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Rev. Jen Stuelpe Gibbs
March 14, 2010
“Becoming a Prodigal People”
Luke 15:1-7, 11-32
The scripture today starts by saying “tax collectors and other sinners came to hear Jesus.” One of the versions I read said, “tax collectors and notorious sinners.” It’s a great way to start a tale! This motley crew drew near and the Pharisees and the Scribes were grumbling about it. How did they know that they were there? I suspect the Pharisees and Scribes were there too. Can you see them there sharing the same air, tensions so thick that you could cut them with a knife? They shuffle trying to figure out how to relate to one another. Not only were the riffraff and the saints, the sinners and the righteous ones breathing the same air, but they were all there to hear Jesus. They were probably not there for the same reasons, but all were there sharing the same space and at one time or another were probably invited to share a meal.
The Pharisees would be the first to say that Jesus would just as soon pass the bread to a prostitute than a temple leader. He ate with them all. All walks of life were there just as we are here today to hear Jesus’s response to the grumbling between groups. He responds with a series of stories. The stories always start with lost things that are later found and end with a celebration and veritable feast like any good celebration.
Jesus lays out his stories, and he comes to this last familiar story. It is the final story to make the point. It is his coup de grace. This last story is where we will spend our time this morning.
As we dig into the parable, let us pray together:
Holy God and spirit, come and move in this sacred place. Come and take our eyes, and see through them, take our ears, and hear through them, take our minds, and think through them, and take our hearts, and set them on fire. Amen.
The story could have begun, “the younger son and his dull family,” but it didn’t. The story could have begun, “the older son and his foolish father,” but it didn’t. It could have begun, “the dysfunctional family who threw us all a feast,” but it didn’t do that either. It started out simply with, “the man had two sons.” Right up front, Jesus cuts to the chase and says this story is about the man. It is about the man, but why then are so many words, verses, and details spent on the family, particularly the sons starting with the first one? There are details about disrespect, distant countries, and dissolute living. There are pea pods, pigs, practiced speeches, and pleading. We know this younger son. He has priorities that hurt loved ones and communities. He has ideals that took him to nowhere good. He has wasted resources and wasted chances. He has conflicts with loved ones. He is lost, lonely, and in need of forgiveness.
We know this son. We easily slide into his story because it is just like sliding into our favorite pair of old slippers - the ones our family wishes we would throw away because they are worn. They are formed to our feet just as this story at one time or another fits our lives. After a long day, we hear the slippers calling, “return home and put me on.” They comfort us. After a long journey down to his knees, the son hears the call of hope. “Return to me, and put me on.” We feel the son’s story tugging at our sleeves, tugging us to come with him home to forgiveness. This story becomes for us, a comfortable old pair of slippers. It is part of our times and part of our lives. But this story isn’t necessarily about the son. It is about the father who has two sons.
But then comes the story of the older son, and even more words and verses are given to him. In fact, more of the story is given to that son than any other character. We find him doing what older sons do - working. Older sons are prone to working and farming, laboring in loyalty, and dedicated to doing right. He is sacrificing and serving. We know this son, too. We slide into his story like we do a meeting already started. So often, we slide in right beside him in solidarity, wanting the reward that comes for doing good, protesting when honor is offered to the dishonorable, and looking for justice where justice is due. We workers gather right beside this older brother as if in an office protest when the promotion is not offered to the long timer but to the newbie who is a sweet talkin’ hot shot. Each of us knows at one time or another what it means to be overlooked and what it means to be slighted. In solidarity, we understand the brother who clings to his view of justice like he clings to his “to do” list. We know him. It is a part of his story, and it is a part of ours. Although many of the details rest in this elder son’s life, this story starts, “the man had two sons.”
This story is about the father, so why less air time, why less words and fewer verses? I suppose it had to do with what Jesus was trying to do with this grumbling set of people. I suppose it had to do with what he was doing with the hearers of this story… the hearers in first century Palestine, fourth century Rome, sixteenth century Geneva, and twenty-first century Bloomington. All the hearers, all of us gathered here, we sinners, we righteous ones, we riffraff, we ashamed must listen in to what Jesus is doing in this story. I suppose the reason Jesus gives the father less air time is because that is what happens with an extravagant invitation.
So imagine you go to your mailbox. Maybe it is at the end of a long gravel lane or right outside your condominium. Wherever it is, imagine you go to your mailbox, you open it, and you find an exquisite invitation. It is shiny. The paper is so beautiful. You pick it up and open it and find that paper is thick, heavy, and feels good to the touch. You can’t imagine how much the paper costs. It is woven linen thread after thread after thread. Because of the thread count and because it is heavy in your hand, you already know that it has to be to attend something big. You are being invited to a gala. You are being invited to a black tie affair. It is clear that whatever it is, the occasion is extravagant. You look down at it, with all of its flourishes and design, and you find that you are invited to a veritable feast. There will be food and drink with friends, loved ones, and strangers who are invited from hither and yon. You know all of this from one invitation, one beautiful piece of paper with just one side printed and one set of print lines. Already you know, because of the invitation, how joyous and important the event will be. It has very few words and verses, and yet there is enough information for you to get there.
That’s the way of a really exquisite invitation. It is the way of this story. Jesus’s invitation like any really extravagant invitation to a joyous feast isn’t long. It offers a few words. It is printed word and verse in this story through the father’s words and deeds. So imagine, if you will, that the details of the family, the servants and sons, are woven together line after line, thread after thread. The details of everyone else, is woven together to create the weight of that paper which tells you that the invitation is important. The father’s words and deeds are printed simply, lining the page, offering the invitation. The story of the father is inviting us to something big. Jesus begins telling about the father as he responds to the younger son. But for us to understand the words on the invitation, we need to understand a little more of the threading that holds it. We need more background, so we dive back into what is going on with the son.
Jesus is responding to a son who has cost the family. They were depending on him to help earn a living and help care for the farm and its people. He abandoned them, and even more than that, he shamed them. He took his inheritance before it was time, offending the father and the eldest son. Generations offer him this inheritance, this land that provides not only for him, but for part of the village. He takes a “for sale” sign, and he stakes it on part of the family land to receive part of his inheritance. Whoever would purchase it could be costly to the family or costly to the village. The shame the son causes will hang over that family because they live in a culture where the web of honor and shame dictates who helps you, who does business with you, and whose children you will get to marry to expand your livability. The web or honor and shame determines your goodness and your standing in the community.
When the son does this, the community would ask, “What patriarch cannot prevent his son from carving part the family farm?” “What patriarch gets up from the table when guests are present?” “What patriarch takes direction from his child, runs to his child, and pleads with his child?” No, an honorable patriarch would direct the child.
We know that the son asks for his inheritance, and the father takes the blow with the other cheek. The child goes to the land of the gentiles and squanders his living. I suspect the child knows, just as the father does as he watches him walk toward the Gentile land that a Jewish son who squanders his inheritance to a Gentile will be despised. It is a despicable thing. In fact, in the Talmud, there is a ceremony for just such an occasion. The ceremony called “kip sat sa” is where the entire village, should the boy ever return, fills a vase with burnt corn and burnt nuts, and meets him at the gate. The community crashes the vase in front of his feet and screams his name saying, “You will forever be cut off from this community.” The child would become a cosmic orphan. He might as well go back to the trough with the pigs and dine on pea pods. Apparently, the son with his speech hopes to get to the father before the village gets to him.
The father’s eyes see him on the horizon coming home from the Gentile land. Then he is there, and the patriarch does what a patriarch should never do. Aristotle says, “Great men never run.” The father hikes up his robe, knobby knees for the world to see, and goes running down the road, his robe wedged between his legs, billowing like an apron. He runs like any mama runs to her child. Right there in front of the village, in front of God and everyone, he hugs and kisses him and welcomes him home. But this just isn’t compassion. This is protection, because if he beats the village to his son, he can restore his son to the family and the family to the village. If he can call out for a feast before the village calls for the disowning ceremony, then restoration will happen.
These are the background threads to the invitation Jesus weaves with the way of the Father. Invitations are short and clear. All it says is that the father runs, the father kisses the son, orders the food, and throws a party. The listeners hear the beginning lines of the invitation.
As children of God, what does this invitation mean? We feel the weight of it in our hand. We see the father’s invitation beginning to form on the page, but it doesn’t stop there. It continues. We see the father’s response to the eldest son. His response to the eldest son is much like the first, because when we saw his response to the first, we saw him say, “You who are ashamed and in need, you who have concluded that you cannot be loved, I will run to you. I will welcome you. I will cut your walk of shame short, so that you might be found and alive.” The father runs and restores relationship to the younger child. What is the cost? The cost for the father is his honor. He lays down his pride as quickly as we would shoo a bumble bee from a car. The father trades in his dignity for grace. He disowns his reputation for restoration. In this very public, very hideous display of undignified behavior, he invites the entire village into a celebration called unconditional love. He extends the invitation to the child and to the village.
The same kind of thing happens with the oldest son. The oldest son in the field hears this music of celebration and smells in the air the finest of meat. Then the slave says to him, “Your brother has returned. Your brother, the self-centered, pig loving, sin-sick brother has returned, and your father has given him the best of everything.” He is hurt, angry, and slighted, and he refuses to take part in such an obscene display of dishonor where foolishness is condoned. How much more could the father and their family be dishonored? The eldest wouldn’t even come into the feast, and the whole community knew it.
We can hear the questions of shame again. What kind of patriarch goes out to meet his son? What kind of patriarch goes and meets a child and pleads with a child? This father does. He gets up from the table and lays down his pride. He steps on it like he would a hot ember that has escaped. He trades in his dignity for grace and his reputation for restoration in this display of undignified behavior. All this is going on, but all Jesus says about the father is, “He goes and pleads with the child.” This is the child who has prioritized his justice above family and who is focused upon calculating one’s justice in what has been done. And so, the father says, “Let me free you from earning your love. Let me free you from calculating your worth. It is what I will do for you, and it is what I will do for your brother. You are worth more than your works. You are always with me, and everything I have is with you.” What does it cost the father? It costs him his pride.
You know how this story ends. You’ve seen the invitation of the father welcoming the son. Each time he willingly lays down his dignity and grace and says, “Come and be part of this community where unconditional love is offered.” That is the celebration. That is the people of God. That is the community that wraps around one another and says, “I will lay down my dignity and I will lay down my pride because you, dear brother and sister, you, child of God, are worth it, for I have been offered the same through my father.”
Today we are left with a story ending that doesn’t end. You have seen it. It doesn’t have a conclusion. We don’t know what the eldest son does with it. He has been pleaded with, and he is still standing outside the party. I have to think that maybe Jesus spent so much time on the family, because this is a universal story of grumbling families, working families, families of faith, and blood families. He knew that if he described it enough, we would slide right in and find ourselves somewhere in the story, and we would also find the invitation from the father.
Jesus weaves the father’s words and deeds into a simple invitation, and today we are left to decide what we will do with it. What will we do today with the invitation to be part of the celebration of God’s unconditional love and grace? What pride and dignity will we have to lay down? What worries about what other people think will have to slink to the ground? What attire will we have to change? Instead of pride, we will put on grace and make our way to the party. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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