Sermons

Mar 18 - The Rev. Christopher McLaren - The Prodigal Father

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Sunday March 18, 2007 Lent 4C
Text: Luke 15 1-3, 11b-32 The Prodigal Father

In one of his stories, Ernest Hemingway tells about a young man who wrongs his father and he runs away from home to the city of Madrid. Out of great love for his son, the father travels to the city to try to find his estranged son. In desperation he takes out an ad in the Madrid newspaper, that reads simply, 'Paco, meet me Hotel Montana, 12 noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa.' The next when the father arrives at the hotel, the scene is wild. There he finds eight hundred young men named Paco milling about, anxiously searching the crowd for the face of their father, their hearts aching to embrace the forgiveness offered. Evidently we are not alone in our search for a loving father.

PAUSE – new story

Making my way through the crowds at Mardi Gras I spotted her with her 4 month old child, a woman at whose wedding I had reluctantly officiated. She was the only person I had ever advised to call off a wedding. Her father and I begged her to reconsider but to no avail. Through the eyes of blind love we didn’t understand; her father was the enemy trying to break up the relationship. Less than two years later our prophecies had come true. Her husband had beaten her severely after the birth of their child, she had left in fear with a restraining order and the father she had rejected and reviled had opened his home to her and her new baby, a safe harbor.

PAUSE – new story

It was a strained telephone conversation at first but it ended with the message she had most wanted to hear even through her shame and helplessness. Her mother had said those beautiful words that almost broke her heart but mended something at the same time, “Come home and bring the baby with you, I’ll wire the money for your plane ticket. I love you.”

PAUSE – new story

I could feel her anger as she said it; “I’ve been working myself silly at that University for 35 years, day in and day out. I’ve never gotten a break or had time to go off and find myself, but my husband still doesn’t know what he wants to do when he grows up and I’m tired and working while he tries to find himself. When is it going to be my turn to do something for me, my turn to be the irresponsible one? My turn to do something I really want to do?

PAUSE – new story

I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I can see my grandmother pouting in the backseat of a car in our garage, in a reverie of passive-aggressive hatred. She and my grandfather had traveled for two days to our home for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary and for some unknown reason she was refusing to attend the celebration dinner at a local Thai restaurant. She was stubbornly boycotting the party in some awful display of parental manipulation and rejection. I remember thinking how much like the older son she seemed, how out of touch with the celebration, how selfish, how bitter.

I’m sure that you’ve experienced them yourself just as I have. They are what I would call Prodigal Moments. Moments when the force and power of this universal story of failure and forgiveness and extravagant love comes crashing into our world.

Jesus has been taking criticism for his policy of radical welcome. Simply put, his habit of sharing table fellowship with a questionable social group had rankled the religious authorities. Jesus was messing with their neat categories of just who is “In” and who is “Out” just like he continues to mess with ours. Who is welcome at our table? Who is welcome in our pews? Do we have a policy of radical welcome?

In response to his critics, Jesus decides to tell a parable, one of those pesky little scraps of story that tease the mind into active thought. The trouble with parables is that more than us reading them they seem to read us, and that can be unnerving at times. Welcome to the ways of Jesus.

So, we get a story of two sons. There is nothing quite like sibling rivalry and a poorly drawn up will to bring out the best in families. The youngest is so “thrilled” with the whole arrangement he delivers one of the most offensive speeches contained in all of our Holy Book. It goes something like this, “Dad, pardon the obvious disrespect, but I wish you were dead, so I could get what little inheritance I have coming to me right now, leave this miserable town, get away from my “perfect” brother, and find my own way in the wide world.” To almost everyone’s surprise the father actually does the unthinkable. He doesn’t get horribly offended, and cut the miserable “fruit of his loins”out of the family estate planning. He must have had a great therapist. The wealthy landowner nobleman father divvies up his estate and gives his younger son his 1/3 early as was the traditional Jewish custom.

With his future in hand the younger son skedaddles to Babylon, the French Quarter of New Orleans, Amsterdam’s red light district or Ninevah’s south side, take your pick. Lets just say he played the ponies, drank too much, embraced hedonism, ran with the wrong crowd and finally got robbed blind by a girl you wouldn’t bring home to mama. About that time the economy went south and he found himself in need of work. It was humbling in the extreme for a Jewish boy, even a bad Jewish boy, to slop the pigs, but desperate times required desperate measures. With the bright lights and all the allures and pleasures of city life but a faint memory, the younger son had plenty of time to think. One can almost hear the music of Harry Chapin diagnosing an agony at the heart of a the matter, "The cat's in the cradle, and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon . . . When ya comin' home? Son, I don't know when - but we'll get together then, y'know we'll have a good time then"? Peering into the smelly mysteries of the slop bucket of his life he had an “Aha Moment.” “What in the world am I doing here, when I can go home,?” he said to himself and began to fashion a first-rate groveling speech for his father.

So, home he went, speech prepared, ready to become an employee on his father’s estate. Here the story gets really good. As he approached home, we are told the most delicious detail. His father had not forgotten him, he had not written him off, quite to the contrary, his father had been awaiting his return, hoping it, praying it, anticipating it, scanning the horizon. In fact, there is in the text the mere hint that the father has had his people searching for his son, on the lookout for him, private investigators in the shadows watching, just in case.

The scene of the reunion is one of those tear-jerkers. The Father doesn’t sit in his study looking severely over his spectacles, his fingers drumming on the desktop, awaiting a grand apology and show of repentance. No, Jesus tells us that the father runs to the son. Losing all sense of dignity, the father jumps out of his Jaguar and runs through the scrub of the desert in his best Italian shoes and tailored suit to meet his weary, filthy, skinny, desperate son. The camera shifts to slow-motion and soft filter focus. The meeting is passionate, tears flowing, stammering apologies, sounds too deep for words. Surprisingly the boy finds himself swept off his feet by his father, his rehearsed groveling speech is cut-off, not allowed. He can hardly get a word in before his father swoops him up into the party. If there is a moment of transformation in the younger son, it is probably here in the arms of his father. On our own we seldom comprehend our own sinfulness. Only in the light of God’s love do we understand the darkness of our souls, our own deep need of God.

There follows a raucous party replete with the symbols of son-ship, power and restoration. The best robe is brought, a signet ring, and yes more of those Italian shoes. There is great rejoicing as the band sets up and the entire household celebrates the return of a son; one thought to be dead is alive, one lost to them has returned. Their worst fears have turned into laughter, their “I told you so’s” and “serves him rights” have been transformed by the “radical welcome” of the father. Compassion reigns. To be prodigal is to be extravagant almost to the point of being wasteful, and it is the father who seems extravagant, not the son. He is the prodigal father, prodigal in his welcome, prodigal in his compassion, prodigal in his forgiveness, prodigal in his love.

However, clouds gather on the edge of all this sunshine as the older brother approaches the house. His irresponsible brother has returned to a grand welcome while he has been the hard-working-stay-close-to-home-I’m-always-dependable kind of guy. Predictably, he is angry and boycotts the party. In a touching gesture his father comes out to woo him into the party, but it is a troubled and troubling conversation. The elder son is so out of touch with his father’s generosity. This hyper-responsible son is bitter, hardened, and suspicious; he rejects his father’s compassionate ways. Even though he has stayed close to home, it is the elder brother that doesn’t seem to know the father and his prodigal nature. He is still busy trying to earn his father’s affections and approval, oblivious that both already exist in abundance. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The father’s extravagant love, deep compassion, and generous heart has always been available, free for the taking, the enjoying, the living.

The parable ends with unanswered questions. Will the eldest son join the party? Will the radical welcome, the prodigal love of the father overcome his eldest son’s self-righteous resentments? We are left to wonder. Left to ponder our own prodigal moments. Left to find our way into and through this story.

In an eloquent sermon entitled, "The Weight of Glory," C.S. Lewis pointed out that the problem isn't that our desires are too strong. Rather, our desires are too weak. We are far too easily pleased. We settle for mere trifles like money, sex, status, glory, when God wants to give us true wealth, genuine intimacy. We were not made for the far country, however enticing it may be. We are not made to stand outside boycotting the party. We are sons and daughters, and we need not settle for less.

I remember one time in a college bible study someone remarked that the church seemed more full of older-brother-types, people heaven-bent on doing everything right, refusing to embrace those sinful, inheritance-squandering-types, while Jesus seemed most at home with the younger-brother-kind-of-folks. It caught me off-guard at first having spend my whole life in the church. However, the more I’ve pondered the story of the Prodigal Father and his extravagant love, the more I came to realize that the father goes out to both of his sons. He makes the humbling trip to both of his children to deliver his message of wild forgiveness, of radical welcome in person. In the end the distinction between the younger son and the older son breaks down, both are his children, both need his love and wild forgiveness, both need to hear his radical welcome home, both need to be reconciled. Both long for intimacy with the Father. Both need to experience the Father running toward them with arms open wide, full of forgiveness. And so do each of us.