Though we won’t do a show of hands, I am willing to bet that of Jesus’ roughly 40 parables, this one is the favorite for at least half of us here today. Small wonder! Some have called this tale of The Prodigal Son and his forgiving father “the Gospel in miniature,” a little story that contains the essence of the greatest mystery of all - the unfathomable love of God that welcomes our wayward race, the grace on which the Christian faith, not to mention every life in the universe, rests.

So this is a beloved story…but it’s also a parable, and as you may recall from last week, according to an Irish scholar named John Dominic Crossan, you know you’ve heard a parable when you walk off scratching your head, saying “I have no idea what he meant by that. But I’m quite sure I didn’t like it!” And we do like the tale of the Prodigal Son - could that be in part because there just isn’t much offensive or uncomfortable in it? After all, it’s a story that promises a happy comeback and a big party, and if there’s anybody in the world who loves comebacks and parties, it’s we Americans. Hugh Grant came back. Tiger Woods is roaring back. Marion Barry always comes back. It’s the American way. So however heart-rending the lost son’s practiced contrition speech is, we can already hear the band tuning up for a party.

Maybe this is just one of those happy parables, without a hard edge to it. (Maybe it’s the only one?) Who wouldn’t like to hear the message: “Listen, son, however much you have messed things up, you can always, always come back. With your Father, forgiveness is waiting, along with a ring and a fatted calf!” And that happens to be true, you know. Great is the rejoicing in the Kingdom of Heaven when one sinner repents of her ways!

But before congratulate ourselves on our respective party invitations, we might do well to recall that parables are the HAZMAT scenes of the Gospels, fun-house mirrors that Jesus dares us to peer into, to stare and frown at, and maybe begin to ask: “is that really what the world looks like?” One way, then, to give the Prodigal Son a fair hearing is to consider why Jesus first spoke it and to whom. We know exactly the answer to these questions, found in the first three verses of Luke 15: Jesus is addressing the Pharisees, these experts in the Law of Moses who are deeply devoted to living morally-upright, godly lives. This group of religious heavyweights has observed with disgust and increasing moral outrage the indecent company Jesus has been keeping. For all Jewish people, and for the Pharisees in particular, your table habits, how you ate and with whom, showed the person you really were. Clean food, clean plates, clean hands – these things were essential to having a clean heart. We might say, “you are what you eat,” but they would have said: “you become one of those with whom you eat.” To these learned men, Jesus had lost all sense of propriety and decency, all sense of patriotism and tradition.

And when you think about it, on the subject of table manners, Jesus’ story here is suspended in a larger parable, one so big it might be missed - namely, his own ministry. Jesus could have built a team of deeply religious, devoted followers, people of impeccable moral character. Instead, we know he called, seemingly at random, some fishermen, like the headstrong but not particularly quick-brained Peter, and also James and John, guys who would seem quite at home in a Black Hills bar preparing to whack someone over the head with a pool cue. Jesus ate regularly with Nathaniel, a man so closed-minded he expected “nothing good to come out of Nazareth,” and also those like James the Less and Bartholomew, who so undistinguished themselves that we know nothing about them but their names. Round out this dream team with a tax collector - a traitor who had sold out his own people to the enemy for money - and a fellow who was in league with a terrorist group known for walking up in a crowd and stabbing tax collectors (and others they saw as collaborators) through the heart, and then walking away. Frankly, calling Matthew the Publican and Simon the Zealot to come be fellow disciples is like inviting Keith Olbermann and Glen Beck to go on a three-year campout together and just somehow hoping for the best. And last, there was Judas Iscariot, whose hand was also on Jesus’ table.

These are the likes of those with whom Jesus ate - people who did indecent, even traitorous things, people who led messy lives, those who did not even try to live up to religious standards and rules. Add to the mix some prostitutes, a few more tax collectors, and you’ll see why the Pharisees were enraged by the company Jesus kept. That’s the exact context of Jesus telling his extended story about what it is like to recover things that were lost – this is his answer to the Pharisees’ righteous anger.

So here’s the weird thing: Jesus, who has laid a HUGE table to bring together his baker’s-oddball-dozen Disciples, still can’t seem to find a table big enough to bring together the Pharisees and those they detest as sinners. I think this is why Jesus tells a story about a man who can’t seem to get his two sons at the same table, either. One of his sons is so ashamed, so heart-sick at his shameful behavior that he believes he’s banished from his father’s table. His older brother is so soaked in self-righteous indignation, so puffed up with a sense of entitlement, that he refuses even to be in the same room with his younger brother.

We see that clearly, both sons want some kind of relationship with their father. They have that in common. But what they also share is a common mistake: they believe they do not have to be in relationship with each other to live with their loving father. And that is simply not true; their father has one house. So dad prepares a meal, a party, really. Yes, it looks like it’s for the younger son, but in fact it’s a party to which both sons are explicitly invited. In this way the father’s plan seems to be to let them figure out just what to make of each other.

How does his plan turn out? Well, the younger brother is probably not going to object: he’s just happy to be under his dad’s roof again. The older brother has a tougher choice to make. He can stand outside, secure in the feeling that at least he’s right, or he can enter the house and take his place at the table. He suggests to his father that he’d rather be right than be loving, refusing like Cain to acknowledge any need to be in relationship to his brother. Observe: he says “that son of yours,” not “my brother.” His father offers gentle correction, “Son, you are always with me…but…this brother of yours…was lost and has been found” (15:31-32), but if the older son catches it, we don’t know. Luke shares with us a story that Jesus clearly left open-ended: we know the table has been set for the whole family. What we don’t know is if they can manage to sit down together.

So maybe the kink in this story that makes it a parable, a fun-house mirror offering a glimpse of God’s Kingdom, is this: we have to abandon the idea that we can love God and still despise each other. That’s just not the way our Father has appointed for us. To call the Lord God “Abba,” our Father, means working things out with our brothers and sisters in Christ. (Turns out, we really are forgiven our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us!) To view someone else, or some other group of people, with contempt, to refuse to accept that we who love God are all bound together no matter how wrong somebody else is, means declaring that we who have been forgiven so much just don’t have it in us to be grateful. So yes, it feels good to believe you’re right. But it is a terrible thing to stand outside the window while God throws a party. And because there are seats for all of us, there’s a seat for each of us - at a celebration that begins and ends with joy.

Thanks be to God.