The other son

In The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen considers the well-known parable from the perspective of Rembrandt's famous painting. In so doing, he notes that while he first identified with the prodigal, a blunt but well-meaning friend suggested that perhaps he had more in common with the resentful son of the story.

It's always hard, isn't it, hearing something harsh -- because it is painfully true -- from a friend? We don't all have a friend like that, but we should, if only to give voice to what we ignore when it is whispered by the Holy Spirit. The problem is that we also have, many of us, one or two friends who imagine they are that person. You know the type, the let-me-get-in-your-face-so-we-can-get-real person who is more passive aggressive than introspective, but who can't stop spouting that iron sharpening iron verse.

Obviously, though I have lived much of my life as the prodigal son, the judgmental, withdrawn, irritable son rears his ugly head more often than I care to admit. So as Nouwen describes how the second son resents the attention the returning son has received, I see myself.

I also see the Church, in our more selfish moments. Nouwen writes of the sin often evidenced by the righteous: "It is far more pernicious: something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue." Thus do good works lead to frustration when people don't reform, or piety to pride, or faithfulness to disdain for unchurched heathen who are getting all the attention from the Emergent-Church types these days.

"The parable that Rembrandt painted," Nouwen says, "might well be called 'The Parable of the Lost Sons." I hadn't thought about it, how one can get lost while dwelling on his own land, or become alienated from a father while living under his roof.

And surely this must be a harder sin to overcome, Nouwen claims: "the hardest conversion to go through is the conversion of the one who stayed home." It puts me in mind of the scene in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, when the hunted priest is in a prison cell with the dregs of humanity, but also with a pious woman who condemns him when she learns that he is a drunkard:

"God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety? ... salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer..."

No wonder Christ warned that the way is narrow. We can stray onto the path of the prodigal, or worse, dwell on our father's land doing good works, but let grow up in our hearts the dark cancer of a Pharisee. Why is the latter worse? Consider for whom Christ reserved his harshest words. Or recall that the prodigal realized he was lost. The angry son thought he was in the right. Did he ever go back into his father's house, to join the feast? We don't know. And yet, Nouwen says, the encouragement in the story is that the father is always there, ready to welcome his children with open arms, if only they will lay down their pride and rebellion. Which is easier said than done, and usually said about other people, rather than ourselves.