Third Sunday in Lent, February 28, 2016 | 9:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 4:00 p.m.

A "Missing" Mother

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 32
Luke 15:11–32

Listen to what God is saying to us: I am yours.
You are mine. You are the one who is held safe
and embraced in love from eternity to eternity. . . .
You are my child. You belong to my home.
You belong to my intimate life and
I will never let you go. I will be faithful to you.

Henri Nouwen

Let us start this morning with a short survey. By a show of hands, how many of you know the story I just read as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”? What about “The Parable of the Waiting Father”? Have any of you ever heard it called “The Parable of the Two Lost Sons?” Or “The Lament of the Elder Son”? One last possibility: Have any of you ever heard this familiar story Jesus told called “The Parable of the Missing Mother”?

For me, after all these years of hearing this story and after all these years of hearing and reading great sermons on this story, the missing mother is what intrigues me the most. She does not show up in this story that Jesus tells, at least not explicitly. No mention is ever made of her. She seems to be invisible. And yet—what if she’s not?

As you heard, the younger son is anything but invisible in this story. Rather, he is the one who does his very best to throw the family into chaos. This portrait of the younger son would have surprised Jesus’ original Jewish listeners. All through Hebrew scripture, whenever you hear the phrase “A father had two sons,” you know that the first son is going to be the one who messes up, and the second son, the youngest son, will be the one who gets it right. A few examples: Cain and Abel. Ishmael and Isaac. Esau and Jacob, etc. “The pattern continues throughout Israel’s history . . . so all of Jesus’ biblically literate listeners,” as soon as they heard his introduction, “would have known to identify with the younger son” (AJ Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, pp. 50–51). And yet, in this provocative Jesus story, this younger son is not the one to emulate. Rather, he is the one shown to be irresponsible, self-indulgent, and greedy.

The younger son illustrates those qualities right off the bat when he tells his father he wants his cut of the inheritance now, rather than later. It’s like telling his daddy he might as well be dead. And when the younger son gets his share, off he goes to do who knows what, who knows where. At some point in his “wilding” experience, the younger son gets to the moment when he has spent all his money, squandered his sense of self, and forgotten whose he was. He finds himself far from home in an unknown land, hungry, with no one willing to be generous to him anymore. No, Jesus’ listeners would not have wanted to identify with that one.

So what about the older brother? He is the one trying so hard to make up for all the family dysfunction. He seems to have one goal: save the family’s reputation at all costs. I can easily see this elder son wearing himself out trying to be the perfect child. Perhaps he is bound and determined to get the attention off of his troubled brother so the family can save face. In some ways, I wonder if this older brother is the most fearful and hurt of all of them. But only in some ways.

For then we remember the invisible one. The one not mentioned in the family story. The mother. She watches as her younger son runs off and rejects the family’s values, their good name, maybe even their faith. She sees him take what he thinks is rightfully his and just disappear, as if all her love for him meant nothing. Surely it hurt her heart to watch him choose to leave it all, them all, behind.

Then there is her husband, the father. Every day, day after day, he goes out and stands on the front porch so he can see far down the road, hoping to see some sign of his younger son’s return. She watches as he stands there on the porch day after day, as if the rest of them didn’t even exist. He just stays there stuck in his grief, in his shame, in his fear. What else could he have done? he wonders. Had he been complicit in the boy’s actions by giving into his demand? Like the shepherd lost the sheep and the woman lost the coin, had he, the father, lost his son?

I imagine, too, this mother watching her older son going through his life, day after day , attacking it rather than receiving it. She watches as he hardens his face and heart by working more and more, trying harder and harder, always thinking it is now all up to him. The salvation of the family is up to him now. There has got to be a way for him to make it all right. Surely if he can just be successful, he will make up for the ways his youngest brother let them all down.

And there she is. Invisible in the text. Silent in the story. But missing her youngest. Wondering if he is alive. Wondering if he will ever come home, if she will ever see him again. And there she is. Invisible in the text. Silent in the story. But watching her husband wasting away in inactivity, growing more passive day by day as he just stands incessantly and waits, imprisoned in guilt and regret. And there she is. Invisible in the text. Silent in the story. Her own heart breaking as she watches her older son wear out and burn out, striving to be what is impossible: perfect; the salvation of the family. There she is, through it all, watching them all, loving them all, heart breaking for them all. And for me, it is in her “there-ness,” so to speak, that she represents God’s unwavering, often quiet, always constant presence. We see God in her.

Now, I know this decision to see the missing mother as standing in for God does not fit with the traditional interpretations of this strange, mysterious parable. It does not fit with the interpretation that says the younger brother is the key to understanding what Jesus was getting at. After all, the younger boy hits rock bottom, “comes to himself,” and makes his way home. This interpretation claims the key understanding of this story centers on its focus on repentance, for that is what the younger son does. He stops his old sinful behavior. He turns from it and turns back towards home. Perhaps illustrating that turn, that change, is indeed why Jesus told the parable.

But what if the primary reason the younger brother went home was simply because he was hungry, starving, and no one else would reflect his father’s generosity towards him. This sounds cynical, but we can almost hear the false piety in his practiced response. “Father,” he practices, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am not worthy to be called your son.” Maybe he meant it. But maybe not. As Presbyterian preacher David Buttrick once said, it appears the younger brother’s strategy was primarily to just go home to daddy and sound religious (David Buttrick, Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide).

And, of course, there is the interpretation I have often shared in which the father is the key to understanding why Jesus told the story. This interpretation stresses the immense love and grace expressed by the waiting father. After all, he waited, day after day, never giving up, constantly on the lookout for the lost son coming home. And as soon as the waiting father laid his eyes on his youngest son, even though the boy was still a long way off, he hiked up his robes and took off, running down the road to embrace his lost son now found. He smothered the boy with kisses and hugs, not even giving his son the time to say his practiced apology. It just does not seem to matter. Repentance does not seem to matter to this waiting, gracious, merciful father. He just wanted his child back home.

Not only does the father shout to the rafters that his son has returned, but he also does the impossible: he rewards the son’s irresponsibility by throwing a party—holding nothing back. The parable of the waiting father. Truthfully, I love this picture of God’s grace portrayed with such extravagant mercy, running down the road wildly and freely. I have preached that very thing before and might just do it again one day.

Then, of course, we know the interpretation that looks at the older son as the key for understanding why Jesus told the story. Jesus tells this parable, after all, in the context of the religious leaders grumbling about how Jesus eats with all the wrong people. Therefore, this interpretation claims the elder son is the representative of that kind of legalistic religion, a kind of religion so caught up in being right that the people come to enjoy watching themselves be so good. They come to a point where they stop worshipping God and start worshiping the way they serve or worshiping the way they do church or worshiping even the way they worship. This legalistic religion confuses the subject and the object. It is a form of religious understanding that misses grace altogether. This interpretation claims the elder son is so wrapped up in himself and in the fact that his father broke all the rules that he cannot even be glad his younger brother is alive and back home. It makes him the enemy of mercy.

But I struggle with that interpretation that makes him an enemy. We might notice the older son was not even given an invitation to the party. He learned about it as he was working out in the fields. He heard the music and the commotion. It makes you wonder: Did no one at the party even realize this elder son was missing? As one commentator observes, the father indulges the one who slights him and slights the one who indulges him (quoted in AJ Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, p. 67). That is why one interpreter calls this story “The Parable of the Two Lost Brothers.” Why didn’t his father immediately send word to him as he labored in the fields, doing all the right things, trying to make everything OK? We might wonder what actually galled him: was it really the celebration thrown in honor of the younger brother? Or did his daddy break his heart again by taking him for granted or just plain forgetting about him? No one even bothered to let him know a party was underway.

Those are the historical interpretations of this mysterious, imaginative immersion into God’s world called the parable. But today let us be drawn in to see the mother, the woman, who is in the text by being invisible in the text. Might it be that her unwavering, quiet, constant behind-the-scenes presence helps us notice God? Might she be God, watching day after day as God’s family seems so intent on self-destructing?

Might she be God, waiting day after day in the hopefulness that someone will respond to the immense love, to the steady faithfulness, to the ongoing daily care she generously provides them? Might she be God, who, like her, is the one behind the scenes, the one who sometimes goes forgotten, yet still the one who carries the pain of the human family and of the world while remaining faithful in her unchanging love for all?

Perhaps she was the one thrilled to watch the father and the younger lost son embrace. And perhaps she was also the one who remembered their other son as well. I wonder if the mother sought out the father and said something like, “Remember we have another child, too.” She needed to help him remember all their children. And when she reminded him, the father’s face drained of color, as he realized what he had done. He had forgotten about his faithful child. The one who never caused him any problems. The one he counted on. But because of her reminding, he went searching.

He went to find his other lost son, the one who would not come to the party because he felt forgotten. Due to the mother’s encouragement, the father found the older son and told him everything was already his. Told him how he was full of regret for not having let him know sooner how much he meant to the family, how deeply he was loved, how he, the father, realized that it was the older son who had kept it all going, while he, the father, had been lost in grief and shame and the younger brother had been lost in selfishness and greed.

In the end, perhaps due to the mother’s influence, both children end up being embraced and celebrated. She is the one who remembered all of those that made up the family and reminded them all so that no one would ever be left out or forgotten again. She is the one who made it possible for all of those who were once lost to now be found—the youngest son in his selfishness and greed; the father in his grief and shame; the elder son in his drive for perfection and need to fix it all. She helped find all of them, and she brought them all back to themselves.

We discover another gift of this parable when we name it “The Parable of the Missing Mother.” After all, like her, God has no need to be seen or recognized or praised in order to love us. The presence of God often goes unmentioned, unnoticed by us, by our world, every day. And yet that does not keep God from lavishly loving us still. Like in this parable, God’s primary concern is only that, in the end, the whole family is made whole. That is what Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem was about—making the whole family of God whole again, bringing us all home again, and reconciling all of us back into God’s lavish, wild, and free love. Sometimes when it comes to God, God will be the voice not mentioned in the story or the life not named in the text, the one who goes unnoticed—yet the one who acts most powerfully and speaks most lovingly. The one who keeps bringing us back to ourselves.

And I know, it is not like we mean to forget Her. It’s just that when we, ourselves, are so caught up in ourselves, we too easily overlook the One whose faithfulness needs no billing in the play, who has no need to be listed as a star in the drama, but who faithfully is the hidden One, gracing us with Her ferocious humbleness and undiscourageable love each day. Doing whatever She can to create space for the family relationships of Her world to be restored and for the flourishing of Her entire household called creation. Hoping that one day, we might notice Her work and join in. The parable of the Missing Mother. Though the truth is we are never missing to Her. Amen.