Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32
Sunday, September 28, 2020
Family Appreciation Weekend, Week 7, and the 30th Sunday of COVID Time
I’m not sure two years makes a tradition,
but I’ve been preaching on the story of the Prodigal Son,
on family weekend
for many a year now,
across a couple of institutions.
so, let’s go ahead and call it one, I think.
And you can read into this as much as you like.
though I surely hope you parents don’t think of the Bucknell experience,
as “squandering a fortune on dissolute living”
As I’ve mentioned before:
I hold these students here (at chapel) in high esteem,
in no small part,
due to their making much healthier,
and sensible life and social choices,
than I did during my own college years.
in this strange moment of digital connection –
if you’re on Zoom,
and feeling like it,
you can even ask my own parents about
my prodigal days.
Or you can check in with my very own younger brother,
and ask him how well our lives and relationships map,
onto these two brothers,
about neither of whom there’s much good to say.
I’m imagining that this story is familiar to you.
It may be the best story.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain and Charles Dickens are said to have thought so)
I imagine if you try,
that you can feel the younger son’s hunger.
his desperation.
It’s hard – for those of us who know the story so well –
for the smell of the fatted calf not to waft into the front half of the story,
but I’m imagining you can feel his desperation.
He is destitute, and dying, and desperate.
And so too, I imagine you,
can see the father come running.
The very moment he sees his son come over the hill.
Full only of love and relief,
when we’d expect shame and hurt and a good talking to.
I imagine you can feel his embrace,
and the tears that must have flowed.
I imagine you can taste that first good meal,
and feel the good robe on your shoulders,
after weeks and months of hunger and cold.
This is,
the story.
Our story.
the story of a God,
a parent who loves us so much,
that there’s no distance to far,
no sin too great,
no insult too deep,
that could keep God away from us.
A God so overflowing with love,
that the second we are seen,
returning, even when we’re far off,
comes running,
with arms open.
ready to throw a big party.
This is our story,
at it’s most simple
And it is lovely,
and it is – even amidst this complicated world and life –
I truly believe the most important thing.
You are really and truly and deeply loved.
More than you are any other thing,
and no matter what you do.
But there’s more to the story too.
Which is worth a closer look.
Especially as we begin to wonder, inevitably
what it means to live,
in this world,
with all its troubles,
while surrounded by such a deep love,
each day.
First,
I don’t think the younger son really repents.
It’s not regret or sorrow or contrition that sends him back home,
but hunger.
He rehearses a speech, to be sure,
and delivers some of it.
And the words are right, perhaps,
but the deep down, internal dialogue,
is all about how the pigs and his father’s servants are eating,
but he’s not.
Which I think means,
in these difficult days,
or those to come,
that even despair and hunger,
are enough, sometimes.
I hope that the younger son,
came to some place of deep sorrow and regret and repentance,
but we don’t know.
We only know that the father was there,
with open arms,
ready to rejoice, nonetheless.
It’s probably fairly obvious,
how significant a slap in the face it would have been,
when the younger son demanded his half of the inheritance,
and ran off.
“give me the share of the property that will belong to me”
is the 1st century version of,
“I hate you and I wish you were dead.”
But it’s maybe a little less obvious,
how insulting the older son’s behavior is.
Here in this pivotal moment of rejoicing,
and repair.
This long hoped-for day,
For the elder brother to stay outside the party sulking,
might be just as bad,
as the younger son’s profligate ways.
Not that I can’t empathize
maybe more than I’d like to.
He’s asking, after all, for fairness.
He’s been working hard,
grinding away,
earning that inheritance.
He stayed,
and watched his father’s heart break,
and put his nose to the grindstone,
and obeyed his father dutifully.
All he wants is what he thinks he’s due.
but fairness has blinded him to love in his midst.
Turned him cold and jealous.
He’s keeping a ledger, a tally.
and he thinks he’s owed,
and it leads him down the same path,
of rejecting the father,
and his love.
Jesus is trying to get us to understand,
that love is not about some cosmic ledger,
it is its own economy,
its own source and its own end.
Ledger keeping doesn’t work when it comes to love in real life either,
If we keep track of the number of dishes done,
the number of “I love yous” initiated.
who gets to choose the TV show you watch how many times,
who’s done more kindness this week,
all the simple acts,
that make up the living, breathing, stuff,
of daily loving.
If we’re counting those,
and tracking them,
we are setting ourselves up only for failure.
The elder son’s failure.
And even so,
the Father does what no self-respecting landlord would do.
He leaves the party,
his own party,
to tend to his other prodigal son.
Saying, “all that’s mine is yours.”
And it’s not enough,
in that moment.
how painful must that rejection have been,
not based in profligate living,
but fairness and jealousy.
We can only, I suppose, pity the father.
And hope we can do better sometimes.
And know that we’re forgiven when we don’t.
we don’t know how either of these stories end.
It stops, I think,
in just the right place to make us wonder…
Does the elder brother fuss and sleep it off,
and wake up refreshed and glad that his brother is home?
Or does he stay resentful?
Does the younger son,
stay on the straight and narrow,
or after a week at home,
does he get restless,
and start to dream again about the booze and drugs and prostitutes,
and whatever else was part of that life between?
We don’t know.
All we know for sure is that the father loves first,
and loves recklessly.
So if you remember only one thing today
from this story,
let it be that you are really and truly loved,
no matter what.
But if you remember two things,
maybe the second
is that love and grace
are risky.
It’s risky for God, of course.
who loves you, me, loves us so much,
and must feel the pain of rejection so acutely and so regularly,
that we can’t even fathom it.
And even so, loves us all the more.
But grace is risky for us too.
As we attempt to live it,
as we attempt to steward it.
It perhaps goes without saying,
that loving things in this world,
comes with heavy risk.
Dr. King wrote famously (“Letter from Birmingham Jail”),
as he was lamenting the white church’s unwillingness to stand with him,
in the cause of justice and civil rights,
that there is no great disappointment without great love.
if we don’t care about things,
they won’t disappoint us.
But I find myself wondering today,
if the converse might be true as well:
That there is no deep love,
without disappointment and risk.
But what other choice do we have?
If not love,
then despair,
or apathy,
or selfishness.
The world breaks our hearts each day
if we’re paying attend–
each hungry child,
each forest fire,
each unjust verdict,
each failure to indict.
each broken spirit that graces my office,
or, these days, my Zoom screen.
Each person who falls sick,
because they can’t afford to skip a day of work.
we use lots of words to describe that feeling these days:
fear, and worry, anxiety, and anger.
Fatigue.
God, the fatigue.
But I think,
the right word is grief.
Which is but love,
mixed with loss.
Love, mixed with disappointment.
Love, mixed with betrayal.
to love greatly,
is to risk much.
love makes us vulnerable,
and we love any way.
sometimes we welcome a stranger into our home or our community,
and they are not nice to be around.
sometimes we love a community enough,
to fight and advocate and work for it to become better,
and it fails us.
Sometimes we enter a relationship ready to trust and hope,
and they let us down.
And we love anyway.
Sometimes the pain and injustice in the world,
feels too much to bear,
and we love anyway.
because God first loved us.
And because we long,
deep down to see that love at work in the world.
And we know,
deep down,
that it flows through us.
And on those days,
in which the world breaks us down,
and leaves us tired,
and worn,
and disappointed,
and hungry,
and lost,
and despairing.
We come right back to the beginning of our story,
knowing even our despair and our hunger,
our exhaustion and our fear,
lead us right back to God.
Who’s waiting for us with the good robe,
ready to welcome us back home,
with a meal cooking,
and a party ready to get started.