Well, another sermon on the prodigal son. Ho hum. It’s like the joke about the preacher who dreamed he was preaching - and when he woke up, he was. The story is so old, so familiar.

But these parables of Jesus are always sneaky. Clarence Jordan said a parable is like a Trojan Horse; it looks harmless, you let it in, and then - Bam! It’s got you. How might this one get us?

Somehow the image of the pigsty feels ugly but appropriate. We plod about in somewhat of a bovine culture, this consumer-centered economy that we inhabit, appetites gone haywire, totally undiscriminating. Advertisers say to us, “You are a bundle of appetites, and not to satisfy even one is risky business.”

And yet: Is our problem simply appetites run amok? Is this parable just a warning to all ne’er-do-wells, to all would-be hedonists? Turn! Repent before you wind up in the pigsty!

Once, when some reporters were asking Prince Charles about the prospect of his ascending to the throne of England, he stopped the conversation cold. He said to them, “Gentlemen, you are speaking of the death of my mother.”

The younger son in today’s story has no such sense of respect or even affection for his father. To demand his inheritance is really to wish his father dead. It is both insult and injury to his father and to the whole family.

You may have heard that the boy repented, that he had some profound religious experience in the pigsty, when it says, “he came to himself.” That’s possible. But I think this is probably to overrate the young man. He is simply hungry. He seems to be thinking of one person only: himself.

It sounds to me like he hatches a rather cynical plan to go home and use his father again, rehearsing the lines he thinks will hook his father and allow him to manipulate him again. So I think that if there is any real change in the boy it comes not in the pigsty, but when he finds himself surprisingly swept off his feet by his father before he even gets a chance to repent, either for show or for real.

He can’t even get a word of his rehearsed speech in before his father swoops him up into the party. That’s when I think the change in him must come, because I think it’s in the light of true love that we truly perceive the darkness and unsatisfied hunger in our souls.

St. Jerome wrote: “The son couldn’t be satisfied, because pleasure always creates its own hunger.” So many choices, so much to titillate, but nothing really satisfies. We may be like the king of whom Ovid wrote, “In the midst of banquets he searched for a meal.”

C. S. Lewis, in an eloquent sermon, “The Weight of Glory,” said that the problem isn’t that our desires are too strong, but they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased. We settle for mere trifles like money, sex, glory, when God wants to give us true wealth, genuine intimacy. We were not made for the far country, however enticing it may be. We aren’t pigs. We are sons and daughters, and we need not settle for less.

Jesus says the father ran. Nowadays, in our culture, running is regarded as cool, but in Jesus’ time and place men just didn’t run; running was a sure sign that you had lost all dignity. But this father, who lets himself be taken advantage of, cares more for his son than for his own dignity. He could have given the boy a thrashing, required heavy penance, sackcloth and ashes, fasting. But he ran.

Jesus tells this as a healing story, I think. Your craving can be satisfied. Your seeking is over. God, even now, is running toward you, lifting you, twirling you, hugging you, saying “I love you.” God is, metaphorically speaking, our Father. God is Father to the Fatherless. He runs, he throws a party. He reaches out to that older brother, too.

Abraham Lincoln was once asked what he would do with the Confederates when the Civil War was over. He said, “I will treat them as if they had never gone away.” There’s that loving Father!

Of course, there will always be some carpetbagger in any such circumstance, some spoilsport to leap into the breach to say, “He’s eaten his cake, shall he have it too?” A much wiser response comes in the wonderful book, Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.

Her protagonist is an elderly minister who has married late in life and has a son. In his waning years, he writes a treasure trove of letters to this infant son he knows he will not live to see grow up, so that he will have the benefit of some of his father’s experience.

Drawing on this parable, he writes: “As I have told you, I myself was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father’s house - even when his father did, a fact which surely puts my credentials beyond all challenge. I am one of those righteous for whom the rejoicing in heaven will be comparatively restrained. And that’s all right. There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality.”

And he concludes, “It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.”

Wisdom is when we recognize the empty place inside us for what it is. Kierkegaard called it “the God-shaped hole.” The gnawing hollowness we feel is God calling us home – not home, as in death, but home as in living life fully, living intimately aware of our connection with God.

We may, of course, fret about the young man’s sincerity, and our own. Too often we worry about purity of motive and depth of feeling when the critical thing is simply what we do, or whether, so to speak, we go home or remain lost.

In the parable, the turning toward home was all it really took. In our lives, what it takes is the turning toward God’s love, which always awaits us.

Did the father do the math on what his younger son had cost him? No. This is not a parable about prudence or wariness. One might wonder why this story is commonly called, “The Prodigal Son.” It might better be named after “The Prodigal Father,” if “prodigal” really means recklessly extravagant.

In describing a giddy, welcoming joy in God’s heart, Jesus describes his own joy in the fellowship of sinners. He is our elder brother and he delights to be at our party, for we are the sinners and the tax collectors, symbolized by the younger brother. And yet we are the resentful older brother, too. Can we let ourselves be received and honored at the party, and can we bring ourselves to attend?

One last story: In a small South American village, a little girl suddenly claimed that God had spoken to her. She went to her priest, who tried to convince her that this was a product of her imagination. While she was with him, the girl heard the voice of God again. Not knowing how to handle it, the priest called his Bishop.

The Bishop summoned the girl to his office. She was terrified but still convinced that she had heard the voice of God. The Bishop asked her about her conversations with God, and she told him about them. He then thought to prove to her that she wasn’t hearing the voice of God, and said to her “The next time you speak to God, ask him what was the last sin the Bishop committed.”

A few days later the girl came back to the Bishop’s office. He asked, “Have you spoken to God?” She replied , “Yes.” “Did you ask about my last sin?” She said “Yes.” “What did God say?” the Bishop asked. She answered, “God’s forgotten it.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we truly believed that our mistakes are forgotten as soon as we’ve repented of them, that is, turned away from them and back to God. There is the opportunity for newness. There is the faith that the Still Speaking God is not finished with us yet.

“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time,” wrote T. S. Eliot. That’s the journey we’re on, the journey of Lent, the journey to wholeness, new life, and joy. Amen.