Fourth Lent
Luke 15: 1-3, 11-15
Quickly bring out a robe--the best one and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found! And they began to celebrate." And not much later there was music and dancing.
Our time is Lent, the Christian season of penitence, confession of sin, mourning, and sober self-examination. The hymns, the liturgies are solemn, somber is this season of the cross. We wear purple--color of repentance, contrition.
Here deep in Lent, the gospel is the story of a party. John Wesley, in his commentary on this story says that the word here "implies nothing of levity, but a solid serious, religious heartfelt joy. " Poor stuffy John Wesley. Obviously making merry didn't mean in his time what it means for us. But you see Wesley's worry. A party! And in Lent!
Well the truth of it is, the makers of the liturgical calendar dealt with this very problem. It's just that they thought 40 days of somber was a bit much so they christened this day "refreshment Sunday", gave everybody a break from their Lenten disciplines, opened the windows to let some fresh air in and reminded everyone about the lost sinner who came home to the anxious father and got not a reprimand but a party, a party not of solid serious joy but of new clothes, fattening food, music and dancing.
It's quite a story. A story that touches a nerve deep within us. Endless pages have been written about each of the characters. Endless hours have been spent pondering which character best represents us.
Are we the prodigal son? The nasty boy who begs for an inheritance and then squanders it away in no time only to have to come back to the father contrite and penitent.
Are we the older brother? The responsible, hard working, long suffering member of the family who just wants his share of the credit, who just wants to be appreciated.
Are we the waiting father? The man who just doesn't care a whole lot about his money, a man who just wants his sons to be home and happy. A man who is more invested in grace and forgiveness than in just desserts.
A lot of attention has been paid to these characters. But I'd like to suggest today that the important quality in the story is not most importantly in the characters but in their relationships. If each of the characters is the point of a triangle then the story is in the lines rather than the points.
A father has two sons and he loves both of them. The one, a sinner, knows that he has sinned so his relationship with the father is easy. He is aware that he deserves nothing, that he has earned nothing. He comes home, as he is, penniless and destitute. What he receives is all a gracious gift, a gift born only out of the great love that the father has for him.
Now the second son, the relationship that he has with his father is a tougher nut to crack. Remember the episode that started this whole story. The tax collectors and sinners are coming near to Jesus. And the scribes and Pharisees were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." This whole story is addressed to these older brothers--the Pharisees and scribes. The scribes and the Pharisees are the ones who are claiming that they have been working like slaves for their father. They obey his commands to the letter and what have they got to show for it? Now the story is interesting because note, the father comes out to them too. The father loves this son just as much. The father invites him to the party as well. The father assures him that "you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." My presence with sinners and tax collectors doesn't mean that you aren't important to me and loved as well. Jesus loved the Pharisees and the scribes.
I just finished reading a wonderful fun book by Michael Malone entitled Handling Sin. In it Early Hayes has two sons. The one son is a reprobate. He's in trouble with the law for passing bad checks; he's in trouble with some loan sharks for gambling debts that haven't been paid. His father Early wants him to come to his senses because he loves him.
The other son Raleigh lived life in the confines of exactitude. "And so. Like stars blinking out, Raleigh's world faded from the sacred to the profane, pausing along the way in an elaborate totemic system of supplication and avoidance, based on the hope that while he might be powerless, he would still be able, by unswerving ritual, to appeases whatever or whoever, the Powers were. ...Whereas years earlier, he would not eat snap beans because he heard them beg so piteously to be spared, now he ate them with numerical exactitude: three beans followed by five corn nubbins followed by two bites of pork chop would propitiated the powers. Miscalculations on the other hand, could conceivably enrage them into a sort of spitefulness." He became an insurance salesman. His father desires to save him from this calculated exact existence and open to him a world of grace. On the Ides of March, our hero, Raleigh Whittier Hayes (forgetful husband, baffled father, prosperous Insurance agent and leading citizen of Thermopylae, North Carolina), learns that his father has discharged himself from the hospital, taken all of his money out of the bank and, with a young black female mental patient, vanished in a yellow Cadillac convertible. His father will not listen to reason and re-enter the hospital till Raleigh has found his brother and brought him to New Orleans to meet his father.
When they finally meet the father says to his son, ""That's what scared me about you, Raleigh. I lay in that awful hospital and said, xxx that pompous jerk is just shriveling with virtue, evaporating to where his own wife won't even be able to find him, and he won't even know he's disappeared."
The father, God, loves us rule abiding, structured, precise, possibly stuffy children but he wants to open a world of grace and celebration to us. The father wants to free us to love back.
So now there we are. Our triangle has two legs. The father loves the prodigal son. The father loves his self-righteous son. But there's one leg missing. There's one relationship missing. That relationship is what Jesus is trying to teach the Pharisees and what Jesus is always trying to get through to us. What's going on between the brothers? And the Pharisees grumble, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.
Henri Nouwen has written of this parable, "Returning to the Father's home is not the ultimate call of the parable. There is a call beyond the call to return. It is a call to become the father who welcomes home and calls for a celebration ... the hands that forgive, console, heal and offer a festive meal must become my own."
From the very first book of the Bible we have a picture of two brothers. Cain kills Abel. And God calls Cain to account. And what does Cain have the nerve to ask--Am I my brother's keeper?" There's no reply. It's supposed to be that obvious. Of course we're our brother's keeper. Of course we are. We're not supposed to be standing over to the side lobbing pot shots at those sinners, those embezzlers, those lazy, those weak, those drop outs, those druggies, those ex cons, .... What the father wants, more than anything else, is for the brothers to get along and to care for each other
It's a refreshing Sunday all right. A good Sunday for a party to celebrate the grace and love God has for us. But it's still Lent and maybe we've got something to think about.
Amen.