Don't Miss the Party!

 

Years ago, I served in a parish with a Saturday evening service. The idea was that this service would grow the parish by bringing in folks who didn’t want to get up on Sunday mornings: young singles, former Catholics used to a Saturday mass, couples on their way out to dinner. On many a Saturday afternoon, I would stand in the church entry hall, vestments on and bulletin in hand. There, I’d watch the parking lot fill with cars full of young families with children. The parents and children would pour out of the cars, dressed up, smiling and laughing, clearly glad to be there with one another. Sometimes these families would even speak interesting languages and wear exotic clothing, and their skin tones would reflect the amazing diversity of God’s creation.

Now, I’ll bet you’re thinking that we need to start a Saturday service here at St. Ambrose, right? Or you think that I’m making all this up! Well, I’m not making it up, but here’s the rub: those wonderful people who filled the church parking lot at 5:30 on Saturdays didn’t join me in the church. They didn’t even look in my direction. They skipped merrily into the fellowship hall, the fellowship hall that they had rented for a birthday party or a wedding reception. And as I watched them, my shoulders would droop, and I would cry out in frustration to God: “It’s not fair! It’s not fair at all! We have a really great worship service going on this afternoon. The music is uplifting; I’ve spent hours writing a sermon; we even have a wine and cheese reception after the service, for goodness’ sake! We’re nice; we’re welcoming. What’s the deal? We could all be home watching basketball or enjoying the warm sunshine right now. But we’re here in church! Why don’t the others want to join us? It’s not fair!” And I’d grow resentful toward those smiling families. I’d grumble to our administrator that those renters were taking up all the parking places in the lot. Maybe we shouldn’t even rent our hall on Saturday nights.

Now, imagine that, as I was stewing over this unjust situation, a visitor had wandered into the church and had started chatting with people in the pews before the service. What if he had suggested, “Why don’t we just 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, full of self-righteousness. “What about our service?!” At this point, I would likely insist in disapproving tones, “If that’s what you all want to do, then you just go ahead, but I have to stay here. I’m the priest. I have to do this Eucharist …. That’s what I’m here for, that’s my job, that’s who I am.”

It is one thing, isn’t it, to leave home of your own free will and then return. It’s another thing to have “home” taken out from under you. Yet, that’s what happens to us all the time, isn’t it? Ask the survivors of the Marshall fire, staring at the charred wreckage of their dreams. Ask the Ukrainian refugees, who have to flee their homes and their lives as the bombs fall. 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 a college student who returns with joy to his parents’ house on break, only to realize that it isn’t really home anymore. Ask us older folks, as we look at the church, also our home, so different from the full churches that we remember when we were younger. 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. We want God to make things “fair” again, to reward us righteous ones, even to join us in our resentments. What we get, instead, is today’s parable.

Those of you who have been working on Jesus’ parables in Don’s class could help me out right now, I imagine. We just studied today’s Gospel lesson two weeks ago. But for everyone else, let me explain that here in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus actually tells three parables about lost things being brought home. First, before today’s reading, we have the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. And today, we have 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. When the lost son 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’re expecting the happy ending, the overall celebration.

But the parable of the two sons doesn’t 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. He responds like I did on Saturday nights when the fellowship hall was so full and the church so empty. So often, we cloak our resentment with a mask of integrity.

In our parable, though, the father comes out to meet his resentful elder son 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. The parable is left open, open to our response. We are left standing with the Pharisees and with the elder son. We watch Jesus rejoicing with sinners and outcasts, and we, like the elder brother, have to decide if we will join them. Can we? Will we?

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 got older and would be away at sleepovers or summer camp, 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.

I wonder if that’s how God feels about us, about all of God’s children. I’ll bet God longs to have us all tucked safely under God’s wings. God, however, takes that parental love one step further. God sent God’s own 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.” As Henri Nouwen writes, “Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home, and must look far and wide to find one. Home is the center of my being, where I can hear [God’s] voice that says, ‘You are my beloved. On you my favor rests.’ The same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light.”^[2]

Today, Jesus says to us: Righteous Pharisees, join the party. You are loved so much that you are free to leave home. Repentant and sorrowful 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. Ambrose, you are loved so much that you are free to leave home. Don’t miss the party.

 

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[1] Eugene Peterson, Tell it Slant (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 94f.

[2] Henri Nouwen, “The Return of the Prodigal Son” found at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1045480-leaving-home-is-living-as-though-i-do-not-yet.

Hens, Ducks, and Jesus

 

In 2007, at the end of our time in Jerusalem, my seminary group stood in the church called “Dominus Flevit” and looked out over the holy city. This little church is built in the shape of a tear drop and bears the Latin name for, “The Lord Wept.” It marks the spot where Jesus is supposed to have uttered the lament that we just heard in Luke’s Gospel. The church altar sits in front of a clear glass window. This window is framed in black iron designs so that a cross, and just above it, the dark outline of a chalice and host, are interposed right on top of a spectacular view of Jerusalem. I stood there and looked out at the domes and rooftops, glowing gold in the afternoon sun. My heart twisted with grief as Jesus’ words echoed in my head: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

You see, I had just visited many of the most holy places in the world. I had met wonderful people on all sides of the Middle East conflict who were negotiating life together in this complex city. But the constant signs of entrenched violence were what overwhelmed me: the ever-present Israeli soldiers in full army gear on the street corners; barbed-wire spread around buildings like deadly Christmas garlands; the ancient gate where the apostle Stephen was stoned, now pock-marked with centuries of bullet holes; the Palestinian kindergartners lined up at armed check points to get to school on the other side of the horrifying concrete Wall. Everywhere I looked, there were signs of killing and stoning, guns and terrorist bombs, wars and curses. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You are but a symbol for the human violence that fills our world. Even today, you still reflect back to us Jesus’ painful longing to save us from ourselves. What a fitting Gospel reading for us today, as the horrible violence of war once again rages in Europe. How Jesus must weep over the bombs falling on hospitals, the women and children fleeing by the millions, the lives broken and ended on both sides by the invasion of Ukraine.

Even over here, in the relative safety of the United States, I can picture myself as one of those defenseless chicks, clueless and peeping. How easy it is for me to superimpose the face of Vladimir Putin on the face of that despotic fox, Herod Antipas: Crafty and sly, hungry and greedy, using power and self-interest to achieve his ends. I have to ask: With such powerful foxes prowling around us, why did you have to choose a hen, Jesus?  Innocent people are shot in our grocery stores, and fires burn down whole neighborhoods, and war tears apart a whole country. I’m all for using feminine images and highlighting the powerful devotion of a mother …. But why aren’t you a mother lion, Jesus? Or a mother grizzly bear? Or a mother wolf? Why not something with some teeth and some claws? As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “When the foxes of this world start prowling really close to home, when you can hear them snuffling right outside the door, then it would be nice to have a little bigger defense budget for the hen house.”[1]

Always a city girl, I myself don’t really know much about the lives of farm animals, including mother hens. I do know about mother ducks, though. Last spring, right outside our kitchen window, a mother mallard duck crept behind our juniper bushes to lay her eggs. She was so well-camouflaged in the brown mulch that a quick glance would miss her entirely. With her bill tucked down in her feathers and her body flat with the ground, she spent most of her time peacefully asleep, covering her brood. Mother Mallard was always there at her post, the epitome of faithfulness, and I wondered how she got enough food and water to sustain herself. Having been a single mom, I identified with this mother duck, alone minding her babies as their father flitted around the pond, flying free. During a cold snap, I became filled with even more compassion for her, for she stayed on her nest all day while icy rain slid off her back. “What a good mother,” I thought to myself, and sighed.

After several weeks had passed, though, the weather had warmed enough for the HOA lawn service to come by. Hearing the loud mowers, I worried right away how the mother duck would bear all this noise. I looked out my window to check on her … but she was gone. There were twelve eggs in her well-padded nest, made soft with fluffy pieces of her own down. “She’ll be back soon,” I reasoned. “She must have been startled and has gone to find food.” But that night, she still wasn’t back. The next morning, the eggs sat unprotected in their cozy nest, and a few were broken. “Predators!” I gasped. Shaken, I got out my trusty iPhone and read with growing dread and dismay all about the nesting behavior of ducks. I learned that, when frightened, the mother duck runs away and never returns to her nest. She simply leaves her eggs to die and starts over later with another brood. I was devastated. I understood that, in the case of danger, having the mother die with her young would not propagate the species, but still …. It was a long time before I was ready to cover the remains of those abandoned eggs with soil. It was hard for me to give up on mama duck.

I’m afraid that, when danger lurks, I have about as much trust in God as I now have in mother ducks. Not that God would get scared and run off, exactly, but sometimes, I just don’t trust God to turn up. Just saying: it does look like there are an awful lot of unprotected nests out there in this world … And I sometimes feel like a defenseless little egg in the face of the world’s troubles, uncovered and thin-shelled. I decide that I need to take care of things myself, that the survival of the nest is up to me. But of course, it’s not.

Did you know that real chickens can actually communicate with the clucking sounds that they make? They have a special happy cluck and a special “hunger” cluck. They also have a special “danger” cluck. When the little chicks hear their mother cry danger, they are wired to come running, to run toward the one who calls them, and to hunker down under her wings.[2] The image of creatures taking shelter under the wings of the Almighty, too, is all over the psalms. As the psalmist writes, “How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.”[3] But we chicks facing Herod the Fox don’t seem to get it. We don’t run home to our loving Protector. When we don’t heed the call of our prophets, or even the call of our mothering Savior, then something is wrong. We are acting against our created nature.[4] And Jesus weeps.

O Jesus, our Mother Hen, you are so unlike my Mother Mallard, and so unlike me. When danger descends upon you, you don’t run and hide. You walk straight into the violence of Jerusalem, straight into the den of the fox. You stay with us there. You don’t give up on the world to try again somewhere else. You stretch out your fragile wings so wide that they cover the whole world. You stretch them out “on the hard wood of the cross,” as the collect says, “that we all might come within the reach of your saving embrace.”[5] No wonder the window of Dominus Flevit in Jerusalem frames the city’s violence and suffering with a cross and with a chalice and host raised high. In the eucharist, Jesus continues to call us to himself every Sunday. And, as Lauren Winner points out, this time we go.[6] We come forward; we’re gathered in, and we take shelter in Jesus’ body—a body broken and shared, yet more powerful than the evil of all this world’s foxes.

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[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1997), 128.

[2] Lauren Winner, “Luke 13 Sermon, Goodson Chapel,” unpublished manuscript. I am indebted to this sermon for many insights into this text.

[3] Psalm 36:7.

[4] Winner, 2.

[5] Collect for Mission, Morning Prayer Rite II, Book of Common Prayer, 101.

[6] Winner, 6.