Lent 4 (3/14/10) “Robe, Ring, Sandals, and Fatted Calf”

Luke 15.11-32

The German theologian Helmut Thielicke tells about sitting his young son down in front of the mirror. At first he seemed entertained by the image he saw there, and he made lots of gestures and smiles. Then, almost as if something clicked, he seemed to realize the correspondence between his movements and those in the mirror. It seemed, in that moment, as if he recognized that in this glass he was seeing himself.

That’s how it is with Jesus’ parables. They are interesting stories, entertaining—but suddenly we realize that it is our own image that we are seeing! Perhaps that is nowhere truer than with the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We see ourselves in it! No doubt that is why it is the most beloved and cherished of all the parables.

But perhaps it is more like one of those mirrors in the fitting room of a clothing store! It is not just that we see ourselves, but we see ourselves from many different angles. The parable, too, can show us a lot—sometimes, perhaps, more than we really want to see! What I would like to do this morning is to take one view, one angle—not the only one, to be sure, but perhaps one we don’t often notice. I’d like to consider the details of the father’s response when the prodigal returns from the far country. Let’s see what this angle can show us about what it means to be welcomed by God.

“But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.’”

We’ll start with the robe. It is a wonderful symbol which is used often in the Bible to talk about being changed. When a sinner turns to God, a change happens.

When we first moved into our home in Alta Sierra, we faced the need to do something we liked to call “pond maintenance.” Nowadays we call a local guy to come and do this with chemicals, but back then it involved wading into the waters of our pond, perhaps up to your waist or even your shoulders, and pulling out cattails. It would be hard to find a task more unappealing. You would come out of the pond soaking wet and absolutely filthy, mud and slime under every toenail, clothes so gross and yet stuck so closely to you that they practically had to be peeled off. I did this more times than I care to remember. I don’t know of any other occasions that I was so glad to have a shower and clean clothes!

It was kind of like that with the boy in the parable. He had been living with the swine—not a clean place to be. He had no money to stop for a shower and a change of clothes on the way home; he presented himself to his father in the foulest possible condition. And the first thing his father does is change him! “Bring out the best robe and put it on him!” (We’ll read between the lines and assume that he gets to bathe first!) The idea is that the father doesn’t make him stand there in the humiliation of his past, but gives him a new existence, right now. “If anyone is in Christ,” Paul says, “there is a new creation.”

Sometimes when we come before God, that is hard to believe. We almost would prefer to stand there, filthy and smelly, and grovel. We confess the same sins, over and over, as if we can’t really believe we are forgiven. But you see, God does not want that. He is like the welcoming Father in the parable: “Bring out the best robe! Forget the past! I’m going to change you, make things new for you, starting with those filthy clothes!”

Next, there is a ring. This isn’t just a piece of fancy jewelry; in the ancient world a ring meant authority. It often functioned like a seal, and so to possess a ring meant that the owner of the ring placed great trust in you. And that’s what is important here. The returning prodigal is told, in a symbolic way, that his father’s forgiveness is so complete that he trusts him fully.

I know some of you have heard this story before, but I can’t help but tell it. When I was in college, I got a job delivering groceries in the Sunset and Ingleside districts of San Francisco. The Sunset is nice and flat, but the Ingleside has some pretty decent hills. Having grown up in Chico, my experience with hills was limited, and my experience with one-ton flatbed trucks was non-existent. For the first several days, the owner of the store, Leon, accompanied me to teach me the route. Now it was going to be my last day of training, and I was driving. I was stopped at a stoplight on one of those Ingleside hills. When the light changed, the truck went backward instead of forward—not too far, mind you; just about as far as the vehicle behind us. We got out of the truck, Leon exchanged insurance information with the other driver, then in silence he drove us back to the store. “Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee?” he suggested. I did so, and then walked back to the store, assuming I was about to be fired. But when I walked in, he tossed me the truck keys. “Now you’d better get going and finish those deliveries.”

I have never forgotten that gesture of trust, just at the moment when I felt I had failed completely! And isn’t it that way with God? When he welcomes us, he doesn’t keep reminding us how far we’ve fallen. He doesn’t say, “Well, I’ll take you back, but you’ve got to earn my trust!” No, he treats us as if we had never given him any reason to doubt us. That is what forgiveness means.

Then we have the sandals. I suspect the sandals here represent freedom. There is an African American spiritual called “I Got Shoes”: I got shoes, you got shoes, all God’s children got shoes. When I get to heaven, gonna put on my shoes, gonna walk all over God’s heaven. The slaves, you see, were not allowed to have shoes because it was assumed that being barefoot would hamper any attempt to escape. In heaven, they sang, all would have shoes, and be able to go and do what they pleased.

That’s what’s going on here. It would have been easy for the father to keep the prodigal on a pretty short rein. After all, he had wandered off and gotten into trouble in the first place. But the father shows, not just that he trusts him, but that he gives him complete freedom.

In John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace, the protagonist Gene discovers that he is quite in the thrall of his school roommate Phineas. When Phineas says, “Come on, let’s go to the beach” or “Let’s go play ball,” Gene feels obligated to do it. He’s afraid Phineas will think ill of him if he does not. He resents it, because he feels the need to spend more time studying. One day Phineas asks him to skip the books and go play, and the resentment gets expressed. Phineas looks surprised. “Oh, you need to study? Well, that’s OK, if that’s what you need to do. It’s only a game—no big deal!” Gene discovers, to his surprise, that Phineas in fact has given him freedom—it is his own feelings of guilt that have forced him to comply with Phineas’s invitations.

So often we feel constrained by God. We feel that we must do this, or we can’t do that, or God will be angry. We become almost paralyzed by guilt. We are a bit like the older brother in the story: so hung up on being responsible and dutiful that we miss the joy in being a child of God. But that’s not the way it is with our loving Father. He gives us freedom! He does not want life to be a list of rules, a morass of commandments. He wants us to love him, to be sure; but he also sets us free to live by his grace.

Then we have the fatted calf. “Get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat!” You will recall that the boy was starving; that is what brought him home in the first place. But he expected to have to work for bread. What the father gives him is so much more! Not just bread, but the fatted calf!

I have a “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon posted in my office. Calvin’s mom says, “Calvin, will you gather the trash please.” Calvin snaps, “Why should I? What will I get in return?” Mom replies, “We will feed, clothe, shelter and educate you through your entire youth.” So off he goes with the trash, muttering “I really hate having things put in perspective.”

Of course with God, the perspective is a little different. Remember your catechism, on the first article of the creed? I believe that God created me and all that exists. He has given me, and still preserves, my body and soul with all their powers. He provides me with food and clothing, home and family, daily work, and all I need from day to day. God also protects me in time of danger and guards me from every evil. All this he does out of fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, though I do not deserve it. That’s what the fatted calf is all about! We come to God, sometimes pleading for some crumbs, and he prepares a great feast! So much he gives us! So much he loves us!

But there is one more word added: “Let us eat and celebrate.” What comes through more than anything else in this parable is the great joy, the festive joy, of God. Sometimes I think we have this image that when we sinners pray for forgiveness, we come crawling and weeping, and God scowls and us and taps his foot until we finally say all that we need to say, and then God begrudgingly says, “Well, OK, but don’t do it again!” But no! With God, when we come to him with humble hearts, there is not one word said about the past. There is a celebration! There is joy!

In a sense, that is what the Sacrament of Holy Communion is about. We call it a “celebration,” but often we don’t catch the full import of that word. It is a time of joy! We believe that in the sacrament we receive forgiveness of sins, but perhaps that leads to a misunderstanding. Receiving bread and wine isn’t like getting a certificate or license saying your sins are forgiven; no, it is more like this is the party, the great feast, which expresses that forgiveness—like the party in the parable. It is God’s gift to us, God’s way of saying, “I’ve missed you! I’m so glad you’re home!”

Pastor Richard O. Johnson

Peace Lutheran Church

Grass Valley, Calif.