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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