All That You Leave Behind

This sermon was delivered at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Year C Lent 4, Sunday March 18, 2007.

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

“Remember when you learned how to ride a bicycle?

“You probably began with training wheels. Eventually, when these were removed, things became more difficult. You struggled to stay upright, maybe even falling a few times and scraping yourself. As you practiced, it’s likely that one of your parents walked beside you shouting instructions, encouraging you and catching you as you lost balance. You were scared…but excited! You looked forward to the time when you would succeed, when you would at last ride free on your own. So, you kept at it every day, and eventually mastered the skill of riding a bike.”[1]

Well, master is probably too broad of a word. “Become good” or “improve” are probably better. After watching what some kids do on a bike these days, my definition of “mastering the skill of riding a bike” falls way short of what they consider “mastering the skill.” But neither their mastery of the bike or nor mine would have happened if the training wheels had stayed on the bike.

In everything we do, as soon as we can even imagine taking the symbolic training wheels off of our proverbial bike, we begin to imagine the day when we will at last ride free on our own. We still struggle when the training wheels come off, we fall and we scrape our knees. Even after we become adept riders we get banged up after a fall, especially when we try new and more difficult things. And sometimes the crash and burn can be magnificent.

The important thing to remember is that unless we give up the training wheels, our skills can’t develop any further. We need the assist to learn, but unless we leave the training wheels from our Schwinn Lil Stardust behind, we will never graduate to the Fastback CX racer or the Rocket Disc Mountain Bike.

Life is often defined by what we leave behind. This is never more obvious than when kids go off to camp, or to college. As they leave the nest, the training wheels begin to come off, until, hopefully they establish themselves and begin forging the next link in life’s glorious chain. But it is not so easy. Our Gospel reading today deals with what we keep and with what we leave behind.

Jesus’ parable begins with a young man asking his father for his share of the inheritance. This request wasn’t uncommon in Jesus’ time;[2] younger sons all over Judea were interested in getting their share and setting out to make their claim on life. Or perhaps this younger son was tired of being less than his elder brother in the eyes of the father. Maybe the younger son got into trouble and had to “get out of Dodge.” Regardless, the younger son asks for his share of his father’s belongings.

In this brief exchange, the younger son leaves behind his father, his family, his home, all that is familiar, and any future claim he may have on his father’s estate. But the father knows that he is giving up more than just belongings. The father is giving his son a share of the resources needed to maintain life, the means of subsistence.[3] The son thinks he is asking for stuff, but the father knows he is giving life to his young son yet again.

As for the father, he loses more than just property, he loses his son.

Now it isn’t mentioned in the text, but the older son has a dog in this fight too. When the father chooses to grant the younger son’s wish, the entire estate is divided, including the land. Since the younger brother has no intention of staying on the homestead, the older brother has the right, nay, the responsibility to purchase the land to keep it in the family. So when the younger son leaves, he takes the family’s liquid assets with him. Suddenly, the older son is land rich and cash poor. If liquidity becomes an issue, it’s the older brother’s problem.[4] The older brother doesn’t leave this behind, it’s taken from him.

Then we come to the part of the story that good sons everywhere cheer; the ruin of the younger brother. He gathers together his part of the family wealth, and goes on a journey to a distant country. There he squanders the property on dissolute living. Jesus knows how to turn a phrase, doesn’t he? “Squander” just seems more descriptive than “waste” and “dissolute” can range from inappropriate and undisciplined[5] to degenerate, immoral, debauched, and self-indulgent.[6] Jesus isn’t mincing words. The son has left behind his birthright, his nest egg, and every tangible connection to home. Evidently he also left his moral compass behind when he left his father’s house.

Maybe this wasn’t the best thing to leave behind considering what happens next.

After spending everything freely, famine strikes the countryside and he became needful. So he goes on the road again and he binds himself to a citizen of this country as a hired hand. He has taken the lowest status job possible. Household servants have a roof, subsistence, and a living wage. All the hired man earns is the food he needs to survive, and in this case the food his new master has provided seems meager.[7]

This young man has left behind any semblance of life, simply to exist from day to day. And he exists taking the lowest job imaginable for a Jew; he’s feeding a gentile’s pigs. He has left everything behind, literally getting him nowhere.

He even cries wanting to eat the pods he is feeding the pigs. But he seems to regain a grain of his dignity. He does not eat the pig’s food because it is not offered to him. As hungry and dissolute he may be, he does not steal the swine’s feed from his master. He knows his father’s servants are living better than he is, and it is time to leave his pride and his wild life behind, even if he only does this because of his hunger.

So the young man leaves his pride and/or his shame in the field with the swine. He decides it is better to face the consequences of his actions before his father hoping to become a one of his servants rather than die of hunger. He shows his humility saying he is no longer worthy to be called the son of his father. He leaves his pride and vanity behind realizing that he is not worthy of the son’s life he left behind and squandered. He returns to his father.

But the father has left much behind also. The father waits for his son like the wife of a sailor standing on a widow’s walk waiting in vain for a husband who does not return from the sea. He waits until he sees his son returning from far away. Then, with joy he runs.

Imagine how this looks to the neighbors. This younger son, after a season of riotous living and another season of hunger and pig-work would have looked pretty ragged. There were rumors about what he had done while he was away floating around town; the older brother shows us that. He wasn’t ritually clean. He had become a disreputable character. And the father welcomes him back not in spite of this, but because of this. He was lost, and now he is found, he was dead in the world and is now returned to life in his father’s presence.

So when they come together, the younger son begins his by now well rehearsed apology. But his father has no desire to hear his son’s groveling.[8] The father leaves behind any anger he might have toward his admittedly irresponsible son. He leaves behind the right to say “should have known better.” He leaves it all behind for the right to say I love you and welcome home, welcome back where you belong. Let the celebration begin!

This is where we come to the difficult final act of this drama, the introduction of the elder son. Coming home after a hard day’s work, the elder brother asks one of the servants what’s the ruckus. He is told his brother has returned and there is joyful music and dancing.

Because of his highly developed sense of duty and responsibility, the older brother has been stuck on the homestead and hasn’t even been offered a goat for a cookout with his buddies. He has had to take care of the home while Dad waits on the hill like a shepherd looking for the lost sheep. He has had to face the business when his brother took a significant chunk of the family’s loose change. He has had to hear the reports of how the family wealth and his brother’s youth had been misspent. He comes home to a party with music and dancing, and he is not a happy camper. He has not left his anger behind.

He even faces another possible financial strain. According to the law, the father can restore the younger brother to the family with another full share of the inheritance.[9] No wonder he’s upset.

The father leaves the party to speak with his elder son, but he will not be consoled. As the father affirms the younger son’s return to the home and to life, the elder brother disowns him. The elder brother has now left the younger behind. The father affirms that all he has belongs to the elder son so now is the time to celebrate, not hold a grudge. But this falls on deaf ears.

It is said that multi-part parables can only truly be understood through the last part.[10] In the first parts, the father and younger brother leave a lot of stuff behind. It is in the light of the elder brother’s anger and resentment that the redemption and humility of the younger brother and the generosity of the father become more significant. When we see the contrast we see the difference between life giving light and all consuming darkness.

Earlier I spoke of the economics of inheritance. There are as many theories about how the father’s estate was divided as there are commentaries.[11] But this is just so much math. It is said that economics is the study of the use of scarce resources. And doing the math on the father’s estate and the son’s inheritance, you see the resources are limited. If you have written your will you know the same thing. But when we look at this story from our earthly economic point of view, we miss something important.

When we stick with the vast yet limited resources of this story’s father, we miss that the estate, the generosity, the largess of the Lord our Father is greater than we can ever hope or imagine. Given the infinite power and grace and gifts of God, our inheritance is without measure. In the words of my calculus teacher,[12] half of infinity is still infinity. When we try to put our scarce resource thinking into the infinite graciousness of God, we limit God. But the Lord will not be limited. When we share the gifts of God, we soon learn that God is more than we can ever hope or imagine. But to become heirs in the world of our heavenly Father, we need to leave behind the dissolute living and petty anger of this one.

As we see in the life of the brothers, this is difficult. In the words of a hit song from 2000:

I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Leave it behind
You’ve got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you can leave behind
All that your reason
All that your sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
All that you scheme…[13]

There are many, many things that we should leave behind, and more than a few of them are found in this parable. But there is one more thing which gets lost when we focus on the parable instead of its context. In the very beginning of this reading, we are told Jesus was with sinners and tax collectors. Even worse, he was eating with them. For the uber-religious members of the crowd, Jesus was violating all that was good and clean by eating with such disreputable people. In a very real way, Jesus was telling his story in the parable of the father who was so prodigiously generous with his grace and forgiveness that he was willing to accept and restore his disreputable son. It is up to us whether we leave behind our biases and dine with Jesus and the rest of the sinners and the tax collectors or we keep our personal piety like the Pharisees and our anger like the older brother.

There are people all around us who are dead to us, some intentionally, some not so much. We’re human; it’s our way of doing things. But this is not the way of the kingdom of God. In the kingdom there is more than enough life to go around. How we respond to the generous offer of life in our Lord the Father is our choice. It is a choice we make when we come together to share in the bounty of the table the Father sets for us. Come, share, dance, sing, and celebrate because we were once dead, but now in the eyes of the Father we are alive.

[1] From the KraKoosh blog titled “Get Out There & ‘Fail’” http://krakoosh.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/get-out-and-fail/, accessed March 17, 2007.
[2] http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/printer_friendly_single_item.asp?item_id=93009411, accessed March 12, 2007.
[3] “bios” entry from the electronic edition of Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third Edition. Copyright © 2000 The University of Chicago Press. Revised and edited by Frederick William Danker based on the Walter Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und für frühchristlichen Literatur, sixth edition, ed. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, with Viktor Reichmann and on previous English Editions by W.F.Arndt, F.W.Gingrich, and F.W.Danker.
[4] http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/printer_friendly_single_item.asp?item_id=40793, accessed March 12, 2007.
[5] Cousar, Charles B., Gaventa, Beverly R., McCann, Jr., J. Clinton, Newsome, James D., Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, YEAR C. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994,page 226.
[6] “dissolute” entry from Microsoft Word Thesaurus.
[7] http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/printer_friendly_single_item.asp?item_id=23050, accessed March 12, 2007.
[8] Ibid, homileticsonline.com, id=93009411.
[9] Ibid, homileticsonline.com, id=40793.
[10] http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/printer_friendly_single_item.asp?item_id=22984, accessed March 12, 2007.
[11] Traditionally, the younger of two sons could inherit one-third of the father’s wealth. According to homileticsonline.com, id=23050 the younger son could have left the first time with only 11% of his inheritance, but if he had been restored to the estate, he could have eventually taken up to 40% of the father’s estate. According to homileticsonline.com, id=40793 he could have taken one third of the father’s estate and then one-third again, or up to 56% of the original split. Regardless, the elder son feels he deserves his righteousness if for the money alone.
[12] Mr. Ronald K. Oetting, sir.
[13] Bono (Hewson, Paul), “Walk On”, All That You Can’t Leave Behind by U2. PolyGram International Music Publishing BV, licensed to Interscope Records, 2000.