Sermon Text
I have always suspected that I am more like a pharisee than a disciple. I am, after all, a religious leader. And 90% of the time, I am a rule-follower. Tradition and structure resonate with me.
And in today’s parable, while I can catch glimpses of resonance with the younger, prodigal son, or maybe even the prodigious father.
The one my heart goes out to the most, even when I don’t want it to, is the older son, the one who stayed, the one who never shirked his duties or stopped working.
And I know, I know… perhaps he is lost, too, in his own performative obedience. Perhaps he must learn to celebrate, to rejoice, to forgive, and to welcome his brother home.
But the younger brother has the audacity to leave, squander all that he has taken from the family, and when he returns, their father throws him a party.
And here’s what gets me, because sure, I can understand the joy of a parent welcoming a child back home. And I can understand the deep gratitude and relief of a child who expects nothing but receives everything, but the older brother doesn’t even get the memo about the party until he arrives back home from a full day’s work out in the fields.
There is already a party going on in his home. His invitation is almost an after-thought. “Oh right. There you are. Come in; you should come in and celebrate.” Of course, he is angry and refuses to go in!
Can you imagine approaching your own home and hearing music and dancing and everyone enjoying themselves
while you were out working in the fields as you’ve done everyday for years on end?! And there’s a party happening? On who’s behalf?
So I’m a pharisee. I’m the elder son. I’m the one who stays and the one who is unable to celebrate.
So what about you? Which character do you resonate with the most?
The thing about this story is that, no one is all bad, and no one is all good. Everyone, from their own point of view, seems to have a valid and understandable reaction to the circumstances at hand. I feel for the younger son, too. On some level, I can understand his desire to live his own life and then his subsequent failures. And I do applaud his ability to return home with humility and repent.
I feel for the father, who most of us assume represents God, even though it never explicitly says so in the scripture. But indeed, the grace of the father is prodigal in the sense that it is extravagant, over-the top, and lavish, almost even to the point of being wasteful. Because like last week’s fig tree, the story leaves some unknowns.
Does the younger son stay this time, or does his need for adventure and a prodigal lifestyle have him return to disgrace? Does the older son ever go into the party and choose to celebrate, or does he harbor resentment and anger for a lifetime?
The story is open-ended – we don’t know if the older brother joined the festivities, and we don’t know if the younger brother breaks his father’s heart all over again.
And maybe that’s just it. We don’t know how it ends because it is up to us to help complete the story. Debie Thomas is a minister at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto. In response to this parable, she writes two letters, one for each brother. Here are “Letters to Prodigals” by Debie Thomas:[1]
To the Boy Who Ran:
I begin with you, because you’re the strangest and least accessible to me.
Impetuous. Careless. Demanding. So selfish, you take my breath away.
On the face of things, you and I have nothing in common.
I’ve never run away, or squandered an inheritance, or broken my parents’ hearts.
Neither have I felt the ardent, tear-soaked embrace of a lovesick father
— human or divine — welcoming me home.
Maybe this is why I dislike you. Am I envious because God is generous?
Am I hurt because the Father’s love is a wild, unfettered thing, unpredictable and unfair?
Yes, I am. YES. I AM.
I wish I knew for sure that your penitence was genuine.
I wish I had a guarantee that you understood — not just in your head but with your whole heart —
just how much fear, destruction, and sorrow you caused.
I’m okay with forgiving you, but only if you’re sorry beyond language.
Only if you bleed repentance. I also wish I knew for sure that you pulled your act together, once the party was over and the fatted calf was eaten.
Did you get up early the next morning and pull your weight in the fields?
Did you apologize to your brother, or ask after the health of your Father?
Did you humble yourself, and make peace with the villagers?
Did you understand that really, there could be no such thing as going home?
Not in any simple way? Everything — everything — would have to change.
This is a problem, of course — my lack of charity.
I want to accuse you of having no empathy — of not [giving a damn] {caring}
about how you ripped your Father’s heart out of his chest —
but here I am, completely uninterested in empathizing with you.
So I’m digging down, trying extra hard to reach you. Who are you beneath the labels?
Beneath “Prodigal,” beneath “Sinner,” beneath “Poster Boy for God’s Great Kindness?”
I grew up in the Church, a quiet Good Kid in my Father’s shadow.
I don’t have a dramatic conversion story like yours. What could you possibly have to teach me?
“Dying of hunger.” That’s how your story describes your final days in that far-off country.
When your costly adventure was over, when your funds ran dry, when your so-called friends abandoned you.
There among the pigs, covered in filth, you finally realized who and what you were.
“Dying of hunger.” May I give you a new label? A new name? One that I can relate to?
Aren’t you, at the very core, The Hungry One?
It was hunger, wasn’t it, that first lured you away from a good life and a good Father?
A gluttonous hunger, maybe, but hunger still. For freedom? Self-expression? Meaning? Peace?
Something in you — something wild and insistent — needed feeding,
and your Father, in his vast, unorthodox wisdom, understood.
I can’t hold the long view as skillfully as he does, but I suppose his letting you go makes a savvy kind of sense.
You couldn’t return home without leaving. You couldn’t taste resurrection without dying.
Maybe we need to know hunger — know it on the tongue, in the gut, like a fire in our bones — to truly savor the Feast.
The Father understood. What a remarkable thing that is — his deep, patient knowing.
He respected the hunger that pulled you away.
He knew a wiser, sharper hunger would bring you home.
Was it admirable? What you did? I don’t know.
But there is this: even though it cost you, even though it wounded your family, you honored your hunger.
I can’t speak to the rightness or wrongness of your decision — I dare not —
but maybe there is something in your story I should attend to.
I usually ignore my hunger. When I can’t ignore it, I hide, minimize, and vilify it.
Is there a chance my hunger wants to point me to God?
Your journey ends in a passionate embrace.
Unrestrained welcome, overflowing joy. Were you grateful? I will never know.
It seems your Father didn’t much care; he just wanted to feed and clothe you.
There’s so little of your experience I can relate to, much less applaud.
Despite my best attempts to reconcile my heart with yours, my envy remains.
Your Father ran to welcome you.
He cared for nothing in this world so much as having you safe and snug in his arms.
No matter what the preachers say, this is not everyone’s visceral experience.
To hear we are loved is one thing. To feel ourselves embraced is another.
But at least you and I have this in common: I know what it’s like to hunger.
To hunger for love, for depth, for passion, for joy.
And I know what it’s like to imagine an exotic Elsewhere,
A more perfect nourishment miles away from my Father’s all-too-familiar table.
I know what it’s like to “come to myself” in the broken,
impoverished places of my own foolish fashioning,
and to long for the warmth and sustenance of a home.
I don’t like you. But maybe we’re not so very different after all.
To the Boy Who Stayed:
I won’t lie; my sympathies lie most naturally with you.
Your story haunts me. Your resentments mirror mine.
Whenever I think of you standing — appalled — outside your Father’s house,
your brother’s easy laughter ringing in your ears, my heart breaks.
I see you sore and sweat-stained after a day in the fields, longing to go inside for a shower, a meal, a bed.
Longing for so many legitimate things, only to be thwarted by a song and dance that grates on the ear.
A robe, a ring, and a fatted calf. Not intended for you.
Theologians tell me I’m supposed to look at you and see self-righteousness, arrogance, and unholy spite.
But I don’t. I look at you and see pain. I’m an oldest kid, too.
Used to being responsible, staying home, and getting things done.
By temperament, I’m careful, I like order, and I don’t mind work.
But I’m a stickler about fairness. I care about fairness a lot.
I am also, to be fair, a seether. I don’t confront; I seethe. Just like you.
Tell me. How long did the bitterness fester?
How many weeks, months, or years did you suffer in silence, mistaking restraint for righteousness?
Did your Father shrink as your anger grew?
Did every word he spoke, every request he made, every sigh he sighed, feel like daggers?
Did you ever lie in bed at night and wish you had the courage to leave? Yell? Hit?
Or was it another kind of courage you lacked? The courage to cry? To plead?
To confess a need so insatiable and so secret, it made you burn with shame?
What would have happened if you’d looked your Father in the eye and said,
“Yes. I know that all you have is mine. But it’s not enough.
I can’t fathom why, but your “everything” is not enough for me.
I can’t find contentment. I can’t make my way to love. In your very Presence, I am lost.”
I know these are terrifying things to admit to yourself, much less to say out loud.
But what if you had said them? What if you had said, “Something in me is broken,
such that I can’t embrace or enjoy what’s mine. Please help me.
Wrap your arms around me. Hold me. I am full of hatred —
for myself most of all. Please teach me how to love.”
The challenge of your story — the challenge that tears at me —
is that you have rightness on your side. You are right to call for justice.
Right to ask why your brother’s sins incurred no consequences.
Right to ask why your own loyalty seems to count for so little.
You are right to find your Father’s version of love a bit much, a bit scandalous, a bit risky.
Because it is. You’ve understood the point of your own story better than anyone.
Yes, your brother squandered his inheritance.
Perhaps, by hoarding and withholding, you’ve also squandered yours.
But the real Prodigal in this story is your Father, is he not?
Over-the-top, undignified, and hair-raising in his love? Of course you’re right to be appalled.
I don’t know why your Father never gave you a young goat. Or threw you and your friends a spontaneous party.
I wish with all my heart he had; it makes me angry that he didn’t.
Was he waiting for you to ask? Were you, in turn, waiting for him to initiate?
I know that mingy, self-protective mindset so well: “If I have to ask for it, then it doesn’t count.”
Maybe it does. Maybe there is something essential to be learned in the asking.
“We have to celebrate and rejoice.” This is your Father’s final word to you as you stand out in the cold,
your arms crossed, your fists clenched, your heart bleeding.
Did you know, dutiful firstborn? Did you know you have to celebrate?
Did you know that joy is a must in your Father’s house? That partying is a duty?
How astonishing, that you lived within arm’s reach of your Father all these years,
and never glimpsed the merriment that is at his core.
“We have to celebrate and rejoice.” He insists.
But there you stand, you lover of justice. 100% right — and 100% alone.
What will it take for you to believe this craziness?
Some lessons can only be learned in the thick of laughter. Some hearts will only be healed at the Feast.
But here’s your vindication: the power in this story is yours.
Your brother is inside already; it seems he’s done breaking hearts for the time being.
Your Father stands in the doorway, awaiting your company.
You get to write his ending. What will you do, as the music grows sweeter?
What will we choose, you and I?
What Rev. Thomas does in these letters is examine her true and honest feelings towards each brother. And in so doing, she is able to extend some compassion to them both. Maybe it doesn’t matter who we resonate with the most, be it the father, the older sibling, or the younger sibling.
Maybe what really matters is our willingness to try and understand, and our willingness to be open and honest.
Maybe if we are just willing to be compassionate and empathetic and try to understand ourselves and each other just a little bit better, that is the prodigal grace we can offer one another, knowing that God’s grace and love are lavish and abundant and covers a multitude of sins.
And maybe the story ultimately ends with reconciliation because we are willing to have mutual forbearance for one another.
The Second letter to the Corinthians reads, “Therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view …
for if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation…”
What if we stopped regarding one another from a human point of view, and instead saw one another through the reconciling and reckless love of God. Would our lives be more “full to the brim?” Overflowing with grace, overflowing with compassion, overflowing with love.
Not because we’re all the same or because we all understand each other or get along. But because we are all loved and claimed and reconciled to God through Christ? So we have a chance to now be reconciled to one another.
What would life be like if we stopped keeping score, if we stopped running away, if we just let love guide us and fill us?
As Debie Thomas ends her letters, perhaps we would discover:
Maybe we’re not so very different after all. What will we choose, you and I? Amen.
[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/856-letters-to-prodigals
