This is my final blog post related to Henry Nowen’s wonderful book, The Return of the Prodigal Son. If you have been reading my blog for the past month or so, you know that I have been spending time with Nowan’s book and its deep dive into Rembrandt’s painting–and the parable itself. I have really appreciated how he locates himself in the various characters of the parable and how that spiritual imagination leads him into a deeper relationship with God. Once again, I highly recommend it.
There are three final things I want to lift up from the book. The first comes in the chapter titled “The Elder Son’s Return,” which begins with the verse where Luke tells us that the elder son is angry and resentful about the party being thrown for his dissolute younger brother, and will not return to the house and join the party.
As Nowan reflects on the elder son, identifying with him, he says “I guess that all of us will someday have to deal with the elder son or the elder daughter in us. The question before us is simply: What can we do to make the return possible?” Not the return of the younger son, but our return, the return of the one who has been there all along: the good child, the responsible one, the one who makes sacrifices, the one who does the right thing. Do you recognize yourself?
In response to this question Nowan asks himself, he identifies two things that are necessary: trust and gratitude. He defines this trust as “that deep inner conviction that the Father wants me home. As long as I doubt that I am worth finding and put myself down as less loved than my younger brothers and sisters, I cannot be found.” We have to trust that we are beloved and wanted just as we are; our place at home is given to us freely and fully–we do not have to earn it.
He then goes on to define gratitude as a spiritual discipline: “the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy. Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice…There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude because God has appeared in my darkness and urged me to come home.” I think the character of the elder brother in this parable is very revealing, because it shows us so vividly how much we love to cling to our resentment–the fruit of our self-righteousness. The disciple of gratitude helps us practice letting those feelings go.
The character of the father is the last character in the parable Nowan explores. In one of these chapters, Nowan includes a very interesting interpretation of one of my very favorite parables, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. In that parable, as you remember, God pays all of the workers the same amount at the end of the day, paying those who worked only one hour as much as those who did a full day’s work in the heat.
This parable challenges our traditional notion of fairness, which is why I love it, but Nowan reads it through the lens of the non-competitive love we see from the father in the parable of the prodigal son. Here’s the interpretation Nowan suggests:
It hadn’t previously occurred to me that the land owner might have wanted the workers of the early hours to rejoice in his generosity to the latecomers. It never crossed my mind that he might have acted on the supposition that those who had worked in the vineyard the whole day would be deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to do work for their boss, and even more grateful to see what a generous man he is…God is so naïve as to think that there would be great rejoicing when all those who spent time in [God’s] vineyard, whether a short time or a long time, were given the same attention. Indeed, [God] was so naïve as to expect that they would all be so happy to be in [God’s] presence that comparing themselves with each other wouldn’t even occur to them
As long as I keep looking at God as a landowner, as a father who wants to get the most out of me for the least cost, I cannot but become jealous, bitter and resentful toward my fellow workers or my brothers and sisters. But if I am able to look at the world with the eyes of God’s love and discover that God’s vision is not that of a stereotypical landowner or patriarch, but rather that of an all-giving and forgiving father who does not measure out his love to his children according to how well they behave, then I quickly see that my only true response can be deep gratitude.
In all the times I have read, meditated on, and preached that parable, that idea had never occurred to me, either, because I could not imagine such a world–one where I would happy for someone who received the same pay as me for doing less work. That is my “elder daughter” resentment coming out, the one who believes all good things must be earned.
One more point: are you still with me? In the conclusion, Nowan asks the question as to how we ourselves can embody a truly compassionate “parenthood”–one that is modeled by the father in the parable–and he identifies three ways: grief, forgiveness, and generosity. The practice of grief calls me to “allow the sins of the world–my own included–to pierce my heart and make me shed tears, many tears, for them. There is no compassion without many tears. This grieving is praying.”
The second way that leads to this spiritual parenthood is forgiveness. This is, of course, a core Christian practice, and also one of the most difficult. Nowan describes forgiveness as a “stepping over:” stepping over my self-justifications that allow me to talk myself out of forgiveness, and stepping over “the wounded part of my heart that feels hurt and wronged and that wants to stay in control and put a few conditions between me and the one who I am asked to forgive.”
Finally, generosity. The generosity that the father shows in the parable is not a gift of wealth, but the giving of self; it is the gift of one’s care, attention, energy and time [and money, too], even to the ones who have not given those things to me. Generosity, Nowan says, “creates the family it believes in.”
Like all of Jesus’ parables, the parable of the prodigal son has much to teach us about who we are in relationship to others, to God and to ourselves. Nowan draws out these lessons gently, poetically, and meaningfully.
Happy Lutheran 