Are We Going to Party or Pout?

 

Remembrandt's "The Prodigal Son"

Preaching on the prodigal son is challenging. First of all, there are so many ways one could approach this that figuring out what is the one way in is tough. And then there is the obvious that everyone has heard this story before. And before that. And before that again. 

As a special treat for this Laetare Sunday of Lent...I decided to have some of the participants in my Playing with the Parables class help tell the story out Luke 15 by playing the different roles. Yours truly was double cast as the Pharisees grumbling...and then as the servant running to tell the older son that his younger brother came home. 

I see in some of my fellow Americans shades of the older son. I keep trying to square for myself how people can be OK with our government now basically abducting foreign-born people in broad daylight, whisking them off to detention centers, cutting them off from their families and lawyers, and then shipping them out of the country to gulag-like prisons in El Salvador. Do they really think that's what a person waiting on their asylum hearing deserve?

Or how can they be OK with scrubbing the websites of the armed forces and govenrment agencies of any mention of the contributions made by women and minorities in this country? Do they really believe that any person of color or woman or LGBTQIA person got to their positions or made their mark simply because of some preferential hiring standard? 

I'm feeling as though so much of white, straight, male, cisgender America would rather stand outside the house feeling pissed off and slighted rather than come into the house and realize that God's love is really that deep and wide that it includes foreigners, women, queers, black and brown people, trans men and women. And just because God loves us, too...doesn't mean God thinks less of them.

So: party or pout?

See what you think.  

Text: Luke 15: 1, 11b-32

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I find sometimes that one of the biggest challenges in preaching is trying to say something new or interesting when the Scripture is a well-known story.

Easter and Christmas always present that task.

And then there are the stories like today’s Gospel—the parable of the prodigal son.

This is one of those tales from the Bible that we all have probably heard more than a dozen times in a Sunday School class.

It’s so well-known that even people who have nothing to do with the church will have at least some memory of hearing a story about the kid who goes off and squanders his inheritance and then comes back home and his dad is all-forgiving.  

Maybe some of us have lived this story in some way in our own families.

Just for fun…how many here are the youngest?

And how many are the oldest?

And how many of you are parents?

I imagine that for most of us our birth order and our position in our families may  deeply color the way that we read this parable and how we understand what’s happening in this story.

Like I’ve said…I’m the youngest in my family and I know that my parents had already been around the block a few times with my older brothers.

So by the time I was born…they were a little more chill about parenting.

It’s not that I was able to get away with more things than my brothers.

But I always had a sense that my brothers felt as if my parents treated me with kid gloves so to speak…and somehow loved me more.

Sibling rivalry is a real thing in families with multiple children.

The original audience for this parable was very aware of sibling rivalry stories.

We can almost see them nodding and maybe some eyerolls when Jesus starts:

“There was a man who had two sons…”

The audience…the Pharisees, the scribes, the tax collectors and sinners and disciples all were looking at each other in that knowing way…

Yes…OK…two sons.

Cain and Abel.

Isaac and Ishmael.

Jacob and Esau.

Now…here we go…there was this father and his two sons.

Two son stories…to a Jewish audience…(remember: these are all Jews)…would be normal.

But Jesus does something interesting with these two sons that isn’t the usual take.

In this story….the younger son is not the model kid.

Instead…he’s the demanding greedy one….who takes off with his inheritance and blows all of his money on partying and gambling and living it up.

It’s the older son who helps at home…takes care of his dad’s property…is loyal and faithful to the family.

Some try to put a better spin on the younger son by saying that he realizes he’s done wrong when he goes home.

But really…the story doesn’t say that.

What it says is that he knows he’s hungry and there’s better food at home; that’s not really admitting that he’s been wrong.

He figures out the right words to say.

Does a little practicing of his speech.

And before he’s even at the end of the driveway…dad comes rushing out of the house….arms extended. He’s so excited and happy that even as his son is starting that very well-rehearsed speech…his father is calling out to everyone:

Bring the out the best robe!

Get some sandals for his feet!

And let’s kill the fatted-calf and get this party started right!

Dad doesn’t ask questions.

Dad doesn’t notice that this son has lost probably about 40 pounds and looks like death warmed over…and stinks of pig…a repugnant smell to a good Jew.

Dad only cares that this one son has come back.

Dad also doesn’t bother to let the older son in on the rejoicing.

Dad hasn’t gone out to the fields to invite his loyal son to the party.

Dad’s focus is only on the younger son who has come home.

And so when the older son shows up after a long day working in the fields and he’s hearing music and laughter and dancing coming from the house…he’s like, “What’s up? What is all this rejoicing?”

And he hears it from a servant…someone even lower in the ranks…who tells him his foolish and wasteful brother has come home and dad’s throwing a party for him.

It makes sense if we…we who are sitting here in St. Barnabas on a Sunday morning…are in sympathy with the older son.

We are like this older son.

We could be doing a hundred other things on a Sunday morning rather than being in church.

But here we are…because we are the faithful.

And yet…we look at this father…and if we see this father as God…we see God giving all the good stuff to the one we think doesn’t deserve it.

Those jealousies and prejudices we carry in our hearts begin to bubble to the surface.

That insidious tempter wants us to feel every slight as an outrage.

Every time someone or some group we think of as “other” outside of our own tribe has something good and positive happen for them…we take it as a personal affront.

And then…let’s talk about this father.

Amy Jill Levine…who I’ve mentioned before…is a Jew and a New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt University.

She notes that this Parable of the Prodigal Son takes on a different flavor if we read it in conjunction with two other parables…the other the two stories that Jesus tells right before he launches into this one.

See…once again…the diviners of our lectionary…smart and thoughtful people that they are…have chopped up Jesus’ teachings here in Luke.

And so I’m going to fill-in the gap.

After the Pharisees and the scribes complain, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them”….Jesus talks about the shepherd who has a hundred sheep.

One of the sheep wanders off…and the shepherd searches high and low for that one sheep.

And when the shepherd finds it…he rejoices and invites everyone to join in the celebration.

And then Jesus talks about the woman who loses a precious coin.

She tears up her whole house until she finds that one lost coin.

And when she finds it…she calls together her friends and throws a party because she found her coin.   

But in our parable…the father has two sons. He lost the younger one.

He doesn’t go looking for him…and he still has his loyal and steadfast older son.

And when the lost one turns up on the doorstep…the father rejoices…but doesn’t go looking for the oldest.

What Levine suggests…is that when we put these three stories together…they tell us even more about God.

Because these stories are about counting.

It’s easy enough for the shepherd to notice a missing sheep when counting sheep.

It was simple to pick up a lost coin.

Making a lost child feel welcomed…included…and loved…is a bigger lift…and ultimately the more important one.

That’s the message imbedded in what the father says to his older son as he stands outside the house feeling as if he is the lost and forgotten one now.

“No son” says the father.

“No…I have never forgotten you. You have been at my side. I have always loved you. Come in. Join us and let’s celebrate that a lost one has found their way home.”

This is the message said to us…right now…and in this time.

It’s on us to decide:

Are we going to be accepting and OK with a God who loves with such reckless abandon all of us…including that person  or that group of people we don’t like?

That person we think doesn’t belong?

Because in God’s banquet hall…that table gets extended every day to add more and more chairs.

The choice is ours: we can join the party and dance…or we can remain embittered at the idea that God’s love is endless and God’s kingdom knows no borders or barriers.

Jesus is awaiting our answer.

In the name of Our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.