Today's gospel was the parable of the prodigal son. The preacher had a novel twist on its familiar reproof of the elder brother unwilling to celebrate the return of his wayward brother, who had been presumed lost. The elder son had a "scarcity mindset"! But the father, with an "abundance mindset," was the truly prodigal one - prodigal meaning extravagantly generous. (We'd left the younger brother behind by this point.) We should learn to be prodigal too, as our father is prodigal with forgiveness and love!
But there was a second sermon pushing through this one. The preacher actually began by telling us the news that a super-expensive house in the District of Columbia had just been bought by a shell company, presumably for our unelected megabillionnaire copresident, but that what it cost him was the equivalent of about $60 for a typical middle class person. And at the far end of the retelling of the prodigal son story, she mused about how the drama of the father and his two sons might have looked to their hired hands and the unnamed women of the household (she didn't mention the slaves), and then imagined a version of the story in which the father's "prodigal" largesse extended to everyone. It was all rather confusing. Was she imagining a redistributionist megabillionaire God?
But then this has always been - as it’s supposed to be - a challenging story. Today, perhaps primed by the sermon's prologue, I was stuck on the word "squander" in the description of the younger son's "dissolute living" on claiming his part of the inheritance, which I could not unstick from my sense of what the current regime is doing with everything I hold dear. Is fury at the wanton destruction of moral and cultural capital a scarcity mindset? Must I pray for their repentance and reconciliation, and repent for my own self-righteous squandering of fraternal care?
