The Pursuit of Happiness

​Choosing favorite parables is not easy. But our parable, the parable of the Prodigal Son, is definitely one of my favorites.
 
It is easy for me to put myself in this one. In my young adulthood, I spent time as the prodigal. For basically the rest of my life, I’ve been the self-righteous older brother. I am confident that my younger brother would agree!!
 
Whole books have been written about our parable. We can’t do it all. But as a way into the parable this morning, here is a question. When was the prodigal son happiest?
 
It’s not at the beginning of the parable.
 
Before the parable begins, the young man lived comfortably with his father and his brother, in addition to whoever else may have been in the household. But the young man was clearly unsatisfied, and certainly didn’t appreciate the love of his father. Why else would he ask for his inheritance in advance and then leave home for a distant country?
 
I think how I would feel if one of my sons came to me with the same request. “Dad, I don’t want to wait around until you die. Give me the money coming to me now so that I can leave home and never see you again.” Those are not the words of a happy son!
 
The next stage of the prodigal’s life, the stage of dissolute living, seems happier. But I doubt he was truly happy during his time of dissolution either, no matter how fun that may sound.
 
From what comes next, we know that the prodigal didn’t have any real friends during this time in his life, not one person who cared enough to help him when his money ran out. During his dissolute time, every single relationship in his life was superficial. He had no love.
 
In some ways, the prodigal was an American before his time.
 
We are not all individually dissolute. But as a culture, we spend billions of dollars on entertainment each year. Advertising hammers home the message that the good life consists in the things we buy, and we buy a lot of things. Social media reinforces a similar message with all those pictures of fabulous trips and fabulous food.
 
But all of that distraction, and stuff, and virtual interaction leaves many people in America today feeling empty, isolated, and depressed. What we need to be happy is not that. What we need is genuine connection with people we care about and who care about us. In the absence of human connections, in the absence of love, we cannot be happy.
 
That is true of us, and that was surely true of the prodigal son, who can’t have been happy during his dissolute period, when he had fun, but not love.
 
The prodigal’s dissolute period ended when he ran out of money. But before going there, let’s imagine what might have happened if his money had held out, if he could have continued to live dissolutely. He would not have become happier with age.
 
I enjoyed my own period of dissolute living well enough. But even then I knew there had to be more to life. And if I were still living like that, if today I showed up at a party with a bunch of young people, all ready to rage, I would not be welcome for long. Dissolute living may be fun at twenty. At thirty, it’s getting creepy. At forty, it’s pathetic. It gets worse from there, and I’m a long way from there!
 
Thankfully, God and Carrie teamed up to rescue me from my own dissolution. The prodigal son didn’t get married, so he needed to break free of his dissolution some other way. For him, it took running out of money.
 
That turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. Poverty forced the prodigal son to face, for the first time, the reality of his life, to recognize just how empty and loveless his life had become.
 
His time of suffering cannot have been happy. But it was a necessary first step towards happiness.
 
Finally, the young man decided to go home. He knew he didn’t deserve anything from his father. Not love, not even welcome. He couldn’t go back to what he had had. But he understood now that his father’s house was a good place to be.
 
And now we get to the astonishing good news of our parable. “While he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” His father dressed him and threw a party—not a dissolute one, but a true celebration of love.
 
Thanks to the unexpected loving embrace of his father, the prodigal son had another chance at happiness. He was forgiven, and he was loved. Loved beyond anything he could have imagined, loved beyond his wildest expectations.
 
That is Jesus’ message to us. We look for love in all the wrong places. Or we ignore our need for love altogether and try to stay distracted with stuff that will never satisfy. And we act out because that’s what people do when they don’t feel loved.
 
And Jesus invites us to go home. Jesus promises that we will be welcomed. And there, with God, we will find love and true happiness, the happiness that comes from being loved.
 
Was the younger son happy at last? Jesus doesn’t tell us, but I think so.
 
I like to think that our young man had learned his lesson. Having been humbled, having lost everything, having realized that he needed his father, it is at least possible that he could enjoy his father’s love.
 
But if so, the young man had to grow. He had to learn to love his father in return, and then to let his love ripple out, to love others as he had been loved, to love people who didn’t deserve it as he didn’t deserve his father’s love.
 
His first true test was probably his older brother, the one who stayed home, the one who turned out to be self-righteous and unpleasant.
 
The parable ends with the older brother still outside the party, and his father pleading with him to come in. Sadly, I doubt he came in. I picture him sitting outside the party long after his father went back inside, getting angrier and angrier.
 
But eventually the two brothers had to meet. At that meeting, the older brother was surely full of complaints, and sarcasm, and insults about devouring the family property with prostitutes. It all was true, which makes it hurt even more.
 
It would be natural to hit back. But that’s not what the father had done to the younger son. So, having been loved by his father even though he didn’t deserve it, could the younger son show the same gracious love to his brother?
 
If the younger son could stay rooted in his father’s love, maybe he could help his father love his brother into loveableness. If so, that would be true happiness for all three of them.
 
But even if the elder brother never came around, still the younger brother would surely be happier in his father’s house than he had ever been before because, at last, he knew he was loved, and he could love.
 
That is our invitation and our challenge, too. We live in what can seem like a loveless time. But we are loved extravagantly. Can we, who are so loved by God, love our neighbors, in God’s name? I pray that we can, and so find true happiness.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.