It has happened more than once. I
stand in the church entry hall, vestments on, microphone ready, bulletin in hand,
on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I watch the parking lot fill with cars full
of young families with children. The parents and children pour out of the cars,
dressed up, smiling and laughing, clearly glad to be at St. Thomas and with one
another. Sometimes they even speak interesting languages and wear exotic
clothing, and their skin tones reflect the amazing diversity of God’s creation.
I repeat: this has really happened, more than once. This is not some crazy
dream or made-up story that I am telling you today… But here’s the rub: these
wonderful people who are filling our parking lot at 5:30 on Saturday don’t join
me in the church. They don’t even look in my direction. They skip merrily into
the fellowship hall, the fellowship hall that they have rented for a birthday
party or a wedding reception. And my shoulders droop as I cry out to God: “It’s
not fair! We have a really great worship service going on this afternoon.
Harvey has worked hard to pick out just the right songs; I have spent hours
writing a sermon; parishioners have brought wine and cheese and friendship to
share afterwards. We’re nice; we’re welcoming. We could all be home watching
basketball or enjoying the warm sunshine. But we’re here in church! Why don’t
the others want to join us? It’s not fair!” And then I grow resentful toward
those smiling families. “Peggy, these renters are taking up all the parking
places in the lot,” I grumble. “We need to set out cones or put up signs to
save spaces for our parishioners.
People are going to leave if they drive up for church and can’t find a space.
Maybe we shouldn’t rent our hall on Saturday nights. These renters are just in
the way.”
What if, while I was stewing over
this unjust and troublesome situation, a visiting priest wandered into the church
and started chatting with you guys in the pews before the service? What if he
suggested, “Why don’t we go join the folks in the fellowship hall? It looks
like a great party! I bet they’d be glad to have us there. There are only 10 of
us in here, anyway.”
“We can’t do that!” I would no doubt
protest. “What about our service?!” At this point, I would be ready to call the
bishop and tattle on this rogue priest who is embarrassing me in front of my
parishioners and creating havoc at my 5:30 service. In the meantime, I would likely
insist in disapproving tones, “If that’s what you want to do, then you just go
ahead, but I have to stay here. I have to do this Eucharist …. That’s what I’m
here for, that’s my job, that’s who I am. I’ll do lots of things, but I can’t change
who I am ….”
It is one thing to leave home of your
own free will and then return. It is another thing to have “home” taken out
from under you. Yet, that is what happens to us all the time, isn’t it? Ask my
children, who have grown up with one parent on each side of the Atlantic, torn
between cultures and languages, never completely at home anywhere. Ask a
college student who returns with joy to his parents’ house, only to realize
that it isn’t really home anymore. Ask the wife who returns to her house after
her husband’s funeral, and it is no longer home. Ask the divorced couple, who watch
their home disintegrate before their eyes. Ask us baby boomers, even those of
us who are priests, as we look at the church, also our home, so different from the churches
that we remember when we were growing up. Ask, I imagine, those of you who are
long-term members of St. Thomas, as you look around and wonder where you are,
with staff changes, friends who have died, and even furniture that is
rearranged. Home slips away so easily in all of the changes and losses in this
world. Even in church. We want God to fix our homelessness, and we get pretty
upset when we feel that it is God who is intensifying it. What we want are
the pie-in-the-sky reassurances of the old Appalachian song, I can't feel at home in this world anymore: "This world's not my home. I'm just passing through ..." What we get, instead, is today’s parable.
Here in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus actually
tells three parables about lost things being brought home: the parable of the
lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the two sons.
“Lostness” and the joy that comes with finding home again, is the common
denominator in the three parables, but they are set up differently. Eugene
Peterson points out that the stories are arranged in a spiral of
intensification.[1] In
the first story, one out of 100 sheep is lost. When that sheep is found, the
shepherd is joyful and calls family and friends to rejoice with him. In the
second story, one out of ten coins is lost, and when the housewife finds the
coin, she rejoices and calls family and friends to join her in celebration. In
the third story, one out of just two sons is lost--sons, much more important to us than sheep or coins-- and when he comes home
again, the father rejoices and throws a party for the whole village. The
pattern is the same (loss, homecoming, celebration) but the higher and higher
stakes in these stories deepen our anticipation as we listen to them. By the
time the son story comes around, we are expecting the happy ending. After all,
God often favors the younger son, the underdog: just think of Jacob and Esau. Peterson
imagines that even the Pharisees listening to Jesus would be cheering for the
happy endings of these three parables.
But the parable of the two sons does
not end when the younger son returns home and his father rejoices. It continues
with the story of the elder son. The elder son does not rejoice that his
brother has come home. He is angry, filled to overflowing with self-righteous
indignation. He stands alone, home and possessions and sense of
self destroyed by his father’s wildly forgiving actions, refusing to join the celebration.
He sounds like me on Saturday nights when the fellowship hall is full. The
father comes out to meet him and shows him the same grace-filled love that he
had shown to the younger son. “All that is mine is yours,” the father offers,
giving him everything. This part of the parable, however, has no ending. It
throws the rest of the story off kilter and is meant to shake us up. Like the
fig tree parable that we heard last week, this parable is left open, open to
our response. We stand with the Pharisees and watch Jesus rejoicing with
sinners and outcasts, and we, like the elder brother, have to decide if we will
join them. And our positive response is not assured.
We usually hear today’s parable as a lesson
about repentance. Repentance and grace: the Prodigal Son. But it is really a
story of reconciliation. It is the story of two sons and a father. Barbara Brown
Taylor writes: “It’s about the high cost of reconciliation, in which individual
worth, identity and rightness all go down to the dust so that those as good as
dead in their division may live together in peace.”[2]
“O, how good and pleasant it is,” says the Psalmist, “when brothers dwell
together in unity.”
When my children were young, one of
my greatest pleasures as a mother was to go in and look at my sleeping children
at night, all safe and snug in their beds, all tucked under my wings at home,
no longer quarreling, or whining, but peacefully sleeping like little angels. I
would go in and bless them and feel that all was right with the world, all was reconciled. When
they grew up and would be away at sleepovers or summer camp, or college, I
would look over at their empty beds and feel uneasy. I wanted them home, together, where
I thought that I could protect them. Even now, when my grown children are home
for a visit, there is something wonderful about thinking that they are safe,
that home is restored as we gather under one roof at night.
God, however, takes that motherly
love one step further. God sent God’s Son away from home, away to a land where
he loved so much that we killed him for it. God sent him to us not so that we will
refuse to grow up or so that we won’t leave home. God sent him to us so that we can say to ourselves every
day: “I am loved so much that I am free to leave home,”[3] free to mrirror that love in the world.
Pharisees, don’t miss the party. You
are loved so much that you are free to leave home.
Sinners, don’t miss the party. You
are loved so much that you are free to leave home.
Repentant ones, don’t miss the party.
You are loved so much that you are free to leave what has been your home.
Rev. Anne, don’t miss the party. You are
loved so much that you are free to leave home.
People of St. Thomas, you who already
have one foot out the door in our mission statement to “restore all people to one
another and to God in Jesus Christ,” you are loved so much that you are free to leave home. Don’t miss the party.
[1]
Eugene Peterson, Tell it Slant (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 94f.
[2]
Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family,” found at http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com/newsletter374062.htm,
April 17, 2006.
[3]
Quote from Henri Nouwen found on a colleague’s Facebook page! J
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