The Prodigal

I wrote a piece for a Lenten meditation about Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son, and thought I'd post it here.  (And I added some extra images of a Prodigal Son statue that I am so intrigued with.)

Scripture:

  Then Jeus said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any. That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father. When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’ But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.

All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’ The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’ His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”

Perhaps the most well known of all parables, the Story of the Prodigal Son, is really misnamed. The story Jesus told had two sons in it – both prodigals in their own way – but they are not even the central characters in the narrative. The father is. This father who gives when disgraced, who runs, who embraces, who showers with generosity, who throws a party, and who goes out to both sons is the central focus in the picture Jesus painted. The same is true of Rembrandt's painting. Jesus' story and Rembrandt's picture are both about two prodigal sons. Both of these boys traveled “to a far distant country” - one physically, one on the interior. Both needed to return home. Perhaps, a more fitting name for the account would be Returning to the Embrace of the Father.

Focal Points:

Looking for light: Rembrandt's use of light in this painting tells us where he wants us to look. Three people are illumined in a golden light – the father, the younger son and the older son standing on the right. In addtion, the light falls mostly on the hands of the father, the back of the younger son, and on the hands and face of the older son.

Father and Younger Son:

Clothing: The father is dressed in fine clothes of rich, regal red. Though elderly, he has a fullness to his stature. He is substantive and has a presence that takes up most of the left side of the painting. His red robe is in an arch shape, like an open door welcoming in those in need of shelter. The kneeling son, on the other hand is dressed in rags the color of dirt. He is emaciated and is dwarved in comparison to the more substantial frame of his father. The sandals on his feet are worn out – perhaps depicting his long journey home or that he has come to the end of his own resources (or both!)

The father's hands: Two hands embrace the younger son's back, but on closer examination, they are very different from one another. The father's left hand is strong, muscular and quite masculine. The fingers are spread out and active. There is a certain pressure about this hand, as though it is not just touching the son, but holding him with a gentle strength. The father's right hand is refined, soft, tender, looking almost feminine. It does not hold or grasp, but just touches with an elegant quality to it. Its feminity offers comfort, consolation and a tender caress.

Interestingly, this caressing hand is right above the bare, wounded foot of the kneeling son, while the masculine hand parallels the foot dressed in the sandal. “Is it too much to think that one hand protects the vulnerable side of the son, while the other hand reinforces the son's strength and desire to get on with his life?” (Henri Nouwen)

Older Son: The man standing to the right in the painting is thought to be the older son. He wears the red robes of his father, showing he belongs to the household. However, his illumined hands show a marked difference from that of his father's. His hands are clasped, closed and held close to his body. While his eyes are totally focused on the interaction before him, his face is stern looking with no smile or emotion. There is a good distance between him and what is going on before him. (This could depict physical distance, as in the story Jesus told, the older brother was not there when his younger brother actually returned, or perhaps it represents the distance his heart had traveled from his “home” in the father.)

Looking for darkness: “The return”, though central to the scripture in Luke 15, is not centered in Rembrandt's picture. All the action between the father and younger brother is positioned on the left side while the older brother is on the right. In the Luke account, both boys have a choice to make. Will they leave their darkness and move into the light. We know the younger son makes his journey through darkness back to the father, but what of the older son? We are left wondering. Jesus tells us he is invited in by the father to join the celebration but we do not know what he eventually chooses. In Rembrandt's picture, his face is illumined, but he seems so be unmoved by the father's joy. Right in the center of this picture is a large, dark, open space, perhaps creating the tension of the question, “Who will truly come home?”

Reflection:

Spend a few moments looking at the picture, allowing your eyes to rest on places that pique your curiosity. As you settle into gazing, move your eyes back to one area of the picture that intrigues, evokes emotion or disturbs you. Ask the Father why He has brought your attention to this place at this time. What is it He wants to say to you? Don't be afraid of whatever comes forth, remembering that the embrace of the Father is generous enough to hold it all.

Perhaps you see yourself in the face of one of the main subjects of the painting. Which person do you most identify with? Are you one of the people sitting in the darkness, just watching and inquiring about this Father's great love? Are you the younger son who believes he is “no longer worthy to be called a son”?(Luke 15) or are you the returned younger son who lays his head on the Father's chest and senses His embrace? Are you the older son who “has been working hard on the father's farm, but has never fully tasted the joy of being at home?” (Nouwen) Whoever you identify with, can you hear the Father who reminds all sons (and daughters) of who they are? “You are extravagantly loved. Come home to Me.”

The Vocation

Part 3 of the story...(final part for now!)

The other day, I was writing a piece for a friend about Rembrandt's painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son.  As part of my study, I came across a great little book by Henri Nouwen about the painting.  His experience of Rembrandt's work of art so strikingly mirrored my encounter with The Kiss, I found myself weeping over it as I read it.  

I guess I had known that God "gave" me the picture of The Kiss at a time of hardship and had used it to sustain me for a long, six year period of darkness in my life.  And for that I am so, so grateful!  What I didn't know was The Kiss would move from being a bolster to hold me up in dark times, to the voice of a new calling in my life.

"I have a new vocation now", is how Nouwen describes the transforming effect of his picture.  That is how I feel about The Kiss.

I have a new vocation now.  To speak and write and live from the vantage point of The Kiss:

As one who is loved

As one who is enveloped

As one who can let go of her rehearsed speeches

As one who knows that the Father "is not listening", so I don't have to either

As one who holds on and is held

As one on my knees before my Love

As one held close

As one who gives in to the embrace

As one who is kissed

To live from The Kiss is to speak into realms void of affection; to convey freedom to places of bondage.  It is to move energized by the Father's great abundance into houses of scarcity and hoarding.  It is to remember that everyone I see is invited into the kiss, and to remind them of that fact.

I have a new vocation now.  

And in case that wasn't totally clear already, as I was praying over all of this, here was my "fortune" from a dinner the other night.

Funny how God keeps using some sort of canvas and color to get my attention!!

The Kiss

Part 2 of my story...

I came across a phrase when I was seventeen that summed up my love affair with Jesus.  Written by an Argentinian poet and translated into English, it was etched onto the tablet of my mind as pure truth.

"He kissed me and now I am someone different."

That was what had happened between me and Jesus.  He had kissed me!  And with that kiss, my heart, my mind and my life were transformed!  Like the old fairy tales where a dark spell has been cast upon the princess and she has fallen into a deep sleep, so I was awakened by the kiss of a Stranger, and life would never be the same again.

Many years passed from those early moments of first love (and first kisses), but the poetry of it reverberated always through the halls and corridors of my soul.  Sometimes soft...sometimes loud... the kiss always lingered near.

Until I came to a time of great adversity.  The echo of the kiss was fading as life was difficult and aching.  I was struggling deeply with who I was and what I was called to do.  I found myself living in a new place - both physically and in my soul - disoriented.  Labels and categories that had once been useful, were now confining me and squeezing me in.  They had been places of comfort before, but now just caused confusion, angst, and resentment.  I was trying to find my way by listening to the voices - of people and society - around me but though I longed for guidance, it all sounded like gibberish.  I was propelled by the internal voice of "should"....'I should be this...I should do this....I should have this....'  My heart ached.

During this time, I took a trip to Europe to go visit some friends and ended up on a spur of the moment journey into Vienna.  And I found God waiting for me there.

All over on display in Vienna was Gustav Klimt's painting, The Kiss.  I had never seen it before, but now it was all around me - on posters, in stores, on match boxes, on shopping bags...everywhere!  The funny thing is, I hated it!  It seemed gaudy and excessive; too gold and geometric.  It offended my eyes, but I could not get away from it.  And, like a thistle that secretly attaches itself to a sock or pant leg while on a hike, unknowingly I returned home carrying this picture in my mind.

Back on this continent, I soon received a letter from a friend from Singapore.  She knew of my internal struggle and the voices that seemed to dominate the conversations in my head.  Though she had no advice for a fix, her closing line to the letter was simply, "May you enjoy His many kisses".  

(Funny...for the first time in my life, I think I understand the Psalmists use of the word "Selah".  When a spark of God's beauty has been glimpsed and the only response is to stop and pause in wonder!)

Perhaps you will think me dense, or perhaps you will see God as a great, persistent Lover, but even after all this, I did not "selah" - pause and reflect.  I did however, walk into the house of a friend of mine and there, hanging at the top of her split level stairs was a picture of Klimt's, The Kiss!

Still fighting my distaste for the picture, a few mornings later, I relented and met God on the couch.  I really didn't feel like I needed a lesson in kissing, but rather clarity on my life direction.  I needed answers, and relief, and peace from Him.   Instead,  He directed me to the story of The Prodigal Son.

Perhaps the most well known story in the scriptures, I am sure I had read it a hundred times.  I was skimming my way through the passage when I came to the part where the squandering son comes to his senses and decides to go back to his father.  Reading a little more slowly, I could see the picture Jesus was painting when he said, "when he was still a long way off, his father saw him.  His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him and kissed him."  (emphasis mine)

Klimt's picture flooded my mind...and was transforming into something beautiful before my eyes.  God had given me a picture of a "prodigal daughter" through Klimt's image.  While I was a long way off (away from the original kisses of my Love), He saw me.  Not only did He see me, but He came to me (all the way to Vienna and back!)  Not only did He come to me, He kissed me...again!

Through tears, I read on in the story.  The son begins to confess to his father - true things - that he had sinned and wasn't worthy to be called a son.  Those were true things my heart understood, because I knew that was my confession too!  But then the story turns to the central person in the narrative and a phrase, like the one when I was seventeen, changed my life.

"But the father wasn't listening."

The father wasn't listening.  He was too busy calling for clothing to be put on this child of his, for rings and shoes to be lavished on him, for food to be prepared, and for a celebration to begin.  (And I'd like to believe the father was clutching the child's face and showering it with kisses in between shouting out those orders.)  

It was in that space, between the confession of the son and "but the father wasn't listening", that God said, "Tara, all those things you say about yourself or labels you put on yourself...well, I'm not listening.  All those voices that bombard you to tell you what they expect out of you...well, I'm not listening.  All the "shoulds" that berate you...I'm not listening to them.  Here, with me, all that matters is My embrace and My kisses.  I am not listening to anything else.  And if I am not listening to any of the other noise, you don't have to either!"

That is where I find myself.  Kissed and changed.  A prodigal extravagantly (in spite of everything) loved.  An embraced woman in a picture covered with elaborate robes.   

I find I have a God who pays no attention to the voices that would try to define me.  Rather He reminds me of who I am - the beloved finding her identity only in what the Lover says about her.  So, I become the woman in Klimt's picture - resting and delighting in the embrace of my Love, and enjoying His many kisses!