A Strange Justice
This week the lectionary Gospel text was the dearly beloved parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–31). Few texts have impacted the moral imagination of the West in quite the same way. This is powerful story, one that teaches about the unrelenting, perfect, saving love of God. In my sermon on this text I insisted on the theme of “coming home”; just like the younger son, we too are invited to return “home” to God’s presence. This returning is not only a mystical experience where we find ourselves in union with God, but it also manifests in the way we reconcile our strained relationships with our families and friends. My challenge to the congregation was to allow God’s act of drawing us back home to God’s presence to be the source of our own reconciliation and forgiveness in our relationships now. I was proud of this sermon, I thought it was clever.
I was surprised to see that one of my friends who attends services had a look of utter disdain and disagreement on his face during the entirety of the message. This is a gentleman who delights in the controversial, transformative, and life changing elements of the gospel. He often laughs maniacally when I hit the congregation with a particularly holy zinger, or nods with appreciation over a witty or thoughtful turn of phrase. I have even made him cry in my more tender preaching moments. This time however, he was not having it. At the end of worship I took my usual place at the back of the church to shake the hands of the folks who attended service. By the time my friend arrived in the line he shook my hand, looked at me, and said
“God, I hate that story.”
I was taken aback. The Prodigal Son is a great story, it is a fact. So I conducted a thorough investigation. “Why?” I asked. A regular Nero Wolfe.
His response surprised me.
“Because the older son is clearly correct!” he exclaimed. “You leave the family, you goof up, you are out. Being let back in with a party? Fuck that. That’s not justice.”
That’s Not Justice
What a fascinating statement. Justice is one of those tricky things that we talk a lot about here at Disruptive Theology and I am not always sure we know what it means. We do know that it is an important feature of the biblical imagination and fits in throughout the historic Christian witness. The call for justice, especially for the most vulnerable people of society is a key fixture in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Take Luke 4:18 where Jesus quotes from the Book of Isaiah and proclaims the missio dei :
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free. (NRSV)
So is my friend correct? This is the question that has been bothering me since the end of worship. What lessons about justice can the Prodigal teach us? I would say that in a sense I completely understand what my friend is saying. The Prodigal attacks our ideas of fairness and I would offer that fairness often masquerades as justice. Perhaps the Prodigal exposes just how unfair justice truly is, and shows us that often justice and grace are the same act of God and are not to be separated. The father’s act of forgiving love does bring the kind of justice that Jesus speaks of in the fourth chapter of Luke (what a coincidence that the parable of the Prodigal is only found in Luke’s Gospel!) to the son. While it wasn’t fair from our perspective, the grace and justice of God isn’t fair; God is working to release all captives, recover the sight of all who are blind, and to bring good news to the poor however they find themselves.
Disruption-A Strange Justice
Perhaps the best lesson the Prodigal can teach the church regarding its public and social ministry is we must participate in God’s act of justice in the world and refuse to submit to the common definition of justice as fairness. Justice is simply not fair, it is restorative and transformative. This is a strange justice, one that disrupts the stories we tell ourselves about who deserves what.
Some youth from my church had the chance to serve homeless and vulnerable people in Pittsburgh last weekend. It was a profound experience for many of them. One thing that they discovered over and over was that for the women and men that they met, an ethic of fairness would not rescue them from the situation they found themselves in. These were people, made in the Image of God, who needed justice, the kind of justice that the Prodigal proclaims. This is a strange justice that is paired with grace and forgiveness and restores people into fellowship with God and with others. It sets folks free from the forces in their lives that capture, enslave, and destroy. The church can and must be a proclaimer and advocate of this strange justice that transforms the private and the public lives of people into something holy and free.
O strange God of a strange justice, break into our world and transform it. Make it into a place where lives and societies are recreated in your Image, and reflect more completely your grace. In Jesus’ name. Amen
