After years of hearing the popular parable of what is known as The Prodigal Son, currently, two particular lines strike me the most:

        “… the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country.”

                “ While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him…”

Distance is a peculiar phenomenon, especially nowadays when technology has allowed us to, so to speak, ‘bridge the distance’ between places and people.  You can pick up your cell phone and call someone on the other side of the globe and have a conversation with them as if you were in the same room.  You can just as easily turn on your computer or your television and catch a live feed of something that is going on very far away.  There is a sense of ‘nearness’ yet there is still a distance.  What kind of distance is this?

In Jesus’ time, there were no cell phones, television, or internet, but I am convinced that the story of The Prodigal Son may treat of this same type of distance feigning closeness. In the story, we get glimpses of how relationships are used to bolster agendas and protect self-interest and, thus, distance the characters from authenticity, which can lead into deeper trust and connection.  Interestingly, it is those relationships that appear to be the closest that in fact have the most distance.

This distancing I am speaking about is what we perhaps unwittingly create in the relationship by making the relationship itself a ‘thing’ apart from us that serves the expectations that we have about the relationship. This can happen for various reasons, most of which involve the tendency to take for granted the gift of relationship so that anything that strays from the expectations aligned with that relationship becomes an effrontery, a cause for offense, even an injustice.  We have somehow traveled a great distance from those closest to us.

To recap the parable of the Prodigal Son, the youngest son of a man asks for and receives from his father his inheritance. The son goes away to a “distant country,” where he squanders all the money and ends up tending swine to make ends meet. Upon considering his predicament, the young man recalls how well even those who work for his father are treated, and so decides to return to his father and ask forgiveness with the hope that the father will take him back.

As the son returns, we are told that “while he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.”  The father runs to the son and embraces him, lavishing upon him all the excesses that come along with true home-coming, including a party to celebrate the event. Then we hear in the story, what for me, sets the stage for what is most desperately in need of awakening…

“Now the older son had been out in the field
and, on his way back, as he neared the house,
he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.”

From this point forward the story shifts to the older brother who refuses to go into the party with indignant disgust, voicing the complaint to his father that he was never treated with such lavish love and attention, despite his years of being constantly obedient at his father’s side.  The father concludes that celebration is in order because:

“My son, you are here with me always;
everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice,
because your brother was dead and has come to life again;
he was lost and has been found.”

It occurs to me that this ‘explanation’ given to the older son by the father, although appearing to console, actually serves to challenge the older son on the expectations that he has placed on his relationship with the father, and how comfortable he has become in his apparent ‘closeness’ to the father, without considering what the relationship was all about from the beginning. The question that the older son does not consider is how could a relationship be authentically close and enriching if it does not include others – even a younger brother who has done everything wrong or so it seems.

We must recall that Jesus launched into this parable due to the Pharisees commenting, in a quite disgruntled fashion, on the fact that “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” There is a sense that the question that might be asked in this parable is WHO ‘set off to a distant country,” or more close to home perhaps, HOW do each of us “set off to a distant country” perhaps not in ostensibly external ways, but perhaps more threateningly in inner ways of the heart.  How do we cut away from relationship without ever knowing it?

Moreso, how often, do we take offense, consider unjust, and resent the forgiveness and compassion shown to others because of the distances in our relationships (with ourselves God, and others)? When do we without knowing it equate justice with resentment?

These questions illuminate Jesus’ proclamation that he came to heal the sick, not those who are well.  The question begged is WHO is not sick or in need of healing, compassion and authentic love?  Who is it that has not ‘returned?  It’s the question of blindness that permeates the Gospels.  Could we all be the older brother in the story in some sense?  Have we all not created barriers and boundaries that distance even those closest to us for fear of being vulnerable, risking trust and engaging solidarity?

The story does in some sense always point back to the parent, no matter what the conditions of the child, young or old, repentant or indignant, regretful or resentful:

While still a long way off…God catches sight of us!

The distance disappears. Indeed, the distance was never there for a God who is Love, even though we stubbornly hold onto it’s illusion with resentment and judgment!  What the older brother couldn’t see was how his father could SEE – everyone and everything with no exclusions.  This is the squandering generosity of the Divine juxtaposed against our squandering distance.

The generative compassion of a God who came for ‘sinners’ crosses all boundaries and borders, and invites us to do the same! Could we all be trying to return, hoping that God will catch sight of us in the distance, but failing to realize that God can only see us in and through others.  Can we return from a distant country to the true homeland of all and risk the possibility that what we may consider ‘injustice’ is quite frankly, simply resentment?

Peace,

Thomas

(originally posted March 23, 2019)