters. The story is an invitation to follow the Storyteller’s heart into a
new way of life.
Let’s imagine a continuation to the
story. The two brothers come together several days, maybe years, after the
younger’s return. They meet at night, beneath the same stars that guide Abraham
and Moses, and beneath which David and Elijah learn painful lessons of patience
and wisdom.
After a long, tense silence, the
younger brother says, “I know
you’re angry at me, and I don’t blame you.”
The older brother gives those words time to hang and drift
like a mist in the cold night air.
“You know…Dad…he wept for days after you disappeared. And
about a month later, we were in the fields one day. We’d stopped to rest, and
he asked me, ‘Why? Why would your brother want me dead?’
“I hoped you’d return, but only so I
could kill you,” says the older. “But when you did, and when the old man
welcomed you back, I got furious at both of you. Then with myself.”
“Why are you mad at yourself?” the younger asks.
“Because I’ve realized that long ago, and in my own
cowardly way, I left, too.”
“How do you mean?”
“Do you remember when we were kids,” says
the older, “and Dad had just begun to let us sit out with the flock at night?”
“Yeah,” chuckles the younger, “We used
to fight half the night about who got to hold the sling and who had to carry
the rocks.”
“Mm-hm. And do you remember when I
began to ask to take night watch by myself?”
“And Dad wouldn’t let you. But you
didn’t demand your inheritance and leave.”
“No,” says the older. “I didn’t do
that, but in my own pig-headed way, I did leave. When Dad told me that I was
not ready, I set out to prove that I was. I learned the animals. I learned the
land, and what the animals could and couldn’t eat. I learned how to handle
myself at the market, how to buy and sell for the best price. I learned the
Torah. Even now I know it better than he does.”
“And these are bad things?” says the younger.
On the eastern horizon, dawn begins to break. The older
brother inhales a deep breath of new morning air and says, “Don’t you see? I
did all that stuff just to impress him. I did it to earn what was already mine.
I’ve wasted half my life being as impatient as you. And it has all but killed
me.”
The younger brother thinks back to that
lonely moment in that squalid hog lot when he had realized things his brother is
realizing now.
“When you got back,” says the older, “Dad pleaded with me
to join the party. And do you know what I said? I said, ‘Look, for all these
years I have been working like a slave for you.’ I said that, ‘like a slave.’ In
my own home. I got so mad I couldn’t stand the sight of either of you.
“Then Dad looked at me and said, ‘Son, you are always with
me, and all that is mine is yours.’”
“And it is,” says the younger gravely. “All
mine is gone.”
The older brother pauses like a
shepherd facing his first wolf.
“Then,” he says, “Dad told me, ‘We have to celebrate. There
is no more death between your brother and us. What was lost has been found!’”
As the weight of forgiveness settles on
his shoulders, the younger brother begins to sob. Sometimes, guilt can be so
much easier to carry.
“We’ve both been dead and gone,” says
the older. “But somehow, Dad has made us both alive again. There is nothing of
his – or mine that cannot be yours as well.”
That wise, long-suffering father – he
does not forgive for his sake alone. He forgives to prepare ground for a future
he desires for his sons and for their community, a future they must learn to
desire, as well.
Forgiveness is more than some praiseworthy act. It is a
grateful and generous blessing, a prayer for days to come.
Forgiveness is the true inheritance that keeps the story alive.
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