March 14, 2010
Come Home
- Joshua 5:9-12
- Ruth Moore
I’m so glad to be able to preach from these bible passages today, because they are both stories about the faithful and benevolent love of God. They are also about grace – and that’s a message that I believe we need to hear over and over again – or at least I do.
I preached at the Ash Wednesday Service last month – I think about 25 of you were there. That’s ok, I don’t like mid-week worship services either. I kind of run out of steam by 7pm on weeknights and so my sermon wasn’t all that great. But one amongst you was listening carefully and he did not hear much grace in my words. He just heard the sin and repentance part. That bothered me, because there should always be grace in our faith journey. The Lenten season is all about hope and renewal and taking the time to purposely repent of our sins so we can live the lives that God created and wants for us. Lent is a time for me to concentrate on the 4 r’s – renew, reconcile, repair and restore. We do sin, just like the Israelites who wandered the desert complaining for 40 years, and like the young son who squandered his inheritance – we all sin somehow – but that is not the end of the message. Hope, renewal, forgiveness, grace, and love – an interpretation of scripture should never slight God’s rule of love and grace. So I am glad to get a second chance this morning to talk about how God loves us.
Both of our scriptures this morning are about reconciliation. For the Hebrews the disgrace of Egypt has been rolled away. From the Joshua passage we learn that the Hebrew people are no longer slaves and are now in a new land. There is new life for them there and new possibilities. The past is rolled away and the present can be enjoyed. Just four days after crossing the Jordan they celebrate with a Passover meal.
We hear about another celebration in our gospel passage. Jesus is talking to sinners, tax collectors and the Pharisees when we hear the story known as the Prodigal Son. According to the dictionary, the word “prodigal” is an adjective that means “recklessly wasteful.” The verb “Prodigal” is derived from a Latin word , which is translated as “to squander.” Therefore a prodigal son is a wasteful son who throws away opportunities recklessly and wastefully – and boy does this younger son do that!
Most of you have probably heard the parable of the prodigal son before. But as I recap the highlights remember that the father had two sons – which one do you think is the prodigal – the wasteful and squandering son or the one who stayed at home and slaved on the farm?
It’s God’s dream to renew, reconcile, repair and restore the creation; that is the magnetic power in the parable of the Prodigal Son. That is the power that is pulling the prodigal to come back home. The younger son has taken his inheritance early, he has squandered that inheritance in “riotous living” as the King James Bible tells us and the young man is broke, jobless, hungry and a long way from home. Jesus gives us some indication of just how far from home this son is. He tells us that in order to work the son hires himself out to a pig farmer. Moses was clear that swine are not kosher. No good Palestinian Jew would be caught dead near pigs. This is how far from home this son is. Then Jesus gives us that marvelous description and he tells us that the son “came to himself.” The son realizes the profound disconnect between who he has become and who he truly is. He does not have it all figured out, but he knows that something is just not right.
So the younger son decides to come home. He is expecting humiliation and having to grovel to his father so he can at least come home and work as a hired hand. But as the son comes over the hill to his hometown, who should rush out to meet him but his father. Before the son can even speak the father has wrapped his arms around him and welcomed him home with robes, rings and a party.
It is this part of the story where we can most clearly see what it is to be loved unconditionally. The younger son was completely responsible for his own downfall. When he decided to come home he was motivated by feelings of self-pity and self-preservation rather than by any sense of sorrow for what he had done. But the father didn’t allow any of this to get in the way of welcoming him home. Although we don’t know what happened with this family down the road, at this point there is no wagging finger or prolonged interrogation by the father. The son does not have to prove his readiness to change or pull his own weight before he regains his father’s love and trust. The ring, the sandals, the cloak, they are all signs of the son’s restored dignity and status. His reconciliation with his father is immediate and unconditional. Just like God’s love for us. If we stopped the story right here we could be satisfied. When we come home to God, God forgives us, restores his relationship with us, loves us unconditionally and celebrates with us.
But then Jesus continues the story with the older brother. Big brother is not happy. He has not insulted his father. He has not wasted his inheritance on riotous living and squandered what the father gave him. He has just worked day after day, year after year in his father’s fields. The older brother has never gotten the royal treatment of robe, ring and party. He is mad and he is not going to set foot in the celebration for his younger brother.
Can you relate to the older son? I can. I swear Jesus told this story just so I could hear it! He has been responsible, he has behaved well, he has kept his inheritance secure – and the father has never even given him a goat party! He has stayed at home and been the dutiful older son. Meanwhile, his little brother has wasted his inheritance, lived on a pig farm, slept with prostitutes and the father is having a big shindig for him. Don’t you think the older son has a right to be resentful? So he stays on the porch and refuses his father’s plea to come and join the party. Consequently, he does not get to move into the light, the music, the dancing, the food, the mercy, the love, the reconciliation, the family, the home.
The way the brothers are living their lives just isn’t working. Both are self-absorbed. Both are not satisfied with what they have. The older son can’t obtain the life and the love he wants by earning it, or by being obedient enough, or good enough. And the younger son is not getting the life and love he wants with the kind of freedom he went looking for. He found out that lifestyle was just another form of slavery. What each son is looking for, hoping for, yearning for is the love of the father. Love that is grace. Love that is a gift. Love that is a relationship that blesses, because it is based on self-giving, unconditional love.
So this is really a story about the father – the father who had two sons. The father welcomed home the wayward son and he pleads with the older son and reminds him that all he has is his. The father does not berate and get all critical with his older son. Nor does he defend the behavior of the younger son. Instead he shifts attention away from both of the brothers and turns his attention to his own love and bounty. There is plenty to go around he says. No one will run short – “all that is mine is yours.” (15:31) This is not your younger brother’s party as much as it is my party – a party I am throwing for many. I am on the lookout for all my loved ones, whether they are near or far. I am working for them and ready to celebrate with them before they even think of responding to me or giving anything back.
This parable shines a light on a profound and overwhelming truth about God and God’s kingdom. All of us are lost, and mired in the sins of greed and self-absorption. My husband reminds me frequently that, “It’s not always about you Ruth!” Some of us are also hip-deep in the pig slop of envy – and I’ve been there before too. But God reached out to the people of Israel and provided a home for them and then God reached out in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God raised us up and called us home. It’s not about me or about you, or about my sins or your sins. It’s about God and God’s life giving love and mercy. Every time God’s renewing, reconciling, repairing and restorative love finds one of us and calls that person to come back to God, to come home, it doesn’t mean there is less for the rest of us. It means there is more. More wine. More food. More music. More dancing. More love. More forgiveness. And more grace.
Have you ever seen a yellow ribbon tied around a tree, or a mailbox, or on someone’s arm? People display yellow ribbons when they are waiting for the return of a loved one – usually from the military. There’s even a song called, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree,” by Tony Orlando and Dawn – who most of you have probably never even heard of. (I am so old!!!) It’s a song about a man returning from prison, but it is loosely based on the following story.
There was a young man who was traveling on a train and the older gentleman sitting across from him noticed that he seemed very nervous. So the older gentleman asked the young man if there was anything he could do to help him. He told the older gentleman that he had had a terrible argument with his parents years ago and had left home. He said he hadn’t had any contact with them in 20 years. He was realizing that his parents were getting older and that he had been foolish to cut off all communication with them. He wanted to see them again before they died. The young man said that he had written his parents a letter and asked if he could come home. He told his parents that he would be on this particular train and he told the older gentleman that the train tracks ran right behind his parents’ house. He told his mom and dad that if he could come home they were to hang a white cloth on the old tree out there by the railroad tracks. The young man told the older gentleman that if he saw the white cloth he was going to get off the train, but if he didn’t see it he would just keep on going.
What made the young man nervous was that he was afraid that the white cloth wouldn’t be tied to the tree and that his parents did not want him to come home. He was afraid to even look out the window, so the older gentleman said he would watch for the white cloth in the tree. About a mile from the station the young man just closed his eyes and the older gentleman prayed that there would be a white cloth on that tree. What else could he do but pray! As the train rounded the bend the older man’s eyes got wide and a smile spread across his face. He told the young man to open his eyes and look at that tree in his parents’ back yard. Because on that tree his mother and father had tied every pillowcase, every sheet, every handkerchief, every dishtowel and anything they had that was white and that tree was white from top to bottom. It looked like a snowstorm had hit it.
Jesus’ parable and the story of the young man on the train are really more about the determined, compassionate and infinite providence of God than about the behavior of God’s prodigal children.
Because no matter how far away you have gone – you can come home. No matter how far out you have gone – you can come home. No matter how far down you have gone – and you can always come home.
Amen.
Sources:
e-sermons.com, “Healing for the Past” by Barbara Brokhoff;
e-sermons.com, “The Door is Always Open” by James Merritt;
e-sermons.com, “The Waster” by Frank G. Honeycutt;
Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 2, 4th Sunday of Lent – some of this sermon is taken directly from The Pastoral Perspective by Rodney Clapp and The Homiletical Perspective by Michael B. Curry; Resources for Preaching and Worship- Year C, Fourth Sunday in Lent