This Fellow Welcomes Sinners
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
In the old Soviet Union it was common for people who had fallen out of favor with the communist regime to also fall out of photographs. Long before digital photography made it easy to change our memories, a little air brushing could remove an inconvenient commissar who had been purged since the last worker's holiday. Indeed, Soviet watchers would study every photograph published in newspapers and journals to determine the rise and fall of cold warriors.
The Soviet Union didn't have the corner on the removal of inconvenient people. How many people grew up in our own country not knowing some basic facts about our country's founding? Four decades ago, my parents took us to historic Williamsburg where reenactors sought to bring Colonial America to life. Funny thing -- there were no African Americans. Visitors who went to Monticello and Mount Vernon to learn more about Jefferson and Washington at one time would never have guessed they were slave owners. Histories might occasionally make a reference to Crispus Attucks, a black man who was the first to fall in the Boston Massacre, but how many knew about the exploits of the First Rhode Island Regiment, composed largely of African Americans?
Sometimes there's a reason someone is missing from the picture. One time our three children had their photographs taken with their fiancés in front of a historic building. A frame featuring all three photos hung on our walls. One of the weddings never occurred, however, and it became necessary to replace one of the photos with someone new. There, at least, it was obvious that the third photo was taken at a different place. In that instance it was pain and separation that led to the change, but we never made a secret of it.
The nice thing is that with computer programs we no longer have to resort to simply tearing out a former spouse from a photo. You may not even know someone is gone. So it's always important to ask who is missing from the picture we're given.
Which brings us to today's scripture text -- the familiar story of the prodigal son. Maybe it is too familiar. In the passage Jesus is accused by religious leaders of being one who eats with sinners. This was a big deal by the society's standards. Sharing a meal -- breaking bread -- meant you approved of that person on some level. Social climbers wanted to be seen eating with people above their station. Those worried about what others thought would not want to be seen eating with those they imagined were beneath them.
In first-century Palestine there was no air conditioning, so buildings tended to be built with windward facing windows. The windows were large, and of course there was no glass. That meant people walking by could look in the windows and see who you were eating with. Nor did they have to glance out of the corner of their eyes. It was socially acceptable and even expected that people would stand outside and stare in to see who was eating together.
So everyone knew whose invitations Jesus had accepted. They assumed that Jesus was motivated by the same things they were, so when they sought to discredit him they assumed that accusing this fellow of eating with sinners would cause him great discomfort.
Jesus isn't embarrassed in the least. He proceeds to tell two parables about a lost coin and a lost sheep to explain why he was more than willing to eat with those accused by sinners of being sinners. People could understand immediately how lost property could make us change our behavior and how suddenly the missing thing became more important than all the things never lost.
We are not embarrassed to scramble around for a lost coin. He's not embarrassed to go to any lengths to save us lost sheep.
After sharing these two examples Jesus raised the stakes. He told the story of the prodigal son and put a human face on the topic of lost and found.
I said earlier that perhaps we're too used to the story. We know the main characters -- the father, the prodigal son, and the brother. We may not realize that there is someone missing from the picture.
Jorge Maldonado, a family counselor, wrote a book called Even in The Best of Families, which alas is out of print.1 Maldonado looked at seven familiar biblical stories through the lens of family systems. Keeping in mind (as the author does) that no one interpretation exhausts the depth of a story from the Bible, the author asks a thought-provoking question about the story of the prodigal son.
Where is the mother in this story?
A missing person can change history. Think of what happened in the story of Jacob after Rachel died. He was left with one son, Benjamin, whose birth had caused his favorite wife's death, and another son, Joseph, who he did not blame for his mother's death, not to mention ten other sons who he seems to ignore pretty completely. As a consequence, Jacob treated Joseph with a favoritism that outraged his other sons, who felt slighted. That coat of many colors changed history, in some ways for the better, but also caused decades of pain and separation because a mother was missing.
The prodigal's mother is missing. Is it because she has nothing to say? Or was it because she was dead? Certainly life expectancy was much shorter in Jesus' day. Childbirth as well as ordinary illnesses and injuries could kill that today barely slow us down. A car won't go far with three wheels, but families have to struggle along even when someone important is gone.
Maldonado suggests that many families are unbalanced because someone is missing, in this case the mother. If the mother had died there are probably many grief issues left unresolved. Perhaps one reason the father was so permissive toward the younger son was to try to make up for the loss of his mother. One reason the older brother might be such a hard worker, never allowing himself time off, is that he has become the missing person, the mother figure who is taking it upon himself to make everything right, not leaving room for anyone else's efforts because it is all on his shoulders. Maldonado wonders if the younger son is so irresponsible because he can never measure up to the older brother's standards and has stopped trying. He simply wants to get as far away from a grieving father and an overbearing brother.
Of course this is Maldonado's interpretation and he does not want us to suppose this was all in the mind of Jesus or his listeners when the story was first told, but he wants us to think about unbalanced families -- and we're all unbalanced. We're all grieving about something or someone. We're all trying to compensate, or we're backing off, making ourselves absent. Maldonado suggests that the father's overwhelming love may yet make things right, but the story is open-ended. Jesus doesn't tell us what happens the next week. Like any good storyteller Jesus draws us in, then leaves us with a cliffhanger that challenges us to put ourselves in the story. At different times in our lives we may find ourselves as the father, the older brother, and the younger brother. Or we may even find ourselves absent, though quite alive.
Keep in mind, of course, that this is a story. It's a sacred story, it was told by Jesus, but he was telling it to illustrate a point. One of the reasons for storytelling by the teachers in first-century Judea was that we take the story home with us, that we think about it, chew on it, retell it in our own way, see something new, ask questions, and find our own answers. Stories can have more than one meaning.
Most of us think of the changes that happened for the prodigal himself. He demanded his inheritance, squandered it, returned, and was not only forgiven but restored to the family. The love of the father for the son in this story is meant to mirror the love of the heavenly Father, who is determined to seek for the lost, even if it means that Jesus eats with sinners. It creates an example for us -- to seek the lost and unloved, because they are part of the family.
But there's more. Dad and the other son need to change, too.
The story of the prodigal son demonstrates abundant love, abundant forgiveness. There are also abundant possibilities for transformation. It's time for Dad to be less of an enabler and for the older brother to loosen up and finally give himself permission to enjoy. What's the use of all this work if there is never any reward?
The older son is not an employee -- he is an owner, in stark contrast to the situation when Laban "hires" Jacob. There are consequences for what the younger son did. He will not be getting back the property he squandered. The older son is going to inherit everything. Everything already belongs to him.
We are not employees of God's kingdom -- we're part of the family. That means we may not expect a regular paycheck, but we've got an inheritance that no one can beat. If we try to cash in now, as did the prodigal son, we're only hurting ourselves.
There's the old joke about a man who was finally rescued after being stranded on a remote island for ten years. He kept sane, he said, by constructing an entire town out of palm branches. His rescuers were astonished to discover a home, an apartment complex, a movie theater, a grocery store, and two churches, one at each end of the town. Why, they asked, did he build two churches?
"Well," the man replied, "I never lost my faith. The church was my symbol of faith and community."
But one of the rescuers persisted. "Why two churches?"
The man shrugged. "Well, the one church was where I went to worship. The other was the church I wouldn't be caught dead in."
It seems sometimes as if church members find it just as important to exclude others as they find it necessary to worship God. The older brother doesn't want to be in a family that accepts a prodigal that squandered perfectly good cash while others work hard all the day long. And sometimes it's hard not to think that the older brother is right -- who wants to deal with a reformed younger brother who has spent all his money, puts on a good face, and is getting a party to boot? Give me a stranger any old day. But the cross is written in the face of each one of us. We've had a rough life, a tough life, and yet we're surviving. Let's see the Jesus who has been revealed when all the baby fat has been cut away, and we start marking our journey in the lines around our eyes and in our faces. Let's treat each other, sinners all, like old friends.
We may not like prodigals and they may even make us a little afraid. When Jesus healed the Geresene demoniac they wanted him out of there -- the demoniac was scary enough -- but a redeemed crazy man, one who was sane and whole, now revealed as their neighbor, once lost and now found -- they were going to have do something about him. Before, they could skirt the graveyard and avoid him. Now he was one of them.
I work weekly with a jail ministry and lead a Bible study behind bars. The attendance is good. There's not a lot going on. What interests me is the strong skepticism expressed by many Christians about jail ministry. Trust me, all of us involved are mildly skeptical about jailhouse conversions. We have had enough experience with losing track of individuals once they leave the four walls of the jail, but just the chance, just the possibility that God might succeed in battering down a shuttered heart makes the work worth it.
So what happens when the prisoners get out? One pastor in our community was approached by the chaplain of the program about the possibility of a released prisoner attending his church. The pastor paused an uncomfortable moment and replied, "I don't think we're set up for him right now."
Contrast that with the attitude I encountered at another church. There were three or four members of that congregation in jail. When our church met with theirs for a joint Bible study there was a time each week during prayer in which these individuals were lifted up, and it was obvious that it was assumed they would one day return and be a part of the fellowship.
Jesus welcomes sinners. That includes us -- and it also includes those others, including the missing in action, and those missing in our hearts. We will be made whole, and our cup will run over -- in time, in God's time.
This task of welcoming sinners is too much for one person, or even one church, but we're not meant to be acting alone. One way to help is to get more people involved. Getting back to our original image of people missing from a picture, it's important to ask if we have excised people from the picture without even knowing it.
Take the family structure itself. It was only in the twentieth century that we developed the concept of the "nuclear" family: Dad, Mom, and children. Family in most eras and even in most of the world now includes many branches -- grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, all vital parts of one unit. But we have lopped off those branches, defining down the size of the family and the community, instead of stretching the boundaries. It really does take a village to raise a child. Remember the old days when everyone watched everyone else's kids?
Nor are we meant to see ourselves as one self-sufficient congregation -- for many of us there is a larger denomination and beyond that the body of Christ consisting of all the Christian communions. We are meant to work together in communities, and as a national and global church, to reach out to the prodigals.
Finally, congregations need to strive to achieve a balance, remembering that the prodigal's family was unbalanced. We do not go off the deep end. We need all kinds -- including those driven away by one event or another. Treating sinners like old friends is important, because they are old friends. We have missed them. We need to balance each other's lives and seek balance in our own.
It's worth noting that Jesus does not give us the end of the story. The father and the prodigal's brother are still standing out in that field. There's been no answer yet. We don't know what's going to happen, at least until we decide. The end of the story is up in the air. Our story is up in the air. How will you decide? Are you a prodigal who needs redeeming love? Are you a prodigal's brother, who need not fear eating with sinners and who needs to get off their high horse, get over their snit, and come join the rest of the human race and God's family? Will you bend? Will we reconcile with each other?
This Sunday in Lent brings to life loss and gain -- the forgiveness that comes from the cross, visible in the story of the prodigal son. We once were lost but now are found.
The story of the prodigal son is not about one of those attractive sinners that we don't know, those symbols that are easy to support because we don't have to deal with them after they're redeemed, except perhaps with a check.
Remember the words of Jesus: "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance" (Luke 15:7).
Lost sheep, lost coins, lost lives. Found in every case. It's the word of Jesus. It should be our word as well. Amen.
_____________________
1. Jorge Maldonado, Even in the Best of Families: The Family of Jesus and Other Biblical Families (New York: World Council of Churches, 1994). Out of print.
The Soviet Union didn't have the corner on the removal of inconvenient people. How many people grew up in our own country not knowing some basic facts about our country's founding? Four decades ago, my parents took us to historic Williamsburg where reenactors sought to bring Colonial America to life. Funny thing -- there were no African Americans. Visitors who went to Monticello and Mount Vernon to learn more about Jefferson and Washington at one time would never have guessed they were slave owners. Histories might occasionally make a reference to Crispus Attucks, a black man who was the first to fall in the Boston Massacre, but how many knew about the exploits of the First Rhode Island Regiment, composed largely of African Americans?
Sometimes there's a reason someone is missing from the picture. One time our three children had their photographs taken with their fiancés in front of a historic building. A frame featuring all three photos hung on our walls. One of the weddings never occurred, however, and it became necessary to replace one of the photos with someone new. There, at least, it was obvious that the third photo was taken at a different place. In that instance it was pain and separation that led to the change, but we never made a secret of it.
The nice thing is that with computer programs we no longer have to resort to simply tearing out a former spouse from a photo. You may not even know someone is gone. So it's always important to ask who is missing from the picture we're given.
Which brings us to today's scripture text -- the familiar story of the prodigal son. Maybe it is too familiar. In the passage Jesus is accused by religious leaders of being one who eats with sinners. This was a big deal by the society's standards. Sharing a meal -- breaking bread -- meant you approved of that person on some level. Social climbers wanted to be seen eating with people above their station. Those worried about what others thought would not want to be seen eating with those they imagined were beneath them.
In first-century Palestine there was no air conditioning, so buildings tended to be built with windward facing windows. The windows were large, and of course there was no glass. That meant people walking by could look in the windows and see who you were eating with. Nor did they have to glance out of the corner of their eyes. It was socially acceptable and even expected that people would stand outside and stare in to see who was eating together.
So everyone knew whose invitations Jesus had accepted. They assumed that Jesus was motivated by the same things they were, so when they sought to discredit him they assumed that accusing this fellow of eating with sinners would cause him great discomfort.
Jesus isn't embarrassed in the least. He proceeds to tell two parables about a lost coin and a lost sheep to explain why he was more than willing to eat with those accused by sinners of being sinners. People could understand immediately how lost property could make us change our behavior and how suddenly the missing thing became more important than all the things never lost.
We are not embarrassed to scramble around for a lost coin. He's not embarrassed to go to any lengths to save us lost sheep.
After sharing these two examples Jesus raised the stakes. He told the story of the prodigal son and put a human face on the topic of lost and found.
I said earlier that perhaps we're too used to the story. We know the main characters -- the father, the prodigal son, and the brother. We may not realize that there is someone missing from the picture.
Jorge Maldonado, a family counselor, wrote a book called Even in The Best of Families, which alas is out of print.1 Maldonado looked at seven familiar biblical stories through the lens of family systems. Keeping in mind (as the author does) that no one interpretation exhausts the depth of a story from the Bible, the author asks a thought-provoking question about the story of the prodigal son.
Where is the mother in this story?
A missing person can change history. Think of what happened in the story of Jacob after Rachel died. He was left with one son, Benjamin, whose birth had caused his favorite wife's death, and another son, Joseph, who he did not blame for his mother's death, not to mention ten other sons who he seems to ignore pretty completely. As a consequence, Jacob treated Joseph with a favoritism that outraged his other sons, who felt slighted. That coat of many colors changed history, in some ways for the better, but also caused decades of pain and separation because a mother was missing.
The prodigal's mother is missing. Is it because she has nothing to say? Or was it because she was dead? Certainly life expectancy was much shorter in Jesus' day. Childbirth as well as ordinary illnesses and injuries could kill that today barely slow us down. A car won't go far with three wheels, but families have to struggle along even when someone important is gone.
Maldonado suggests that many families are unbalanced because someone is missing, in this case the mother. If the mother had died there are probably many grief issues left unresolved. Perhaps one reason the father was so permissive toward the younger son was to try to make up for the loss of his mother. One reason the older brother might be such a hard worker, never allowing himself time off, is that he has become the missing person, the mother figure who is taking it upon himself to make everything right, not leaving room for anyone else's efforts because it is all on his shoulders. Maldonado wonders if the younger son is so irresponsible because he can never measure up to the older brother's standards and has stopped trying. He simply wants to get as far away from a grieving father and an overbearing brother.
Of course this is Maldonado's interpretation and he does not want us to suppose this was all in the mind of Jesus or his listeners when the story was first told, but he wants us to think about unbalanced families -- and we're all unbalanced. We're all grieving about something or someone. We're all trying to compensate, or we're backing off, making ourselves absent. Maldonado suggests that the father's overwhelming love may yet make things right, but the story is open-ended. Jesus doesn't tell us what happens the next week. Like any good storyteller Jesus draws us in, then leaves us with a cliffhanger that challenges us to put ourselves in the story. At different times in our lives we may find ourselves as the father, the older brother, and the younger brother. Or we may even find ourselves absent, though quite alive.
Keep in mind, of course, that this is a story. It's a sacred story, it was told by Jesus, but he was telling it to illustrate a point. One of the reasons for storytelling by the teachers in first-century Judea was that we take the story home with us, that we think about it, chew on it, retell it in our own way, see something new, ask questions, and find our own answers. Stories can have more than one meaning.
Most of us think of the changes that happened for the prodigal himself. He demanded his inheritance, squandered it, returned, and was not only forgiven but restored to the family. The love of the father for the son in this story is meant to mirror the love of the heavenly Father, who is determined to seek for the lost, even if it means that Jesus eats with sinners. It creates an example for us -- to seek the lost and unloved, because they are part of the family.
But there's more. Dad and the other son need to change, too.
The story of the prodigal son demonstrates abundant love, abundant forgiveness. There are also abundant possibilities for transformation. It's time for Dad to be less of an enabler and for the older brother to loosen up and finally give himself permission to enjoy. What's the use of all this work if there is never any reward?
The older son is not an employee -- he is an owner, in stark contrast to the situation when Laban "hires" Jacob. There are consequences for what the younger son did. He will not be getting back the property he squandered. The older son is going to inherit everything. Everything already belongs to him.
We are not employees of God's kingdom -- we're part of the family. That means we may not expect a regular paycheck, but we've got an inheritance that no one can beat. If we try to cash in now, as did the prodigal son, we're only hurting ourselves.
There's the old joke about a man who was finally rescued after being stranded on a remote island for ten years. He kept sane, he said, by constructing an entire town out of palm branches. His rescuers were astonished to discover a home, an apartment complex, a movie theater, a grocery store, and two churches, one at each end of the town. Why, they asked, did he build two churches?
"Well," the man replied, "I never lost my faith. The church was my symbol of faith and community."
But one of the rescuers persisted. "Why two churches?"
The man shrugged. "Well, the one church was where I went to worship. The other was the church I wouldn't be caught dead in."
It seems sometimes as if church members find it just as important to exclude others as they find it necessary to worship God. The older brother doesn't want to be in a family that accepts a prodigal that squandered perfectly good cash while others work hard all the day long. And sometimes it's hard not to think that the older brother is right -- who wants to deal with a reformed younger brother who has spent all his money, puts on a good face, and is getting a party to boot? Give me a stranger any old day. But the cross is written in the face of each one of us. We've had a rough life, a tough life, and yet we're surviving. Let's see the Jesus who has been revealed when all the baby fat has been cut away, and we start marking our journey in the lines around our eyes and in our faces. Let's treat each other, sinners all, like old friends.
We may not like prodigals and they may even make us a little afraid. When Jesus healed the Geresene demoniac they wanted him out of there -- the demoniac was scary enough -- but a redeemed crazy man, one who was sane and whole, now revealed as their neighbor, once lost and now found -- they were going to have do something about him. Before, they could skirt the graveyard and avoid him. Now he was one of them.
I work weekly with a jail ministry and lead a Bible study behind bars. The attendance is good. There's not a lot going on. What interests me is the strong skepticism expressed by many Christians about jail ministry. Trust me, all of us involved are mildly skeptical about jailhouse conversions. We have had enough experience with losing track of individuals once they leave the four walls of the jail, but just the chance, just the possibility that God might succeed in battering down a shuttered heart makes the work worth it.
So what happens when the prisoners get out? One pastor in our community was approached by the chaplain of the program about the possibility of a released prisoner attending his church. The pastor paused an uncomfortable moment and replied, "I don't think we're set up for him right now."
Contrast that with the attitude I encountered at another church. There were three or four members of that congregation in jail. When our church met with theirs for a joint Bible study there was a time each week during prayer in which these individuals were lifted up, and it was obvious that it was assumed they would one day return and be a part of the fellowship.
Jesus welcomes sinners. That includes us -- and it also includes those others, including the missing in action, and those missing in our hearts. We will be made whole, and our cup will run over -- in time, in God's time.
This task of welcoming sinners is too much for one person, or even one church, but we're not meant to be acting alone. One way to help is to get more people involved. Getting back to our original image of people missing from a picture, it's important to ask if we have excised people from the picture without even knowing it.
Take the family structure itself. It was only in the twentieth century that we developed the concept of the "nuclear" family: Dad, Mom, and children. Family in most eras and even in most of the world now includes many branches -- grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, all vital parts of one unit. But we have lopped off those branches, defining down the size of the family and the community, instead of stretching the boundaries. It really does take a village to raise a child. Remember the old days when everyone watched everyone else's kids?
Nor are we meant to see ourselves as one self-sufficient congregation -- for many of us there is a larger denomination and beyond that the body of Christ consisting of all the Christian communions. We are meant to work together in communities, and as a national and global church, to reach out to the prodigals.
Finally, congregations need to strive to achieve a balance, remembering that the prodigal's family was unbalanced. We do not go off the deep end. We need all kinds -- including those driven away by one event or another. Treating sinners like old friends is important, because they are old friends. We have missed them. We need to balance each other's lives and seek balance in our own.
It's worth noting that Jesus does not give us the end of the story. The father and the prodigal's brother are still standing out in that field. There's been no answer yet. We don't know what's going to happen, at least until we decide. The end of the story is up in the air. Our story is up in the air. How will you decide? Are you a prodigal who needs redeeming love? Are you a prodigal's brother, who need not fear eating with sinners and who needs to get off their high horse, get over their snit, and come join the rest of the human race and God's family? Will you bend? Will we reconcile with each other?
This Sunday in Lent brings to life loss and gain -- the forgiveness that comes from the cross, visible in the story of the prodigal son. We once were lost but now are found.
The story of the prodigal son is not about one of those attractive sinners that we don't know, those symbols that are easy to support because we don't have to deal with them after they're redeemed, except perhaps with a check.
Remember the words of Jesus: "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance" (Luke 15:7).
Lost sheep, lost coins, lost lives. Found in every case. It's the word of Jesus. It should be our word as well. Amen.
_____________________
1. Jorge Maldonado, Even in the Best of Families: The Family of Jesus and Other Biblical Families (New York: World Council of Churches, 1994). Out of print.
