“But they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”
In the shadowy half-light of a Sunday dawn a band of faithful women clambered over the rocks and up to the tomb where the body of Jesus, their beloved friend and teacher, had been placed on Friday afternoon. Most of these women had followed Jesus since the very beginning of his ministry, and some of them had used their own funds to support Jesus. They saw how he healed people and lovingly listened to everyone who came to him. They saw how he especially welcomed women, poor people, tax collectors, and even gentiles. They heard him teach in the synagogues and tell stories in the villages. They heard him declare that God’s reign had come close to them. They were there too at Jesus’ last meal with his friends, sitting on the floor, or perhaps in an area screened off from the men. They were there at the cross, standing silently by, watching him die like a common criminal. They followed his body to Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, anointed his body for burial, and watched as the stone covering the mouth of the tomb was rolled in place. Unlike most of Jesus’ other friends, the faithful women didn’t betray him, deny him, or flee from him.
Then in that shadowy dawn, the women had a shattering experience. The rock covering the mouth of the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid had been rolled back, the tomb was empty, and two men stood near it. Angels? Terrified, the women fell to the ground. Then the strangers flung a question at the women, “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery?”1 As the women stood up, they slowly began to think of all that Jesus had taught. They remembered how he had interpreted Scripture and some of the things he had said about himself. They remembered that he had taken pains to remind Peter and all the rest of his friends that, “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the religious leaders, high priests, and scholars, be killed, and on the third day be raised up alive.” As the sun rose higher in the sky, suddenly the truth dawned on the faithful women, and they knew that something new and totally unexpected had happened. They ran to tell the others, but “but the apostles didn’t believe a word of it, thought they were making it all up.” Even after Peter went to look for himself, he still wasn’t convinced.
No surprise. In his accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and of the earliest experiences of his followers, Luke stresses how difficult it was for people to believe that Jesus had been raised – unless they went back to the Scriptures and thought about what Jesus had said. At the same time that Peter was shaking his head in puzzlement, two of Jesus’ other followers were walking to the village of Emmaus. They related to the stranger who had joined them on the walk all that had just taken place in Jerusalem, not realizing that they were speaking with the risen Jesus. Seemingly exasperated, Jesus said, “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?” Only when Jesus broke bread with them did they fully see him.
The two disciples ran back to Jerusalem, right to Peter and the others, and told them all that had just happened. Then Jesus himself appeared among them all, but, “They still couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It was too much; it seemed too good to be true.” Only when Jesus helped them to understand the Scriptures did the truth begin to dawn on them. And when Jesus reminded them that were witnesses of what had happened to him, they began to see that they too might be called to tell others about what had taken place.
So is the story of Jesus’ being raised sheer nonsense? At the very end of Matthew’s gospel, some of the eleven disciples still doubted. We’ll hear the story next week of how difficult it was for Thomas to believe that Jesus had been raised. Some of the Corinthian Christians must have doubted the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Why else would Paul have had to remind them, “Face it – if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors.” If Jesus’ being raised from the dead were sheer nonsense, could Peter, an unlettered fisherman, have convinced Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, and all his household, that God raised Jesus on the third day, and that the Scriptures testify that Jesus is God’s anointed one?
And yet, the whole story is still so hard to believe! Doubt in Jesus’ resurrection has a long history – and for good reason. None of us were witnesses. None of us travelled with Jesus and his friends. None of us heard him teach or saw him heal. None of us saw Jesus hanging on a cross between two thieves. None of us wept with the women. But we do know death. We do know the death of a loved one. We do know the death of a relationship, whose loss leaves unfillable holes in our hearts. We do know the death of hopes and dreams, as our work for a peaceful and just world evaporates into yet more war, violence, and injustice. We open our newspapers, or turn on our computers, smart phones, or televisions and witness yet another act of terrorism and murder: Brussels, Paris, Charleston, Newtown, Tucson. Too often, we are those people whom Paul pitied, pitied because the resurrection seems so far away from our own experience. Evangelical preacher Tony Campolo is famous for preaching on Good Friday, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!” Is it still Good Friday for us? Is this where we live?
By God’s grace, Good Friday is not where we live! After that shadowy dawn, the women went and told Peter and the other apostles. Perhaps they told others as well. The men on the road to Emmaus understood what had happened and told the Eleven. Peter finally understood what had happened. By God’s grace, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter and others of Jesus’ friends spread the good news that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was still alive to them. Paul had a shattering experience of Jesus’ risen presence on the road to Damascus and became an eloquent preacher of the good news. Others of Jesus’ friends risked life, limb, and property to spread the good news that Jesus had been raised, that their lives were forever changed by Jesus’ resurrection, and that new life was available, by God’s grace, to all who followed Jesus. And so the good news has come down to us, to this very day, to this very place, good news brought to us across the centuries, witness by witness by witness.
No we are not stuck on Good Friday! It is Sunday! We too have heard. We may not know exactly what happened in that tomb in the rock, but we trust what we have heard. We trust Jesus’ promise that on the third day God would do something extraordinary. We too study Scripture and find in it the confirmation we seek of the reality of God and of new life in Jesus. We too trust that death is not the final answer to our brief human lives. We trust that we too will enter that larger life where time is no more, and that in a sense, as Jesus’ followers, we are already living in that life. We too trust that with God all things are possible, even our own transformation.
And we hear something else. We hear in the words of the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrected life an invitation to us, an invitation to follow Jesus and to live as he lived. Like the women who first saw the empty tomb, like the men at Emmaus, like Peter, like Thomas, like Paul, like all those who spread the good news, we too have been commissioned. We too are called to tell others that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he is the first one who was raised, but he is not the last. Where he is, there we will be.
Sometime in the 1980s, I attended a conference of feminists in the church. There were Catholic women religious there, as well as Protestant clergy women and lay women. We discussed books like Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father, and we celebrated liturgies using feminine imagery for God. The Catholic sisters talked of their struggles with the Roman hierarchy and the call they felt to ordination as priests. The Protestant clergy women spoke of their struggle to be heard and taken seriously in churches still dominated by men. During that conference, I was given the button you see me wearing today. I’ve kept it all these years. The button says, “But they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” For those of us at the conference, the words reflected our experiences in the church at that time. By God’s grace, much has changed in our churches. Although neither women nor married men are ordained yet in the Roman Catholic Church, much has changed even there. Even more has changed in the Episcopal Church, as we have learned that neither gender nor sexuality nor ethnicity nor disability are reasons to exclude people from leadership in the church.
So can I put my button away? Or does the story of Jesus’ resurrection still sound like nonsense? Not for us who believe God’s promises! Not for us who recognize Jesus at the altar and hear his voice in Scripture. Not for us, who joyfully accept his call to share the good news with others.
Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!
1. This and subsequent Scripture quotes are taken from The Message.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Just as I Have Loved You
A little less than a month from now, on April 22nd, this being a leap year in which the Hebrew calendar adds an extra month, Jews around the world will observe the first night of the week-long celebration of Passover. Let’s suppose that you are lucky enough to have some Jewish friends who have invited you to share their Passover meal, the Seder. Are you curious about what they do? Would you be a little nervous about joining this meal, afraid you’ll make some terrible gaffe?
When you arrive at your friends’ home, the house is sparkling clean. You hear that, as part of the cleaning, the family has given away or tossed out all foods containing yeast or leaven, and that they won’t eat leavened bread for an entire week. In the dining room, the large table is set with wine glasses and some strange looking foods. As you sit down, the host hands everyone a small prayer book called a haggadah.
You begin by blessing a first cup of wine. Then the host blesses the matzoh, the unleavened bread, saying, "This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel."
The youngest child asks questions about the Seder, which the father or host answers. As you read and sing your way through the haggadah, you experience the bitterness of slavery by eating bitter herbs, you are reminded of the mortar that the Hebrew slaves worked with by eating a mixture of chopped apples and honey, and you hear of the ten plagues that befell Egypt. For dinner, which follows the second cup of wine, you eat roasted lamb and more matzoh.
After dinner, you drink wine two more times, the host opens the door inviting the prophet Elijah into the gathering, you recite more prayers, and you sing more songs of praise to God. At the end of this meal, having followed the special liturgy, recited the prayers, and sung the songs, you understand perhaps more deeply than you ever did before, how this meal helps Jews to remember, to actively experience for themselves, the liberation of the Exodus event. You understand too why the Exodus event became such an important story for African American slaves and other oppressed people. And you join more deeply, perhaps, with all the rest of the company, and with Jews all over the world, in affirming that, "With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with a great manifestation, and with signs and wonders, the Lord took us out of Egypt."
As an observant Jew, Jesus would have participated in Passover Seders during his life. However, we don’t know for sure whether Jesus’ last meal with his friends was a Passover Seder or not. Some scholars think that it might have been a Jewish meal of special celebration, but not necessarily a Seder. We do know that after Jesus’ death and resurrection, his followers preserved at least two memories of what Jesus did at that last meal. The first memory is preserved in our Gospel reading for tonight. It is the memory of how Jesus modelled self-giving love, and of how his followers were to live out that love in their own lives. As we heard, first, Jesus performed the most humble possible service for his disciples, that of washing their feet, all their feet. Jesus’ washed the feet of Judas, who betrayed him. He washed the feet of Peter, who denied him. He washed the feet of friends who, in his darkest hour, deserted him.
Then Jesus made sure that his friends understood the meaning of what he had done. He told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Facing death, Jesus reassured his friends of his deep love for them, and he charged them to offer that same self-giving love to each other and to all those around them.
The second memory Jesus’ followers kept of his last night is preserved in the epistle reading for tonight: Jesus’ declaration that a new covenant, sealed in his blood, now existed between God and humanity. We also hear his promise to be present to us in bread and wine. In our lesson from the letter to the Christian community at Corinth, Paul remembers for the Corinthian Christians that second tradition, concerning Jesus’ words over the bread and wine of the Last Supper. By Paul’s time, i.e., about twenty years after Jesus’ death, Christians were gathering together in Jesus’ name. Paul reminds them that gathering together for the Lord’s Supper should lead the Corinthians into a deeper form of communion with Jesus and with each other, into a form of active remembrance of the Lord’s love for them similar to what Jews experience in the Passover Seder.
Actually, the Corinthian community was deeply divided. It consisted of a few wealthy families, some artisans and merchants, and a number of slaves. When these new Christians came together for their celebration of the Lord’s Supper, just as Jews do in the Seder, they ate a real dinner. Unfortunately, following the custom of the time, the host served the wealthier members of the community better food in a more comfortable room than he did the lesser community members. So the wealthiest ate well, while those less wealthy ate poorly. If they were slaves, they probably ate very little. In the paragraph just before tonight’s reading, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for their behavior at the Lord’s Supper. In the part of the letter we have just heard, he provides a theological grounding for the instructions he will then give them concerning how they should behave at the Lord’s Supper.
Paul reminds the Corinthians – and us – that in celebrating the Lord’s Supper we actively, experientially remember, i.e., we enter into and appropriate for ourselves, Jesus’ giving of himself over to death. As we actively enter into Jesus’ giving of his body and blood, that event is no longer something that happened a long time ago. It is an event that we experience in our own bodies. It is not that we are, “performing a historical passion play, replicating the movements of Jesus.” Rather, we too are at table with him, we too hear him bless the bread and wine, we too are in communion with him, and we too receive his body and blood from his own hands. We too are included in the new covenant, the covenant that he established on the night he was handed over, the covenant that he ratified by dying on the Cross and rising from the tomb. Ultimately, we too can say, “The Lord died for me.”
But we do not come to Jesus’ table all by ourselves, as atoms. We come to Jesus’ table as part of a community. We come together. “In this shared meal,” we are reminded, “Christians become sisters and brothers in Christ.”1 In this moment we come away from screens of privacy and loneliness. We come out of our fragmented lives. We come hungry, yearning to be fed by God. We leave filled, fed with God’s love. Divisions among us cease. Here we are knit together by our hunger for God and by our experience of God’s satisfying that need for all of us. In receiving the bread and wine, now become Christ’s Body and Blood, we too can say with all our hearts, “Christ died for us.”
As we experience the new covenant in Christ’s blood, and as we are fed by God, we also hear again another commandment, “Do this in remembrance of me.” How do we do this? First of all, we come. We come to the Lord’s Table! Again and again. Again and again we recall our memories of that last night with him. Again and again, we “offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies.” Again and again, we take into our bodies, the sacrament that feeds us, heals us, and gives us hope. As we remember his death, we marvel again at the depth of his love. And as we proclaim together “the Lord’s death until he comes,” we know that we have had a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, when, in the last day, all of us will be gathered together around the Lord’s Table forever.
And then we go. Enlivened by the Holy Spirit we know that the Lord who showed his deep love for us still lives. Nourished by his Body and Blood, we obey his command to share his love for us with everyone we encounter. We go out into the world, into our homes, into our schools, into our workplaces, into our clubs and secular organizations, hearing his words in our hearts, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we care for our children or the elderly, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we volunteer our time to a worthy cause, or as we forgive those who have betrayed us, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” And as night closes in, on our days and our lives, by God’s grace, we will also hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
May it be so.
1. And following, Ellen Charry, quoted in Synthesis, Vol. 28 No.4, p2.
When you arrive at your friends’ home, the house is sparkling clean. You hear that, as part of the cleaning, the family has given away or tossed out all foods containing yeast or leaven, and that they won’t eat leavened bread for an entire week. In the dining room, the large table is set with wine glasses and some strange looking foods. As you sit down, the host hands everyone a small prayer book called a haggadah.
You begin by blessing a first cup of wine. Then the host blesses the matzoh, the unleavened bread, saying, "This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel."
The youngest child asks questions about the Seder, which the father or host answers. As you read and sing your way through the haggadah, you experience the bitterness of slavery by eating bitter herbs, you are reminded of the mortar that the Hebrew slaves worked with by eating a mixture of chopped apples and honey, and you hear of the ten plagues that befell Egypt. For dinner, which follows the second cup of wine, you eat roasted lamb and more matzoh.
After dinner, you drink wine two more times, the host opens the door inviting the prophet Elijah into the gathering, you recite more prayers, and you sing more songs of praise to God. At the end of this meal, having followed the special liturgy, recited the prayers, and sung the songs, you understand perhaps more deeply than you ever did before, how this meal helps Jews to remember, to actively experience for themselves, the liberation of the Exodus event. You understand too why the Exodus event became such an important story for African American slaves and other oppressed people. And you join more deeply, perhaps, with all the rest of the company, and with Jews all over the world, in affirming that, "With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with a great manifestation, and with signs and wonders, the Lord took us out of Egypt."
As an observant Jew, Jesus would have participated in Passover Seders during his life. However, we don’t know for sure whether Jesus’ last meal with his friends was a Passover Seder or not. Some scholars think that it might have been a Jewish meal of special celebration, but not necessarily a Seder. We do know that after Jesus’ death and resurrection, his followers preserved at least two memories of what Jesus did at that last meal. The first memory is preserved in our Gospel reading for tonight. It is the memory of how Jesus modelled self-giving love, and of how his followers were to live out that love in their own lives. As we heard, first, Jesus performed the most humble possible service for his disciples, that of washing their feet, all their feet. Jesus’ washed the feet of Judas, who betrayed him. He washed the feet of Peter, who denied him. He washed the feet of friends who, in his darkest hour, deserted him.
Then Jesus made sure that his friends understood the meaning of what he had done. He told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Facing death, Jesus reassured his friends of his deep love for them, and he charged them to offer that same self-giving love to each other and to all those around them.
The second memory Jesus’ followers kept of his last night is preserved in the epistle reading for tonight: Jesus’ declaration that a new covenant, sealed in his blood, now existed between God and humanity. We also hear his promise to be present to us in bread and wine. In our lesson from the letter to the Christian community at Corinth, Paul remembers for the Corinthian Christians that second tradition, concerning Jesus’ words over the bread and wine of the Last Supper. By Paul’s time, i.e., about twenty years after Jesus’ death, Christians were gathering together in Jesus’ name. Paul reminds them that gathering together for the Lord’s Supper should lead the Corinthians into a deeper form of communion with Jesus and with each other, into a form of active remembrance of the Lord’s love for them similar to what Jews experience in the Passover Seder.
Actually, the Corinthian community was deeply divided. It consisted of a few wealthy families, some artisans and merchants, and a number of slaves. When these new Christians came together for their celebration of the Lord’s Supper, just as Jews do in the Seder, they ate a real dinner. Unfortunately, following the custom of the time, the host served the wealthier members of the community better food in a more comfortable room than he did the lesser community members. So the wealthiest ate well, while those less wealthy ate poorly. If they were slaves, they probably ate very little. In the paragraph just before tonight’s reading, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for their behavior at the Lord’s Supper. In the part of the letter we have just heard, he provides a theological grounding for the instructions he will then give them concerning how they should behave at the Lord’s Supper.
Paul reminds the Corinthians – and us – that in celebrating the Lord’s Supper we actively, experientially remember, i.e., we enter into and appropriate for ourselves, Jesus’ giving of himself over to death. As we actively enter into Jesus’ giving of his body and blood, that event is no longer something that happened a long time ago. It is an event that we experience in our own bodies. It is not that we are, “performing a historical passion play, replicating the movements of Jesus.” Rather, we too are at table with him, we too hear him bless the bread and wine, we too are in communion with him, and we too receive his body and blood from his own hands. We too are included in the new covenant, the covenant that he established on the night he was handed over, the covenant that he ratified by dying on the Cross and rising from the tomb. Ultimately, we too can say, “The Lord died for me.”
But we do not come to Jesus’ table all by ourselves, as atoms. We come to Jesus’ table as part of a community. We come together. “In this shared meal,” we are reminded, “Christians become sisters and brothers in Christ.”1 In this moment we come away from screens of privacy and loneliness. We come out of our fragmented lives. We come hungry, yearning to be fed by God. We leave filled, fed with God’s love. Divisions among us cease. Here we are knit together by our hunger for God and by our experience of God’s satisfying that need for all of us. In receiving the bread and wine, now become Christ’s Body and Blood, we too can say with all our hearts, “Christ died for us.”
As we experience the new covenant in Christ’s blood, and as we are fed by God, we also hear again another commandment, “Do this in remembrance of me.” How do we do this? First of all, we come. We come to the Lord’s Table! Again and again. Again and again we recall our memories of that last night with him. Again and again, we “offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies.” Again and again, we take into our bodies, the sacrament that feeds us, heals us, and gives us hope. As we remember his death, we marvel again at the depth of his love. And as we proclaim together “the Lord’s death until he comes,” we know that we have had a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, when, in the last day, all of us will be gathered together around the Lord’s Table forever.
And then we go. Enlivened by the Holy Spirit we know that the Lord who showed his deep love for us still lives. Nourished by his Body and Blood, we obey his command to share his love for us with everyone we encounter. We go out into the world, into our homes, into our schools, into our workplaces, into our clubs and secular organizations, hearing his words in our hearts, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we care for our children or the elderly, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we volunteer our time to a worthy cause, or as we forgive those who have betrayed us, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” And as night closes in, on our days and our lives, by God’s grace, we will also hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
May it be so.
1. And following, Ellen Charry, quoted in Synthesis, Vol. 28 No.4, p2.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
But Now am Found
I’ve always loved the hymn, “Amazing Grace,” especially that great line, “I once was lost, but now am found….” It’s a very popular hymn in this country, but do you know its story? It was first published in 1779, and its author was an English poet and clergyman, John Newton. Newton was not raised in a religious family, and in his early years, especially during the time he was forced to serve in the English navy, he was often a stubborn and recalcitrant loner. After leaving the navy, he got involved in the Atlantic slave trade, ferrying Africans to the U.S. and other cargo back to England. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel off the coast of County Donegal, Ireland. Newton felt so threatened that he called out to God for mercy. The storm abated, and he realized that God had saved his life. He continued in the slave trade for the next seven years. However, in 1755, he gave up sea faring and began studying theology.
Newton was ordained in the Church of England in 1764 and began writing hymns with the poet William Cowper. Recalling his own moment of conversion off the coast of Ireland, he wrote “Amazing Grace” to illustrate a sermon for New Year’s Day 1773. Though not well known in England, “Amazing Grace” was sung extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the U.S. in the early 19th century. In 1835 it was joined to the tune “New Britain,” by which we know it today. Perhaps what is most “amazing” about the hymn is that, with its message that our sins do not cut us off from forgiveness and redemption, and that, God, in God’s mercy, continues to search for us, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.
Unquestionably, John Newton knew his Scripture. When he wrote “Amazing Grace,” perhaps he had in mind not only his own extraordinary experience of God’s radical acceptance of him, but also this passage from the gospel of Luke that we have just heard. Spoiler alert right from the top: the parable that we wrongly call “The Prodigal Son,” is not primarily about forgiveness. It is about restoration, wholeness, and God’s unrelenting search for us, in order to bring us back into community with Godself and with God’s people. You can see that immediately if you look at its context, and especially if you think about why Jesus might have told this parable.
A major motif of the gospel of Luke is Jesus’ humanity. What is more important, throughout both the gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, is that the writer emphasizes Jesus’ message that all are welcome in God’s realm, and that salvation is available to all humanity. In the gospel in particular, Jesus heals, seeks out, welcomes, and dines with all kinds of people, rich and poor, sinners and law-abiding, Jews and gentiles. In gathering together all kinds of people, Jesus intentionally creates a new family within the realm of God, a family whose members acknowledge God’s grace and mercy, especially as they see it reflected in Jesus’ welcome of all into that family.
As we heard in today’s reading, some Pharisees and Scribes, i.e., some of the religious leaders, appear to question Jesus’ willingness to cross ethnic, gender, and social class boundaries. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they complain. Think about it. In Jesus’ time there were only very prescribed people with whom it was customary to share food. In response to this complaint, Luke has Jesus tell three stories, all having to do with something lost, and all ending with joyful recovery of the lost item. All three stories illustrate what Jesus’ ministry is about. The first two, which come in between the opening sentences and the parable we just heard, are relatively simple and straightforward. The first, as those of you Bible-readers remember, is the parable of the ninety-nine sheep that are safely in the fold and the one that has gone astray. After diligently searching for and finding the lost sheep, the shepherd in the parable says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” In the second story, a woman turns her house upside down searching for a lost coin. When she finally finds it, she says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Interpreting both these parables, Jesus says, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
The third parable, the one we just heard, is more complex. But ultimately its theme is similar to that of the other two. God deliberately seeks those who are lost, it tells us, and rejoices when the lost ones are found. This is not the parable of the Prodigal Son, as it’s usually called. It’s really the parable of the selfish sons and the loving father. Consider: both sons are lost – in different ways. The younger son is more obviously lost. He has taken a chunk of the family’s money and run away. He’s probably immature and inexperienced, so the money quickly disappears, either through extravagant spending or because, as a young man, he was taken advantage of by expert con men. Be that as it may, he was reduced to starvation and a less than minimum wage job. How does he save himself? He rehearses a pro forma apology and heads back home expecting at least a decent meal and a place to sleep. But his father rushes out. Can you picture the old man? Perhaps he’s spotted the boy from the roof-top. He tears down the stairs and out to the road, robes flying, bare legs exposed. When he sees him, does the father rebuke the boy? Of course not. He embraces the boy, ignores his pro forma apology, and calls for a celebration on the spot. “Rejoice with me, for this son of mine … was lost and is found.”
The older brother is also lost. He bears the burden of goodness – as eldest children often do. He is expected to live up to family mores, carry on the family name and occupation, and live up to family standards of behavior. But in some ways, goodness is a prison, especially if you think that you have to be a model person solely through your own efforts. The older son is also alienated from the community and celebration, and has yet to realize that he constantly receives his father’s love, whether he is the model son or not. Lost in alienation, he stands outside the party. A celebration was always waiting for him, but he has always seen himself as carrying the burdens of the world on his own shoulders.
Both sons need the grace of restoration to family and community: one for the unholy life that he has lived, and the other for a life solely focused on himself. Both need to know that they are truly God’s beloved, if imperfect, children. Both need to know that God continually seeks them out, finds them, and rejoices over them. “Rejoice with me, for the child that I have loved has come back to the family.”
Where are we in this insightful parable? Some of us may feel like the younger brother. Perhaps we have intentionally cut ourselves off from community. Perhaps we have committed unspeakable crimes. Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999, has just broken her silence about what it has been like to have been the mother of such a son. Others of us have severed our ties with our families or communities through addictions, either to such harmful substances as alcohol or drugs, or to ostensibly good things like work, sports, or computer or smart phone screens. If we are like the younger brother, God is always waiting for our return, eagerly seeking us, and yearning to draw us back into community.
The truth is that most of us are probably more like the older brother. Priest and writer Henry Nouwen reminds us of our need to acknowledge “the fact that what God has for us is really there all the time….” What we really need are eyes to see. Nouwen continues, “Celebration belongs to God’s Kingdom. God not only offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing, but wants to lift up these gifts as a source of joy for all who witness them. In all three parables which Jesus tells to explain why he eats with sinners, God rejoices and invites others to rejoice with him.”1
As we respond to God’s invitation, we are also called to emulate the third son, the teller of these parables. God also invites us to seek out the lost and invite them into community. Episcopal Relief and Development is at work all over the world doing just that. Many of their stories touch my heart. However, this month two stories in this month’s Rotarian reflected a similar commitment. In one, a woman was working with women who had been trafficked as young prostitutes and were trying to come off the streets. In another, a team of young Rotarians were delivering 2,400 durable non-inflatable soccer balls to countries where young people have been seen playing soccer with bundles of trash or rags. Wherever they stopped, the team played a lively game of soccer with the recipients of the balls.
In this parish, we know the joy of welcoming our Loaves and Fishes diners. I wonder, who else should we be inviting? Ultimately, all are welcome in God’s realm. All are invited, sought, and rejoiced over. God rejoices over you and invites you to bring others into the celebratory feast.
1. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, Lent 4 2016, p 4.
Newton was ordained in the Church of England in 1764 and began writing hymns with the poet William Cowper. Recalling his own moment of conversion off the coast of Ireland, he wrote “Amazing Grace” to illustrate a sermon for New Year’s Day 1773. Though not well known in England, “Amazing Grace” was sung extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the U.S. in the early 19th century. In 1835 it was joined to the tune “New Britain,” by which we know it today. Perhaps what is most “amazing” about the hymn is that, with its message that our sins do not cut us off from forgiveness and redemption, and that, God, in God’s mercy, continues to search for us, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.
Unquestionably, John Newton knew his Scripture. When he wrote “Amazing Grace,” perhaps he had in mind not only his own extraordinary experience of God’s radical acceptance of him, but also this passage from the gospel of Luke that we have just heard. Spoiler alert right from the top: the parable that we wrongly call “The Prodigal Son,” is not primarily about forgiveness. It is about restoration, wholeness, and God’s unrelenting search for us, in order to bring us back into community with Godself and with God’s people. You can see that immediately if you look at its context, and especially if you think about why Jesus might have told this parable.
A major motif of the gospel of Luke is Jesus’ humanity. What is more important, throughout both the gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, is that the writer emphasizes Jesus’ message that all are welcome in God’s realm, and that salvation is available to all humanity. In the gospel in particular, Jesus heals, seeks out, welcomes, and dines with all kinds of people, rich and poor, sinners and law-abiding, Jews and gentiles. In gathering together all kinds of people, Jesus intentionally creates a new family within the realm of God, a family whose members acknowledge God’s grace and mercy, especially as they see it reflected in Jesus’ welcome of all into that family.
As we heard in today’s reading, some Pharisees and Scribes, i.e., some of the religious leaders, appear to question Jesus’ willingness to cross ethnic, gender, and social class boundaries. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they complain. Think about it. In Jesus’ time there were only very prescribed people with whom it was customary to share food. In response to this complaint, Luke has Jesus tell three stories, all having to do with something lost, and all ending with joyful recovery of the lost item. All three stories illustrate what Jesus’ ministry is about. The first two, which come in between the opening sentences and the parable we just heard, are relatively simple and straightforward. The first, as those of you Bible-readers remember, is the parable of the ninety-nine sheep that are safely in the fold and the one that has gone astray. After diligently searching for and finding the lost sheep, the shepherd in the parable says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” In the second story, a woman turns her house upside down searching for a lost coin. When she finally finds it, she says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Interpreting both these parables, Jesus says, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
The third parable, the one we just heard, is more complex. But ultimately its theme is similar to that of the other two. God deliberately seeks those who are lost, it tells us, and rejoices when the lost ones are found. This is not the parable of the Prodigal Son, as it’s usually called. It’s really the parable of the selfish sons and the loving father. Consider: both sons are lost – in different ways. The younger son is more obviously lost. He has taken a chunk of the family’s money and run away. He’s probably immature and inexperienced, so the money quickly disappears, either through extravagant spending or because, as a young man, he was taken advantage of by expert con men. Be that as it may, he was reduced to starvation and a less than minimum wage job. How does he save himself? He rehearses a pro forma apology and heads back home expecting at least a decent meal and a place to sleep. But his father rushes out. Can you picture the old man? Perhaps he’s spotted the boy from the roof-top. He tears down the stairs and out to the road, robes flying, bare legs exposed. When he sees him, does the father rebuke the boy? Of course not. He embraces the boy, ignores his pro forma apology, and calls for a celebration on the spot. “Rejoice with me, for this son of mine … was lost and is found.”
The older brother is also lost. He bears the burden of goodness – as eldest children often do. He is expected to live up to family mores, carry on the family name and occupation, and live up to family standards of behavior. But in some ways, goodness is a prison, especially if you think that you have to be a model person solely through your own efforts. The older son is also alienated from the community and celebration, and has yet to realize that he constantly receives his father’s love, whether he is the model son or not. Lost in alienation, he stands outside the party. A celebration was always waiting for him, but he has always seen himself as carrying the burdens of the world on his own shoulders.
Both sons need the grace of restoration to family and community: one for the unholy life that he has lived, and the other for a life solely focused on himself. Both need to know that they are truly God’s beloved, if imperfect, children. Both need to know that God continually seeks them out, finds them, and rejoices over them. “Rejoice with me, for the child that I have loved has come back to the family.”
Where are we in this insightful parable? Some of us may feel like the younger brother. Perhaps we have intentionally cut ourselves off from community. Perhaps we have committed unspeakable crimes. Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999, has just broken her silence about what it has been like to have been the mother of such a son. Others of us have severed our ties with our families or communities through addictions, either to such harmful substances as alcohol or drugs, or to ostensibly good things like work, sports, or computer or smart phone screens. If we are like the younger brother, God is always waiting for our return, eagerly seeking us, and yearning to draw us back into community.
The truth is that most of us are probably more like the older brother. Priest and writer Henry Nouwen reminds us of our need to acknowledge “the fact that what God has for us is really there all the time….” What we really need are eyes to see. Nouwen continues, “Celebration belongs to God’s Kingdom. God not only offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing, but wants to lift up these gifts as a source of joy for all who witness them. In all three parables which Jesus tells to explain why he eats with sinners, God rejoices and invites others to rejoice with him.”1
As we respond to God’s invitation, we are also called to emulate the third son, the teller of these parables. God also invites us to seek out the lost and invite them into community. Episcopal Relief and Development is at work all over the world doing just that. Many of their stories touch my heart. However, this month two stories in this month’s Rotarian reflected a similar commitment. In one, a woman was working with women who had been trafficked as young prostitutes and were trying to come off the streets. In another, a team of young Rotarians were delivering 2,400 durable non-inflatable soccer balls to countries where young people have been seen playing soccer with bundles of trash or rags. Wherever they stopped, the team played a lively game of soccer with the recipients of the balls.
In this parish, we know the joy of welcoming our Loaves and Fishes diners. I wonder, who else should we be inviting? Ultimately, all are welcome in God’s realm. All are invited, sought, and rejoiced over. God rejoices over you and invites you to bring others into the celebratory feast.
1. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, Lent 4 2016, p 4.
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