Saturday of the Second Week of Lent
As I sit down to read reflections like this, somewhere in the back of my mind, I ask, however briefly, “What am I going to get out of it?” Do you do the same thing? We, by our society and by our sin, are so quick to ask, “What’s in it for me?” I think today’s gospel passage challenges that question.
The parable of the prodigal son begins with the younger son laying claim to his inheritance. He chooses to secure the answer of ‘What’s in it for me?’ as early as possible. Actually, it is insultingly early. It is akin to asking someone to give you they are leaving you in their will now, instead of receiving it after they pass away. So, looking his father in the face, the younger son essentially says, “Give me your stuff, which I’d prefer over you.” As a youngest child I think he gives the rest of us a bad reputation, but I feel a little vindicated seeing that the older brother isn’t much better.
The older brother pouts and gets a big lip when he hears that his long lost brother has returned home, not to a satisfyingly embarrassing punishment, but to a party (obviously we youngest children must be spoiled if he can come back bankrupt from carousing and have a party thrown in honor of his return). When the father questions the older son about why he is upset, he says this, “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.” In other words, he wants to know, “If this is how the problem child is repaid, what’s in it for me?”
The parable challenges this attitude because the father is never phased by the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ or even ‘What am I losing?’ Instead the father sets the tone with a constant emphasis on who. Who is in it for me? If we look around at the world or even inward toward our own hearts, we tend to love things and use people. But what we know in our heart of hearts and what this parable challenges us to do is to love people and use things. May we, like the father, be prodigal with our things so that our hearts and arms may be open to our brothers and sisters.
- Spencer Hargadon