This sermon was delivered at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on the Fifth Sunday in Lent of Year C, March 25, 2007
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
One of the traditions of the ancient church is the burning of incense. Often when people talk about high church traditions, they use the phrase “smells and bells.” Well, those of us who worship in reformation tradition churches aren’t very well connected to the “smells and bells,” and this isn’t all bad. One of the points of the reformation was that the meanings of the liturgy were lost to the people because only the priests participated in them. In the middle ages, the most significant parts of worship became more of a spectator sport than a participation event.
It’s the difference between watching Monday Night Football on ESPN and playing in a Saturday afternoon pick-up game. Both help give exposure to the mysteries of what’s going on in the sport, but only in participating do the work and the mystery come together into something to truly sink our teeth into. This is why we welcome everyone to come to the font. This is why we welcome everyone to come to the table. This is why we welcome everyone to participate in the work and worship of the congregation.
But in losing the “smells and bells,” we lose a connection to thousands of years of worship tradition. There is an old Anglo-Saxon blessing of incense goes like this:
“May my song rise like incense in thy presence. And for us may it be a perfume of consolation, of goodness, and grace, so that these fumes will drive out every phantom from the mind and body, leaving us, as the Apostle Paul phrased it, smelling sweetly of God. May all the attacks of demons fly from this incense like dust before the wind, like smoke before dancing flames.”[1]
The burning of incense is a way of offering, literally raising, prayer and praise. The burnt offerings of the Old Testament were offered for a variety of reasons, all having to do with the worship of the Lord. In the smoke and scent, the worship of the people was lifted on high. It focused the people on the work at hand, worship of the Lord. But there were other scented offerings made in ancient Israel, and this aromatic anointing is what we hear about today in our gospel reading.
Jesus has come to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, where he was served dinner. Some translations lift this up as a special banquet, sort of welcoming the conquering heroes: Lazarus and Jesus, the one who returned from the dead and the one who brought him back. As for me, I prefer the plainer translations, just a supper instead of a banquet. I prefer to think of this as a quiet dinner at home, albeit a quiet dinner with an obsessive-compulsive workaholic hostess, her emotionally theatrical sister,[2] their brother who was recently so dead that he smelled, the Lord our God, and at least one of his closest friends. You know, since this was Judas maybe I should have used finger quotes, you know, “closest friends.” Yeah, some quiet dinner with the old gang.
Suddenly, Mary comes out with a pound of costly perfume made from pure nard worth three-hundred denarii. To get an indication about how much this cost, the average worker earned one denarius a day with a six day work week. Three hundred denarii would take fifty weeks, nearly one full year to earn. Closer to home, the median household income in Carroll County, Arkansas is around $30,000.00.[3] So imagine going to Dillard’s and paying $30,000.00 for about a pint of perfume. Then imagine using it to wash someone’s feet.
Either Lazarus was loaded, or Mary took this foot washing very seriously.
There is no indication that Lazarus was so rich.
After this most generous act, in the words of the gospel, the house was filled with the aroma of the perfume.
Mary took this valuable offering, this gift of great value, and used it to perform a menial chore. She used it to carry out the duty of a slave;[4] she washed the feet of Jesus. Her extravagance is shown in this ordinary action, an action which gives us a preview of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. But I shouldn’t change the subject. We’ll hear about that on Maundy Thursday when we read John 13.
Of course, Judas is livid. After all, the extravagance of this gift could be better suited to feed the poor, or to line his pockets after he lifts a coin or two out of their common purse. Now, the theft angle not withstanding, isn’t Judas right? Couldn’t the money have been better used to feed the poor? We talk about mission and evangelism all of the time. We talk about getting funds for school supplies for kids whose families can’t afford them on their own. We talk about collecting for the hungry locally, nationally, and internationally. We do more than just talk, we act. We do something about it. So if it seems like Judas has a point, well, it’s because from our point of view he does.
But Jesus turns the tables with the often quoted eighth verse, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” This has always bothered me. It seems so callous, and that’s not Jesus’ character.
Something that is missing in the translation is that this is a paraphrase from Deuteronomy 15:11, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” Jewish commentaries prioritized acts of compassion, how we open our hand to the poor and needy neighbor, praising the care of the dead above almsgiving.[5] Jesus alludes to this when he says, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” This isn’t a frivolous use of a costly perfume, Mary is taking care of her poor and needy neighbor as Deuteronomy command. So in a way, Jesus is not being callous toward the plight of the poor, he may be reminding listeners, Judas in particular, that caring for the dead should be emphasized over giving to the poor. Get your priorities straight, dear Judas.
But there is something wrong with this logic. Burial anointing begins with the head, not with the feet. The gospels of Mark and Luke get this detail right when Mary breaks open the jar of nard anointing the head of the Lord.
John makes this a little more complicated as Mary anoints his feet. But there may be two things at play here. The first is that Mary is anointing Jesus in preparation of his death. Certainly Jesus and seemingly Mary know that the hour of Jesus’ death is on the horizon. In anointing him, she acts in love as a faithful disciple of the Lord[6] preparing him for the tomb. Something Judas will fail to do so soon. This is noted in the text, Jesus says it plainly in verse seven. But there is another possible facet to this anointing to explore.
The washing of the feet is not how one is prepared for the tomb. It is a sign of courtesy and hospitality, but in Mary’s hands it becomes more. In washing Jesus’ feet, she anoints him to perform his royal work. As the scent of the perfume filled the house, it wasn’t being filled with the aroma of impending death; it was being filled with the smells of new life, a new life in the anointed Christ.
The house was filled with the aroma of service. The house was filled with the aroma of extravagant giving. This new aroma was even able to cover the smell of Judas’ comment. Yes, Mary has anointed Jesus in preparation of his death, but she has also anointed him in preparation of his life, his work, and his coming passion. Her action fills the house with the aroma of love and devotion, not hypocrisy or mourning.
I have filled this house of worship with an aroma of incense this morning. I have done this to add another element of sensory stimulation to our worship. I have done this to add another medium of lifting our worship. In the words of the Anglo-Saxons, “May our song rise like incense in thy presence.” We need to be like Mary, filling the house with the aroma of life in Christ, not with preparation for death. We need to anoint one another, setting aside one another, preparing one another for the work of the kingdom here on earth. Yes, often we will be called to perform extravagant actions doing menial chores, just like Mary. And like Mary, we are to do this in gracious loving service to the Lord and one another.
May our joyful work and our worship fill this house of God, the houses we dwell, and the world we serve like the nard Mary uses to anoint Jesus and the incense we burn leaving us, as the Apostle Paul phrased it, smelling sweetly of God.
[1] From The Oxford Book of Prayer, edited by Appleton, George. New York: Oxford University Press found in; Archdiocese of Chicago, A Lent Sourcebook, The Forty Days, edited by Baker, J. Robert, et. al. Chicago: Liturgical Training Publications, 1990, page 147.
[2] “Mary” entry #3, Blair, E. P., Entry editor. The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. Buttrick, George Arthur, Editor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 21st Edition, 1962.
[3] http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/saipe/saipe.cgi, for Carroll County, Arkansas, accessed March 24, 2007.
[4] Ibid, The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. “Foot Washing” entry, Shepherd, Jr., M. H., Entry editor.
[5] Mays, James Luther, General Editor, Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Sloyan, Gerard, John. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988, page 153.
[6] Notes on John 12:7-8, The New Interpreter’s Study Bible New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, Harrelson, Walter H., General Editor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
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.
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.
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