"The Prodigal Son" | Shana McCauley | March 30, 2025

So, I got to tell you—I struggle with this parable.

I am a good girl. I do what I'm supposed to. I am clergy, for crying out loud.

I was an honors student. I graduated with honors, right?

I did all the things I was supposed to.

I was grounded one time in my childhood. You can—we'll talk later if you want to know. It's really boring.

But, um, I followed the rules.

And so, when I read this parable, I am so irritated.

It is not fair.

So, here it is: Jesus is traveling with all of these folks.

He's traveling with the kind of people that you imagine he's going to travel with—so, you know, the disciples, and, um, the people who are curious, and the people who need healing, and also with the religious elite, and also with the degenerates.

And when we say, when we read it as sinners and outcasts, or sinners and the other word that's there that I can't remember at the moment—what we think of is sort of, I think, that rock and roll, like Elvis, you know—sinners.

But really, what we're talking about in that time are the sort of people that would make you clutch your purse.

These are the people who shook people down.

They took advantage of people.

The tax collectors—that's the other one.

Those folks stole from people.

They were really the scary type that we would be very uncomfortable around—probably even today.

And so, the religious elite look at this group of people, and they're like, "What is the deal? I mean, some of these folks, all right, but these guys? Really? Like, he's eating dinner with these people?"

And they're really uncomfortable, right?

This doesn't make any sense in their world.

And Jesus catches on.

And Jesus says, "Hold on."

And so, he tells this parable.

There are two sons, and one son says to Dad, the younger son says to Dad, "Give me my half now."

In some ways, this is absolutely not done.

This is not done at the time.

It's not done now.

In some ways, at the time, it's sort of wishing your dad dead, right?

So, "Give me my half, and I will take my half."

And so, the dad does.

And the young son takes his stuff, and he goes.

And he does all kinds of things. "Dissolute living" is what it says.

He goes and squanders his birthright.

And it's maybe okay until a famine comes on the land.

And then a famine comes on the land, and he has nothing.

And he is starving.

And he goes and he gets a job working with pigs— which, in the ancient world, is the worst.

Pigs are unclean.

There's a ritual pro— like, this is gross, gross stuff.

And he goes and he gets this job with the pigs, and he's still starving.

And he looks at the pig slop and he thinks, "Man, I would eat this. I'm so hungry."

And then, as he's reflecting, he thinks, "You know, even my dad's servant had enough to eat."

And he thinks, "You know, I'm going to go home, and I'm going to apologize, and I'm going to throw myself on my dad's mercy. Please, please, let me just be a slave in your house. I will work with the pigs. Just let me have enough to eat."

Can you imagine how he was feeling as he was deciding to do this?

This awful thing where he has lost half of his dad's everything, and now he's going to go home.

So, we don't get intonation, we don't get tone, so we don't get to know if he's going home sad or if he's going home scared.

And my guess is that he's going home with both.

And as he comes up over the top of the hill, his dad sees him coming and doesn't need anything from him.

His dad goes running out, and almost before he can apologize, his dad is kissing him and crying and hugging him and so glad that he's back.

And he calls for the best robe to be brought out and a ring and for sandals.

This, in Jesus's time, would have been would have made sense to them in a way that we don't necessarily hear it.

But to bring him a ring is to give—make him an heir.

Um, to give him sandals means that slaves were barefoot, and so he's giving him shoes to say, "You're not a slave. You are mine. You are my son," right?

And so, he has the servants kill the fatted calf, and they throw a great party for the son who is back—the prodigal son.

And the older son, having worked all day, comes home and sees that there is dancing and there's music.

And he calls someone over and he says, "Hey, what's going on in there?"

And the servant says, "Your brother's home."

Or maybe, "Your brother's home," right?

I mean, who knows—who knows?

"Your brother's home, and your dad's throwing a party."

And the older brother is so mad that he won't go in.

But Dad knows that he's there, and Dad goes out and says, "Come in, come in."

And he says, "Not doing it."

And Dad says, "Listen, everything you were owed— everything you were owed— you have. And you have been with me the entire time, and I love you.

"And I'm so glad that you are here.

"And your brother was gone.

"Your brother was dead, and he is back.

"And I have to celebrate."

And the older brother says, "You have never even killed a goat for me and my friends to have a party."

And the dad says, "For you, you have everything. And my son is back, and for him, I'm going to throw a party."

And we don't get to know what happens next.

We don't get to know the next chapter or how the brothers come back together or how the mother reacts in all of this.

There's lots and lots of fan fiction on what other stories there might be here.

And I think we can all imagine ourselves into this story somewhere.

Obviously, I am the older brother in this story.

But these folks are— this is the story that Jesus tells when there are all these people, all these different kinds of people.

Because when we believe ourselves to be the good kids—the good people—it's easy to judge those who don't deserve it.

Sometimes, when we see the people who have run away or have lived dissolute lives, we think that they don't deserve what we have.

My husband works for a shelter.

He runs a shelter for homeless and runaway youth.

Now, that's the worst sentence ever: homeless youth.

We should not have that phrase.

There are, for the record, less than 20 beds for homeless youth in the Tri-Counties here.

Think about that.

In his program, they bring in kids, they give them shelter—kids and adults.

They're 12 to 20 years old.

So, they bring in these folks, they give them shelter, they give them supports—so educational supports—and they work with families to try to get kids back home if that's possible.

They also are dealing with the shame and with life choices and with the ways that kids have ended up outside of their homes, right?

And they work with the older kids and the young adults on getting them stable, on getting them housing, on getting them employment, on giving them life skills so that they can start out their adult lives.

And not too long ago, they had a client come who was in a hard place.

This particular client had social, emotional, and mental issues that made it very hard for them to be independent.

Um, and so they worked really hard with this person to work through some of these things so that this person could be independent.

And they had a caseworker, and their caseworker did a whole lot of work—really intimate work, if you can think about it, right?

They're knowing the stories, they're learning the stories, they're understanding why this person is in the place that they're in.

And finally, they find a subsidized home so that this person can have support, so that they can live in a community and with an apartment and have a place to live.

And this caseworker takes them over and shows them, gives them their keys, and helps them to get settled.

And comes back and resigns.

And my husband said, you know, like you do when an employee resigns, "You know, why? Why? Why are you—you know, why are you resigning?"

And this caseworker said, "Because that person has a better apartment than I have."

We want to believe that we have earned things.

And for some reason, we want people who have earned less to get less.

This person, who is housed now, is going to have a hard life.

They've got a lot of things working against them, and they have no family system.

They have no supports, so they've got a lot working against them.

This person—this caseworker—has education.

She has a home.

She has a car.

She has all of the things that she needs for this life.

She has earned those things, probably, and yet she comes from a system that helped her, right?

She starts out on the third step and not the basement.

We want to think—I read this prodigal story—this prodigal son story—and I think, "I have done all the good things. I have earned— I have earned the good things in my life, and this guy who blew everything, he doesn't deserve what I have. That's not fair."

It's kind of silly, right?

That, like, somehow I could do enough to earn all the good in my life.

I'm lucky.

I'm lucky.

I grew up poor, and still, I grew up with enough to launch me in life.

And I do—I work hard, I do.

My husband works hard.

We do earn what we have.

But we also came from a place of privilege.

And ultimately, God's economy isn't about earned.

Because God—no matter who we are, no matter where we come from, no matter if we make other people uncomfortable because we are the roughest sort—we can never earn God's best.

And God is always, always racing to give it to us.

Always.

Reckless.

It's reckless.

We don't deserve it.

We don't earn it.

And it doesn't matter.

God doesn't need us to apologize every time.

God is waiting with a robe and a ring for us.

That's God's economy.

It doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense.

But that is it.

That is the God of love that we know, that we meet, that we continue—continue to learn and experience through one another.

Nothing we do can turn that away.

Nothing turns that off.

Nothing makes that less.

The God of all always gives us God's best.

Amen.