Sermon Seeds - Embracing Love

March 9, 2010

Friends, 

Below is information about the scripture for this Sunday, March 14 - the 4th Sunday in Lent. If you are able, please join our Wednesday morning Bible study group at United Church tomorrow morning at 7 am in the library (at this point we plan to have Bible study as scheduled - however if schools are delayed or closed tomorrow, we will cancel the Bible study) when these texts are discussed:

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

If you cannot come to the Bible Study, we still invite you to deepen your Sunday worship experience by reading the suggested lectionary texts for this coming Sunday. Our worship services are at 8:45 am and 11 am.

Grace and Peace, Richard & Jill Edens and Susan Steinberg

Weekly Prayer
Eternal lover of our wayward race, we praise you for your ever-open door. You open your arms to accept us even before we turn to meet your welcome; you invite us to forgiveness even before our hearts are softened to repentance. Hold before us the image of our humanity made new, that we may live in Jesus Christ, the model and the pioneer of your creation. Amen.

Focus Scripture: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.'So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."'

So he set off and went to his father. But 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. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe-the best one-and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate. "Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him.

But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"

Reflection: Embracing Love

We might wonder why Jesus' well-known but often under-read parable in this passage from the Gospel of Luke is commonly called "The Prodigal Son," when it might better be named after "The Prodigal Father," if "prodigal" really means recklessly extravagant. Yes, the son wastes his inheritance on a good time in a distant land, but his father seems just as free and even wasteful in lavishing his wealth on a son who comes home not in sincere repentance but calculated self-interest. Oddly, this little story may cause as much discomfort and discontent in the heart of the listener as it describes among the characters in the story. Return to relationship--reconciliation--is a powerful theme in this week's focus scripture, but it is not an easy homecoming. "Welcome home" may sound all warm and fuzzy, but the return home will present all sorts of challenges.

Once, when members of the news media brought up to Prince Charles the prospect of his ascending to the throne of England, he stopped the conversation cold when he said, "Gentlemen, you are speaking of the death of my mother." The younger son in Luke's story exhibits no such sense of respect or even affection for his father. One might imagine that he was always impetuous, as second sons often are when they follow a responsible, hard-working firstborn who stands to inherit the lion's share of the estate anyway. The scholars say that the older son would receive two-thirds of the estate, with the rest divided up between the other heirs, enough of an injustice perhaps to turn a boy's mind toward other pursuits than working for his big brother. (One commentator, Timothy Shapiro, may steer preachers away from interpreting this text through birth order theory, but many commentaries do just that--perhaps because so many of them are written by first-borns!)

In fact, this younger brother isn't just impetuous--he comes across as a master manipulator who, Richard Swanson suspects, knows how "to play the old man like a fiddle." For example, we never quite feel confident that the younger son's repentance is "true"; Margaret Aymer points out that his conversion is more stomach-driven than heart-felt. Scholars often mention the words "honor" and "shame" when writing about this story, and there seems to be no end to the shame brought on the father (and presumably the family) by the self-centeredness of the younger son. Not that the boy's behavior is unheard of: the Apocrypha warns parents not to become dependent on their children (Sirach 33:20-24), even though one of the Ten Commandments clearly instructs children to "honor" their parents (Exodus 20:12).

We live in a culture very different from the one in which Jesus told this story, but families today still need to be protected, and parents should still be honored. However, we seem to move farther and farther away from the idea that we have responsibility to the community around us as well. Mary Gordon says the younger brother "seems to have the lack of self-consciousness of the irresponsible user," and indeed, he apparently has no regard for the suffering of his father, brother, other family members, or the wider community that would have been affected by the sale of land held by a family that no doubt contributed to the surrounding economy. The sale itself was a shameful thing, Leslie Hoppe writes, in a land-based economy in which Jewish families would not have sold their lands: "It was also a question of religious belief, since Jews considered their ancestral holdings to be God's gift to their families." No wonder the father throws a party for the whole town: it surely helped to ease some of the anger and resentment the community felt toward this wayward and irresponsible son.

As a servant, or as a beloved son?

About that conversion experience of a Jewish son sitting with the pigs, envying them their food: who can measure the boy's purity of heart, even as he practices the speech he hopes will restore him to his father's home, perhaps as a servant, but maybe, just maybe, as a beloved son? When the young man "came to himself," shaken by hunger and by just how low he had fallen, he began the long hard climb back, and his words, "I will get up and go to my father" remind us this Lent of resurrection, restoration, and new life. Daniel Deffenbaugh suggests that the boy returned with a measure of hope, "for he is still by grace able to utter the single word with which his entire misadventure began: 'Father.'" This is one of those times when "Abba" would sound particularly beautiful. Mary Gordon does not find it difficult to imagine how the father's welcome might have felt to the boy: "I was the child of an ardent father, so I could imagine the heat of a father's embrace that was led up to by a yearning run: the unseemly speed of the father who could not wait to see his child. Who runs for him, unable to bear the slowness of the normal progression, the son's ordinary pace." On the other hand, a male writer sees feminine imagery in the warmth of the father's words and actions: Bernard Brandon Scott writes, "The father behaves like a female, a mother, welcoming back her son," addressing him with "a mother's voice. Fathers in the ancient world were remote and distant from their sons." Can you imagine, then, how Jesus' story must have shocked his listeners?

Again, we might want to rename the parable, "The Resentful Brother," because much more ink is spent on the older, "faithful" brother who comes home to the sounds of a surprise party that's definitely not in his honor. Scholars agree that the party itself is what angers the older brother, more than the shame brought to the family by the younger brother, more than the economic realities of splitting up the family farm: Fred Craddock writes, "It is that party which is so offensive. The older brother has a point: of course, let the penitent come home. Both Judaism and Christianity provide for the return of sinners, but to bread and water, not fatted calf; to sackcloth, not a new robe; to ashes, not jewelry; to kneeling, not dancing; to tears, not merriment." We love to villainize those old Pharisees and feel all self-righteous ourselves, as if "our" Christian faith in some way contradicts or corrects the deepest beliefs of our ancient ancestors in faith. However, Bernard Brandon Scott offers a most provocative reflection on this story of two brothers, reminding us of the recurring theme in the life of Israel of younger brothers displacing older ones (think of Jacob or David). And then he startles us by claiming that this "is not just the Christian story, it is more importantly the story of Israel....this is how God has always dealt with [God's] wandering children. It is Christian anti-Semitism that sees this story only as the essence of the Gospel. This story was stolen from Israel." He also injects a moment of humor with his observation about the father's pledge to the older brother: "Everything that's mine is yours. This is going to come as a real shock to the younger son."

It's not fair!

This story is so powerful on so many levels, and it uses the most human of feelings to make its point. Mary Gordon says that Jesus is "a creator of fictions," and that reminds me of a definition of fiction that I heard recently on NPR, that fiction is something that didn't necessarily happen but could happen. We may not know many fathers like the one in this story, but many of us know what sibling rivalry feels like, and can resonate with Gordon's description of the older brother's anger as the kind that evokes "the child's first ethical statement, 'It's not fair.'" Barbara Brown Taylor's reflection on the older brother is delightful as she recalls what it felt like to be the oldest child herself, watching younger ones get away with so much more than she had: "There were not extra steps between the younger son's return and his welcome home party, no heart-to-heart with the old man, no extra chores, no go-to-your-room-for-a-week-and-think-about-what-you-have-done, just a clean robe for his back, and a fine ring for his hand, and a pair of new sandals for his feet." It's just not fair, right? "What do you have to do to get a party around here? Do you have to go off and squander your inheritance before you can come home to be embraced, and kissed, and assured that you belong?" Here she poignantly observes the ways that both sons are lost to the father, one "to a life of recklessness," and the other "to a more serious fate, to a life of angry self-righteousness that takes him so far away from his father that he might as well be feeding pigs in a far country." What Taylor does so well is to describe the love of the father who "does not love either of his sons according to what they deserve. He just loves them, more because of who he is than because of who they are." Sooner or later, even those of us "faithful ones," if that's indeed how we imagine ourselves, end up on that doorstep, too, struggling with our own self-righteousness: "It is up to each one of us to decide whether we will stand outside all alone being right, or give up our rights and go inside and take our place at a table full of reckless and righteous saints and scoundrels, brothers and sisters united only by our relationship to one loving father, who refuses to give us the love we deserve but cannot be prevented from giving us the love we need" (Taylor's sermon, "The Prodigal Father," is in The Preaching Life).

Even though this story is a familiar one, its power increases each time we hear it. Perhaps we might think of the experience of being dead and then restored to life; the son, the father says, "was dead and has come to life," but he's not the only one. The father, too, is restored to life, as parents in all ages are when their children come home. The prodigal, wasteful-in-love, father, "rejected and helpless in love with his child," experiences a kind of resurrection in his son's return, Stendahl writes.

Perhaps the most compelling image is that of being lost, and then found. Is it any wonder that we love to sing of it in "Amazing Grace"? Timothy Shapiro suggests that "One cannot get away from the abundance of loss in this story. Interpret this parable as commentary on the existential reality of being lost, that is, one's inability to retain that which is most important, be it salvation, redemption, love, grace, or whatever other experience of great value." If we begin at the beginning of the scene, we have a clue about how the lost-and-found figure in Jesus' thinking. There he is, when chapter fifteen opens, eating with sinners and tax collectors, not people we should romanticize as sweet, innocent people on the edge of society, rejected and alone. These were people who evoked visceral reactions from those who had made "better" choices, or indeed, had even had the privilege of making choices about their lives. Tax collectors weren't simply government officials who contributed to the workings of society; they were seen as traitors colluding with the hated Romans while they were separating people from their money. Sinners were people who were outside the "proper," acceptable community because they had violated religious laws, and all of these folks were definitely "the lost" in the eyes of the watching Pharisees and scribes. (We have, of course, our own version of these folks today.) The religious authorities complain about the company Jesus keeps (after all, you can't sit down and eat with just anyone), and he responds first with two other parables of lost-ness, about a sheep and a coin both precious in the eyes of their owners, both lost and then found, and both celebrated with a party, with everyone invited who is willing to rejoice.

Examining our own lives

And then, this story, a precious son lost, and his father lost, and, in a way, his big brother lost, too. It's especially appropriate for us to reflect on this story as more than just a good illustration of one of Jesus' teachings, or a really effective comeback to the self-righteousness of the religious authorities. We're deeply into the season of Lent now, and Richard Swanson reminds us that this is "a time of steady examination of what we do and do not add up to, a time for honesty and for thorough rethinking." This is the season "when Christians expect to change their habits, change their minds, change their lives." Where do we find ourselves in this story? How are we counted among "the lost"? Why do we so often identify with the older brother? It's only fair, right, that he should be angry that his "good-for-nothing" brother gets a fatted calf; after all, he doesn't even get a goat when he and his friends want to party! Why do we think that we're the ones who have been faithful and hard-working, and deserve everything we have? Did we deserve the lion's share of the estate in the first place? But did we notice that "our father" came out to us, just as he came out to our brother (that son of his, we'd rather call him), seeking us, reassuring us, spreading this largesse and mercy all around? Are we, like the older brother, perhaps stuck in scarcity thinking, when we'd be much happier, much freer, operating in abundance mode? Rodney Clapp describes abundance thinking particularly well: "Every time God's active, stretching, searching, healing love finds someone and calls that person back home, it does not mean there is less for the rest of us. It means there is more. More wine. More feasting. More music. More dancing. It means another, and now a bigger, party." Another, bigger party: that's abundance.

An especially challenging perspective on this text is offered by Margaret Aymer, who sees the father not so much as an image for God as "a metaphor for the faith community." She reminds us that "the two sons of the story live together in the Christian church: the younger who comes out of hunger and desperation, and the elder who disdains the welcome given to the younger. It may be that the parable is not speaking about how God will act but about how we should act to the one who was dead but is now alive." As an example, she reflects on how we respond to the hungry who, like the younger brother living in a distant country, are desperate for food and at the end of their resources. How do we respond to those in need? "Do we provide the basics, as though we were citizens of a faraway country who cared not for the welfare of this child of God?" In still another use of the word, "What might it mean, this Lent, to be the prodigal church?"

We fret about the young man's sincerity, and our own, but John Stendahl says, "often we worry about purity of motive and depth of feeling when the critical thing is simply what we do or where we go or remain." That is, the turning home itself was all it took, the bringing ourselves into range, so to speak, of God's love, which sets us free but waits and watches and hopes for our return. Did the father do the math on what his younger son had cost him? Stendahl says that this is "not a parable about prudence or wariness...Jesus describes a giddy welcoming joy in God's heart...his own joy in the fellowship of sinners. He is our elder brother and he delights to be at our party." We are the sinners and the tax collectors, the wandering and wasteful son, and perhaps the resentful older brother, too. Can we let ourselves be received and honored at the party, and can we bring ourselves to attend? As Roger Van Harn asks, "What would it be like for such grace to prevail?"
 

Focus Questions

1. In this Lenten season, in what ways do we feel alienated from all that is going on around us, perhaps even from those we hold most dear?

2. Do you find the younger son's repentance troubling? Why or why not?

3. Are there people whom we consider deserving of their fate, who do not "deserve" forgiveness quite so easily?

4. How do you think a "prodigal church" would behave?

5. We all know that Lent leads to Easter; what is the resurrection you long for in this season?

Reflection and Focus Questions by Kate Huey
Kate Huey is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. She is minister for covenantal stewardship in Local Church Ministries in Cleveland, Ohio.