The Prodigal Dog: a Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Lent
by Rev. Cheryl Fleckenstein, OblOSB
This is my parable of the Prodigal Dog. I let Jack out to do her business before I left for work. She disappeared. She usually comes when called, especially when you call “treats!” This time she didn’t.
So, I drive up to Skyline Drive; no dog. I call my husband Paul in tears. Not only do I love this dog, but I know Paul loves this dog. Selfishly, I know that if I lose her, I may be in big trouble with my spouse. So besides love, I had my own self-interest involved in finding her.
I drive back and forth along Skyline, calling. I drive up Vinland, and there she is, in the woods, nose in the snow. I stop the car and call her. She looks at me like, “Oh, hi!” “Go for a ride, Jack; let’s go home.” She hops in the car, I drive her home, and give her treats, the best treats — bacon strips!
Now, if a self-serving person like me can love a prodigal dog, what does this say about the father in Jesus’ story? And what does this say about God’s love?
Imagine a modern-day father and prodigal son who has disappeared, and the father has no idea where. Imagine that at dawn the bus pulls up outside the bus stop in his little town and out tumbles the prodigal son, wrinkled, unshaven, and a little worried about how he will be received at home. Then a voice calls, “Son!” And there is his father. “But Dad, how did you know I would be here, especially at this hour?” And the agent working at the bus station said, “Are you kidding boy? Your old man has come down here two, three times a day, every day, since you left.”
It’s one thing to speak of a love that demands we come crawling back with apologies and promises to do better. It is an entirely different story to speak of a love that goes down to the bus station day after day just because there might be some chance of us coming home. We don’t even know if he came home because he was sorry or hungry; we only know that it didn’t matter to the father why, as long as he came home.
We don’t know if the son stayed home and made the most of his second chance, or if he left the next morning on another trip as wild as the first one. We only know that the father was giving a party for his son either way. It didn’t matter.
And remember, Dad had to leave the party to go out and chat with his older son. The house is full of people dancing and eating, and Dad leaves the party to step out back, putting his enormous love to the test one more time. You see, the party wasn’t just for the prodigal son. The party was a sign of the father’s love, a love that isn’t content until everybody takes their place at the table. So Dad goes out back, trying to help his oldest son realize how unbecoming jealousy and self-righteousness are, and how the party inside is more fun than the pity party the son is having outside. Yet, the father didn’t just tell him to quit feeling sorry for himself and come in and get something to eat. No, he showed the same bus-station kind of love toward his older son as he had toward the younger son.
The older boy reminded Dad that he had never caused him any problems, that he worked hard on the farm every day without asking for anything. And Dad might have said, “You’re right. You haven’t given me a moment’s worth of trouble, but you haven’t paid very close attention either. You see my love for your brother as some special favor, but there’s nothing special about it. It’s the same love I give your brother if he goes astray as I give to you if you stay home. And being around me all this time, you really should have picked up on that before now.”
And we really should have picked up on that kind of love as well. Whether we are off in some strange place wasting our lives, or are self-absorbed back home, God is throwing a party to which we are invited, and at which we are always missed when we aren’t there. A love that goes down to the bus station on the mere chance we might be coming home, and a love that leaves the party to come outside to talk to us, a love that always misses us when we aren’t where we should be.
And if that surprises us, think how much more it must surprise people who have given up on God’s party. Somehow, we have to get the word out that what we do here is not religious mumbo jumbo. What we do here is make sure that God’s party keeps going, and that anyone still doubting the power of God’s love can find a place here that will erase all doubts.
We know who some of those people are. It’s the single mom with four children who lives with dreams and doubts. It’s the young person trying to decide what to do with his life. It’s the older couple making the most of days full of pain and discomfort. It’s the child whose parents won’t come home tonight. It’s anyone who at one time or another has questioned why they take up space on this planet.
See what’s at stake here? People’s lives. We have this wonderful responsibility of keeping God’s party going. And we may find that we too need to cast the nets of our love in a much wider circle and consider what we are willing to give up, just for the chance of sharing God’s love with someone whose life will be changed by it.
