Love Without Conditions

Luke 15:1-2 &11-31

Lent 4, March 30, 2025

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“Love Without Conditions”

All human relationships have limits.  We are bounded by our capacity to love, to forgive, and to change with each other.  In families, we bring our history to every interaction, especially with parents.  And that is why the word ‘father’ comes with so much emotional baggage.  When we say it, our own experience is coloured by the relationship we had, or didn’t have, with our own father-figure.  Going back further, that person learned, or didn’t learn, how to parent from their father.  And for those who become fathers, what they received informs how they interact with their own children. Whether we are close, estranged, or triggered by the man who contributed to our birth, we all carry ideas of what a father is and how a father acts towards his children.  These are human ideas because that is what we know.  Then Jesus tells a story about a father who loves without conditions to show us what God is like.

One of the most famous parables of Jesus is often called “the prodigal son”, but the younger son is not the central character in the story.  Nor is the elder son, although he has an important role, too.  It is the father.  He is the first introduced: “there was a man who had two sons” (Luke 15:11).  In the beginning, he is rooted in the Jewish culture of Jesus’ time.  He has certain responsibilities to his family as the patriarch, the provider, the property owner, the primary parent. (The mother stays in the shadows in this story).  And yet, although he is bounded by tradition, law, and societal expectations, the father goes beyond conditions to love his children.  He meets the needs of both sons – not just the younger- through his actions.

The father is the one who holds wealth and property for the family.  Everyone else supports the business, whether it is farming or industry or service.  Adult children who stay at home are dependent on family resources and are to abide by his decisions. It is his to do what is best to continue to the next generation, who normally would receive their inheritance on his death.  Not sooner!  So when the younger son asks for his share early, this goes against tradition and wisdom.  Yet the father releases assets from the estate to meet his request, dividing the property between him and his older brother.  The younger son probably about one third under inheritance laws.  The other portion is reserved for the elder child to manage with the father.  The younger one takes the money and runs.

And live it up he does, for a short while.  He is far away from his father’s guidance and support, and he makes some bad choices that go beyond leaving his family home.  Dissolute living covers a lot: we can imagine some of the same places we have found ourselves.  Did he get taken advantage of by so-called friends, make bad investments, fall into addictions.  The good life didn’t turn out to be so good.  He faces poverty and loneliness and want.  No one will help him now that he doesn’t have money.  He is an unwanted foreigner who is now forced to take a job far below his former status and skills just to stay alive.  He is humiliated, suffering, and sobering up to the reality of his circumstances. 

Then there is that wonderful phrase of realization: “he comes to himself” (Luke 15:17).  He repents of what he has done to hurt himself and his family, and he makes the decision to return home.  He will confess, not with the hope of throwing himself on his father’s mercy, but to show he has had a learning of the heart.  He would be willing to become the lowest servant in his father’s household, not seeking restoration of place or wealth.  Only a way to move forward from what he has done. 

At this point, the narrative changes from what the younger son decides to what the father demonstrates.  Before the returning son even has a chance to speak, the father rushes forward to welcome him home.  This is a love without conditions.  It doesn’t wait for repentance or lecture with an “I told you so”.  Even though this child was dead to him by leaving as he did, the father rejoices that he is alive and takes him in.  Not as a servant but as a beloved son. 

Then there is the elder son.  We forget about him after the younger one’s adventures, but all the time he has had an equally difficult journey to make.  All the time junior has been away, senior has been toiling in the father’s fields.  Nothing seems to have changed on the home-front.  Father still calls the shots and the elder son bides his time dutifully.  But now the younger one has returned and he gets a party?  It sounds like he’s getting more than his share when the older one hasn’t asked for anything.  There’s a little resentment perhaps?  We don’t hear the end of the story: whether the older son stays sulking in the fields or comes in to the feast in honour of the returning prodigal.  But the father assures the elder “you are always with me and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31).  Including presumably the fattest calf that they just roasted!  Can the elder son share the father’s joy?  That is his growing edge.

In this parable God is represented by the father.  Often, we are asked to choose whether we identify with the younger or the older child, and many people in the Church would say that we feel more like the elder.  There is another possibility.  Each of us, in our particular way, is the prodigal son, strayed and felt the love of the father in being welcomed home.  What if the the elder son is Jesus?  Then we do know the end of the story!  He is the one who shares in all the Father’s inheritance and is obedient even as all the wayward ones make their way back.  This elder son does enter into the feast of salvation and rejoices with the father over “the one who was dead and now has come to life, was lost and now is found” (Luke 15:31).  Jesus does the will of the Father and jointly welcomes all his brothers and sisters reclaimed in love.

All our earthly fathers have limits: what they can do to protect and guide us, how much they are able to forgive, what capacity they have to overcome their shortcomings and learn from them.  Our experience of our earthly fathers can open a window to glimpsing God.  Or they can leave some of us with distrust of father-figures in general.  It is not easy for some to even think of God as a father.  But Jesus paints a picture for us of what our heavenly Father is really like.  God is the one we can trust for mercy, acceptance, and unconditional love.  His attitude does not depend on what we have done or not done, but on our relationship with Him.  If we are willing to come as a child to a loving father, reconciliation is assured. 

This love goes beyond the borders of distance or even death.  Our earthly fathers may be far away from us or cut off from our lives.  They die and leave us for the next life.  But God our Father is always present to us.  This is the God that Jesus addresses in the Lord’s prayer.  He calls God not just father but Daddy- Abba- the familiar and intimate title used by a child within the family.  Every time we return to Him, we find the One who loves without conditions.   Amen.