The verses we have heard from the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel are not the lectionary reading for today. They are my choice for my last Sunday in this pulpit, where it has been such a privilege to preach over the last three years.
These three stories tell us so much—so much about God and about ourselves. I go back to them when I feel as though I have lost my bearings making my way through life. According to Luke the Gospel writer, Jesus told these three stories in response to the criticism of the religious leaders of his time, who complained that he was welcoming sinners and even eating with them.
The stories are well known to people who have spent a lot of time in churches. But there are people here today who have not spent a lot of time in churches, or at least in this church, people who have taken the risk of entering an unfamiliar place in order to find nourishment for their souls. The three stories come to us across almost two thousand years, carrying with them the baggage of patriarchy. The third story is about a father and two sons. It could just as easily be about a mother and two daughters. I will leave the text as it is, and let you do your own up-dating.
For me the central truth of the Christian faith is in these stories. They are about active seeking, intentional searching. Philosophers have written about the human search for God. These stories are about God's search for humanity. In the first story a sheepherder leaves his large flock of ninety-nine sheep to find the one that strayed away. The sheepherder doesn't rest until he has found the lost sheep, carried it home on his shoulders and restored it to the sheepfold.
In the second story a householder discovers that one of her ten coins is missing. She lights a lamp and sweeps her dwelling place until she finds the coin that has been lost. When she finds it, she calls together her neighbors to celebrate her successful search. Both the sheepherder and the householder are stand-ins for God—a man and a woman as stand-ins for God—comforting!
In the third story, the masterpiece of the three, a father and his sons are the central characters. All three are important in the story. Often called The Parable of the Prodigal Son, it can better be called The Story of a Parent and Two Children. There is little doubt that in the story, the father represents God. Whom the two sons represent is more difficult to pin down, or maybe more uncomfortable to accept.
The story begins with the younger son in the spotlight. The younger son goes to the father and asks for the share of the property, probably a farm, which will some day be his. According to the laws of the time, if there were two surviving sons of a deceased father, the elder son would receive two-thirds of the estate, and the younger son would receive one third. Ordinarily the division of property would not take place until the death of the father.
The younger son's request to his father is blatantly insensitive. He treats his father as though he were already dead, or about to die. (It's so easy to ignore the feelings of another person when we are involved in a conversation or task.) The father grants the request and divides his property, giving the younger son one third and the elder son two thirds of the estate, although the father stays in control of the two-thirds. The younger son turns his premature inheritance into portable assets, possibly gold coins, and sets out to have the life he had always wanted.
The narrative is lean and spare. The son traveled to a far country and squandered everything he had in dissolute living. We are left to fill in the details. Out of money, he begged for work, any kind of work. All that was offered to him was feeding pigs, abhorrent to Jews. When a recession hit the area, the younger son ran out of the basic necessities, and no one helped him. He was close to death by starvation.
The next few words are worth a sermon by themselves. "When he came to himself...." I didn't begin teaching at Princeton Seminary until I had forty years of experience in the ministry. In every course I taught, I made it a point to tell the students that the most significant thing they would take into their ministry was their self. I am grateful that my particular life's journey has forced me to work on knowing myself, to explore every nook and cranny of my psyche, my soul. I believe that one of life's greatest tragedies is to live without self-awareness, never to come to terms with what shapes our desires and our actions, taking other people's inventory but not our own.
The younger son "came to himself." And the healing could begin. He realized that the physical hunger gnawing at his stomach was symptomatic of something deeper—a hunger for connection, for a sense of belonging. He rehearsed in his mind the speech he would make to his father, acknowledging his wrongs, and asking, pleading for a place in the family household, even as a slave. And so he began the journey toward home.
The spotlight shifts from the younger son to the father, who for months or even years, had kept an eye on the horizon while taking care of the business of his life. Wondering, worrying, hoping. And then one day there was the figure of a man far away, moving toward the father and the house where he had been waiting and watching. When the father knew it was the younger son returning, he threw dignity and decorum to the wind and ran to meet his son. Like Jacob and Esau almost two thousand years earlier, father and son fell into each other's arms, embraced, and wept with joy.
The son began his well-practiced speech of contrition and request. But before he could get to the request part, the father interrupted him and called for the symbols of belonging—a robe, some shoes, and a ring. And he made preparations for a feast. So it is with God and anyone who makes the slightest move toward going home spiritually.
The story would be enough if it ended there. Jesus made it clear that God's love is a seeking, searching love that is ever ready to embrace those who have felt outside the circle of belonging, for whatever reason. In eating with tax collectors and other so-called sinners, Jesus was making the point that God's love is altogether inclusive.
But there is more to the story. And the third part holds up a mirror to the church—to me as a pastor and to those of us who have been part of organized or disorganized religion. The spotlight shifts to the elder son, who comes home sweaty and sore from hours of work on the family farm. As he approaches the house, he hears music and dancing, not what he might expect on a weekday, early in the evening as the sun was setting.
A household servant gives him the news. His younger brother has returned, and their father has welcomed him home with a banquet. The elder brother refuses to go in to the celebration. He remains outside—in the dark. And the father once again takes action, this time reaching out to the good son, the son who has obeyed the rules. The father pleads with the elder son to enter the house and participate in the festivities. But the elder son remains resolute in his anger.
He explodes. Whereas the younger son began his speech with the relational word Father, the elder son does no such thing. "Listen," he shouts, "all these years I have worked hard for you. I have never disobeyed you." That gets my attention. Never disobeyed? What's missing is the coming to himself the younger son experienced in the far country of his personal crisis.
People who play by the rules and stay at home in the figurative sense sometimes don't see themselves as others see them—perhaps a little self-righteous, rigid, judgmental, in some cases. But they can come to themselves, although it's harder for them. Sometimes their life or work and duty can serve as an evasion of self-awareness, self-examination. There may be something they don't want to face, something too painful to confront. So they keep working, staying busy so there is no time for reflection. But they feel the hunger pangs that were undeniable for the younger son. The longing is just not severe enough to lead to action.
In response to the rage of his son, the father stays true to character. "Son." (Pay attention to that word: Son, daughter, person made in my image. God's address to us is always personal.) "You are always with me, always in my heart, and all that I have is yours. I want you to understand that my love is for everyone, for people who know the language of faith and for people who don't, for people who go to church and for people who don't, for people who come to themselves and for people who don't."
What this story says to me is that coming to ourselves and acknowledging our brokenness allows us to be aware of God's grace, to know the joy of being loved cosmically and eternally. At this stage of my journey, I believe God's grace embraces everyone, whether they realize it or not. If they don't consciously respond to it, they miss the deep joy of knowing what it feels like to be loved unconditionally by God.
Ever since Nancy and I went to the U2 concert on September 24th, I've been living with the eighth song Bono sang that night: "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." It's a great song. As I come to the end of my ministry at Rutgers, and maybe to the end of a major phase of my life, I know myself well enough to say, with gratitude and, I hope, humility, "I haven't found everything I'm looking for, but I keep finding more and more. The story of God's love goes on, and what I've found is very good. It's more than enough. In fact, it's really great.
Thank you for the privilege of being your interim pastor.