Jesus Holds Up A Mirror--April 1, 2025
"Then Jesus said, ‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything...." (Luke 15:11-16)
What if this weren't just a fictional fable about a hypothetical father with hypothetical sons? What if this were our story--the autobiography of the people of God--and Jesus was simply holding mirror up for our faces in it?
I raise the question because often we treat Jesus' parables as just a religious version of Aesop's fables: that they are generic stories with timeless lessons that aren't really about real people, or at least about particular people. And as long as we hear them as general rules, rather than told with you and me in mind, we can always nod our heads in agreement at Jesus' wisdom and still refuse to acknowledge that they have anything to do with us. The greedy man who builds bigger barns and then finds out he's going to shuffle off this mortal coil before the day is out? That's not about ME--that's about OTHER people, really and truly greedy people, so I can safely ignore it! The one about the man laying in the roadside passed by a priest and a Levite before he gets any help from an alien enemy from Samaria? Well, that doesn't apply to ME, since I'm not a priest or a Levite, and I've mistreated a person from Samaria before, either (because I've never met one). See how it works? When we treat Jesus' parables as generic morality plays, we can find ways to let ourselves off the hook for taking them to heart. They're not about US--they're always about some other people, somewhere else, or maybe just hypothetical people who don't exist at all.
Ah, but when Jesus first told this parable, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, his audience of Judeans who prided themselves on being descendants of old Jacob/Israel, son of Isaac, and grandson of Abraham himself, they saw their reflections in the opening sentence. "There was a man with two sons" feels like a shot across the bow right from the get-go, because any Israelite worth his salt knew the story of their patriarch Jacob, who eventually became Israel, and how he was the younger of two sons who was determined to steal the family inheritance and who ran off to a far country to live with his uncle for a couple of decades, leaving behind a furious older brother Esau and a bewildered and brokenhearted father. When Jesus goes on in his own story and says that the younger brother in his parable asks dad for his share of the inheritance (forcing dad to mortgage the property, and basically sending the message, "I'd rather just have the money I would get when you die, and then I'll be on my way" to dear old dad), these details hit close to home. Everyone in Jesus' audience heard echoes of their own national and cultural identity. Everyone who grew up in Jewish culture in the first century knew the stories of their scheming wayward ancestor Jacob, and they knew that the family line had often fallen back into that same pattern over the generations and centuries.
The descendants of the same Jacob/Israel found themselves turning away from God and chasing after wealth and success from pagan gods and pagan empires around them. And then after enough time, when God allowed them to be taken captive into exile in Babylon, the descendants of Jacob found themselves rather like Jesus' lost son in the story: alone in a far country, wondering whether he could ever come home, and without other help in the world. All of that is to say, the Jewish listeners in Jesus' first audience for this parable would have heard their own story in his. And they would have been reminded of all the times that they and their ancestors had been the wayward ones, the willful wanderers, the ungrateful children who took for granted the inheritance that was meant to be a gift, and who then found themselves in deep trouble in the world. Everybody who heard Jesus' story would have realized he was holding up a mirror and compelling them to see their own faces in the son who went "into the far country." And it would have forced them, at least if they were honest, to see that they had all at some point or another been the ones who turned from God and got themselves lost.
That, of course, is the first step in Jesus' plan. He's not just trying to make people feel bad about themselves or pile guilt onto their shoulders just for the sake of burdening them. But since, as we saw yesterday, this story is prompted by self-righteous Respectable Religious people who are upset that Jesus welcomes sinners and includes sell-outs like the tax collectors to his table, the first thing Jesus needs to get them to realize is that they are not in a position to condemn the people on Jesus' guest list. It is easy, after all, to look down on somebody if you believe that you are morally upright and without fault. Then you can trot out the old lines like, "Well, I never had this problem that THEY have..." or "Well, I did things the RIGHT way..." and condemn whoever doesn't measure up to the standard you imagine yourself to have already cleared. But Jesus sees that kind of spiritual snobbery from a mile away. And in a manner of speaking, he sets a trap that the Respectable Religious Crowd walk right into. Jesus tells a story that forces them to see that they belong to a long line of lost children, wandering schemers, and sinners who get stranded far from home. Jesus is laying the groundwork for compelling them to see that they are only different from the "tax collectors and sinners" who are at Jesus' table in the particular ways they have each gotten themselves lost and in trouble. But they are all pitiful prodigals, whether the Pharisees and scribes listening, or the not-good-enoughs who were welcomed at Jesus table. They are all like the exiles who found themselves in the far country of Babylon, and they are all like Jacob before that--the wandering and lost son who ended up far from home, too. Jesus is yanking the high-horse right out from under them--and from us, too.
We should be aware, too, that Jesus' story will do the same to us, if we have a shred of honesty in us. We can't hear a story about a son who bails out on the father who vulnerably lets himself be rejected and allows his wayward child to walk away without seeing that we've been the lost son before, too. And once we see that, we will have to admit that we've lost the right to condemn somebody else for getting themselves lost, too. Jesus is intent on holding up the mirror to our faces as well, not just his first-century listeners. He won't let us pretend we are pious and pure while we look down on the ones who actually respond to Jesus' welcome. Jesus won't let us be obstacles keeping other people from his company because we don't think they are "worthy." He compels us to see we are lost sons and daughters, too, and the only way any of us find a spot at the dinner party of grace is when we quit thinking we have earned it by our good behavior.
How will that change the way we interact with people today? Who might we have been trying to elbow out of Jesus' company before? Where have we been propping ourselves up and pushing others down to make ourselves feel like we've earned God's favor? And who might Jesus be daring you to invite, rather than to shun, when we gather at Jesus' table on Sunday?
What might happen when Jesus holds up a mirror in this story so that we can see our faces in the face of the wandering son?
Lord Jesus, give us the courage to see the truth about ourselves so that we can allow your grace to do its work on us all.
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