Christmas, Romance, and Prodigals

We love our prodigals!

The return of the prodigal, or a character behaving like a prodigal, is one of the common themes of romance stories. And in Christmas romance stories as well. 

The prodigal is usually, but not always, a son, a father, a boyfriend, a brother – a male. He returns home after an extended absence, upending all kinds of former relationships. He may be healed, with no one still trusting him, or he may still be broken, with the healing to come. Sometimes the story is a retelling of the parable spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Sometimes it’s a story inspired by the parable but not bearing much connection to it. 

Prodigal stories do share one primary characteristic – the prodigal returns home and fines forgiveness, redemption, and sometimes love (eventually).

Not Until Christmas Morning by Valerie Bodden

Austin Hart is a bitter young man. He’s working himself physically, trying to recover from an IED attack in Afghanistan. The attack killed his best friend and an 11-year-old boy the unit had adopted. And Austin lost his foot and part of his leg. He’s determined to physically train himself so he can return to his unit, but the odds are stacked against him.

In addition to his foot, Austin lost his faith. God simply wouldn’t allow that kind of death and destruction, so there must be no God. Austin’s brother Chad is still stationed in Afghanistan and talks with him weekly. Chad knows his brother is struggling.

Auston decides to return to Hope Springs, the town where he and his brother were born and spent part of their childhood years. He rents a house next door to Leah, an early 30-something who has decided God wants her to be single and has taken on the biggest project of her life – 12-year-old Jackson, a foster child who’s bounced around nine different foster homes, stays in trouble in school, and is determined not to love anyone. 

Austin becomes the connecting link between the boy and Leah, and Leah and Austin both discover romantic connections developing between them. But Austin still struggles with his anger and bitterness, and Leah, having been hurt once in romance, is resisting the idea of romance. 

Not Until Christmas Morning, part of the Hope Springs series by Valerie Bodden, is a well-done, moving story of three broken people circling each other, each afraid to touch and afraid to be touched. 

A Christmas Homecoming by MaryAnn Diorio

Seven years before, Sonia and Rick Pettit’s daughter Jody left home, disappearing without a trace. She left behind her parents and her brother Ben. Rick was devastated by his daughter’s abandonment and eventually died of what was officially heart disease but was really from what the doctor called a broken heart. Ben has been embittered by his sister’s desertion of the family, and he’s increasingly finding solace in alcohol. 

Sonia keeps praying for her daughter’s return, as impossible as it seems. No one knows whether Jody is alive or dead; a private investigator hired by the family found no trace of her, anywhere.

Jody, however, is very much alive and living in Australia. She’s a divorced mom of twins, struggling to keep her job in a difficult economy and provide for her children. She deeply regrets abandoning her family. When she loses her job in a bankruptcy right before Christmas, she decides to use what little savings she has to return home to Virginia in the United States. But it won’t be the homecoming she hopes for.

A Christmas Homecoming by MaryAnn Diorio is a retelling of the Biblical parable, with a daughter taking the place of the prodigal son. We watch a family come to grips with loss, hurt, and pain as they struggle to find hope and forgiveness.

Everybody Loves Mickey by Therese Travis

Fireman Mickey Hurst was at one time much like a prodigal, but he’s found faith, reformed, and works hard as a volunteer at his church. People at the church love Mickey, except for Aubrey Thomas, who works in the church office. Years before, Aubrey was the recipient of a drunken pass by Mickey, which was made worse by his apology, which sounded a lot like “I’d have to be drunk to try to kiss you.” What Mickey meant was something else entirely, but Aubrey allowed his words to steel her heart.

For his part, Mickey knows he’s love with Aubrey and has been for years. But her ongoing hostility prevents him from trying to take the relationship any further. As a church volunteer, he sees Aubrey almost every day, and he does his best to dodge the arrows she tosses at him with words, auctions, and attitudes.

Everyone else at the church sees the obvious – the two are meant for each other. And so a loose conspiracy of matchmaking is born, beginning with the choir director asking Mickey and Aubrey to sing a duet for the church’s Christmas program.

Everybody Loves Mickey by Therese Davis tells the story of Mickey and Aubrey, a story of walls between people gradually coming down. It’s a story about missed communications, past hurts and disappointments, and (we hope) love.

Photograph by Josh Harrison via Unsplash, Used with permission.

So it's a good story

After Luke 15:11-32

So it’s a good story

with a rather pointy point:

forgive the lost who are found

forgive the lost who were never lost

   in the first place, except within

   themselves.

The need was the save both

   From themselves

One knew it,

one didn’t

In the years that passed,

   one learned

   one didn’t

one embraced grace

one embraced works

Two prodigals:

take the quiz and

choose one.

The Oscar for best performance

by an actor isn’t

the ticket to heaven.

Photograph by Caterina Beleffi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The prodigal sons

After Luke 15:11-32

One ran off, lived indulgence

one remained, lived selflessly

One left, and wasted everything

one remained, and stewarded everything

One left, wallowed with pigs

one remained, caring for goats and sheep

Two prodigals

One left, and spent it all

one remained, and served but

   wrapped himself in service

   and wanted a fatted calf

   his own, to recognize

   what he’d done, to celebrate

   what he’d done, to honor

   his self-control, self-discipline,

   his righteous anger justified

Perhaps it should be called

the parable of the sinner

and the Pharisee

Photograph by Rishabh Butola via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Says the prodigal

After Luke 15:11-32

Says the prodigal:

I have sinned against heaven

I have sinned before you

Reality breaks through:

I have sinned against heaven

I have sinned before you

The prodigal son says that but

he wasn’t the first to say that

the first was pharaoh

as the plagues rained down

reality broke through for a time

for pharaoh, for the prodigal

Pharoah knew

all rulers know

all prodigals know

even when blinded

they know

we know because

we are pharaoh

we are the prodigal

we are the parable

and the father runs forward

arms opened wide

in spite of

Photograph by Josh Kahen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

We are prodigal, son

After Luke 15:11-32

Given much, showered with blessings,

with comforts and luxuries,

necessities and surpluses,

what’s needed for sustenance,

what’s given for liberality,

we have much,

we have been given much.

And more, we want more,

we demand more and when 

we get it, we squander it,

throw it away, waste it

on the temporal, the useless,

the ephemeral, the decadent.

Lost long before we knew,

found long before we knew,

forgiven, long before we were.

Photograph by Dustin Dagamac via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Slippery grace slips away

It’s fitting that Andy Stanley chose the end The Grace of God with the story of the prodigal son.

It’s a familiar story. The younger of two sons asks his father for his inheritance, squanders it in riotous living, repents and returns home, hoping to work as a servant. The father welcomes him with open arms, and orders the fatted calf to be slain for the celebration dinner. The dutiful older son resents this favorable treatment for his brother, and his father has to take him to taks for his attitude. We don’t learn what happened after that.

When I’ve studied this passage (Luke 15) before, and I’ve heared preached many times. We usually focus on the younger son, or the father, or the older son. For some reason, reading the account as told by Stanley, it struck how like both sons we are.

We are the prodigals, and we are the dutiful sons – and often at the same time. It’s the genius of the story – we can identify with both sons, because we are both sons. We are the prodigal who indulges in sin, and we are the obedient older son who keeps faithfully at what’s set before us.

And there’s tension between these two sons, these two ideas, and Stanley calls it the tension of grace. “It’s this tension that makes grace so slippery,” he says. “Perhaps it’s this tension that has driven churches and Christians through the centuries to add to and subtract from grace. There’s something in most of us that screams, It can’t be that easy. But as much as we want to qualify grace, it can’t be qualified.”

We identify with the prodigal, because we are sinners. And his repentance was genuine, and recognized by that father as genuine.

We identify with the obedient son, because we have all been there. Like Martha washing the dishes and preparing the food while Mary lounges around with Jesus, we wonder why our contribution isn’t being recognized. After all, the older son stayed with the father, stayed at the homestead, and worked beside his father while his brother indulged himself in pleasures (however fleeting).

And there it is – that tension. We want the younger son to be forgiven, because we were forgiven. But shouldn’t he have to prove himself? Couldn’t God make this a little harder?

It’s helpful to remember the context for the story. Jesus had been teaching and preaching, followed by large crowds wherever he went. He was especially popular among the tax collectors and known “sinners,” and that rankled the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.

So Jesus tells them three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost, or prodigal, son. All three stories have the same point – the importance of the sinner who repents. Telling three stories with the same point punched the point home. Saving the story of the prodigal son for the last really punched it home – there was no evading whom Jesus was talking about.

The interesting thing about Jesus was that his listeners always understood his message, even when it was clearly aimed at them. The Pharisees got the point of the story. They knew Jesus was talking about them.

And no matter which son we chose to focus on, Jesus is still talking about us.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Grace of God. Today’s discussion concludes the book. To see more posts on this final chapter, “How Sweet the Sound,” please visit Sarah Salter at Living Between the Lines.

Painting: The Prodigal Son by Rembrandt (circa 1669). Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. 

A Contemporary Prodigal

Never have I read a better contemporary illustration of the story of the prodigal son than I’ve read in Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan and Angela Yuan.

Yet it is not the story of one prodigal. It’s the story of two. And perhaps three, and more. Though it may be hard for many of us who call ourselves Christian to recognize ourselves in this story, the fact is we are there, too.

Christopher Yuan comes from an upper middle class family in Chicago. His father Leon is a dentist; his mother Angela a homemaker who also serves as her husband’s business administrator. Christopher goes to college and then medical/dental school, the expectation being that he will join the family practice. On the surface, the life of the Yuan family seems placid, stable and normal.

Except that Angela and Leon have an increasingly empty, loveless marriage, both of them carrying old family baggage and expectations.

And except that Christopher is gay. He tells his parents and experiences almost immediate rejection. He returns to his friends, the people he believes accept him for what he is.  And his finds that acceptance is transient.

He turns to drugs, an integral part of the gay club culture he enmeshes himself in. And then he becomes a drug dealer, part of the drug sales and distribution system that apparently blankets the country.

Angela finds her way to faith. Never part of a church or religious tradition, she still manages to find her way, after coming close to suicide. She begins to spend an enormous amount of time on her knees. Praying. An unused shower stall in the Yuan home becomes her prayer room.

Christopher’s high-flying lasts for a time, and then he crashes, virtually overnight. Most of his friends abandon him. His parents don’t. Instead, despite of the gigantic mess he’s made of his life, his parents accept him and love him.

And just when you think the story has hit rock bottom, you find it hasn’t. It gets worse.

Out of a Far Country contains many stories, and many themes. Brokenness is everywhere. Even the “most lost” living the worst lives can be redeemed. Sin has consequences – in spite of redemption. Loving is more important that judging. Forgiveness is vital. God can do miraculous things with broken people.

All of those stories and themes belong to the rest of us as well. We may not deal drugs or live destructive, drug-fueled lifestyles, but we all know brokenness, the need for forgiveness, and the need for love.

The Yuan family is a living testimony for the rest of us.

Related:

Christopher Yuan’s web site.