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SERMONS

The Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 18, 2007

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

Jesus tells the story of a lost boy, who most of us know as the Prodigal Son. Some have called it the parable of the loving father with two sons. We might also think of it as the parable of the loving father with two lost sons.

Some have called this story the Gospel within the Gospel.

The Prodigal leaves life down on the farm to dance around the Bonfire of the Vanities. The Prodigal is the individual who asks for things before the appropriate time. In a sense, the Prodigal asks the father to die and early death, so that he might enjoy an expansive life prematurely and immaturely. The Prodigal chooses to live a lifetime in a moment. It is all Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, with the sobering reality of Ash Wednesday nowhere in sight.

No appetite is left unfed, so that The Prodigal becomes lost in a treacherous web of self-gratification. The Prodigal is lost to himself and lost to others. This loving father loses his son. Not because the world is some dangerous jungle which simply swallows up the young. The Prodigal is lost because he ransoms himself to satisfies his desires. The Prodigal is lost in something of a jungle of his own choosing - the wilderness of his own passions.

“But when he came to himself he said - How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough to spare, but here I am dying of hunger.”

It takes the experience of actually starving to death for The Prodigal to come to himself. When his body is starved and shivering and no longer capable of experiencing pleasure, he has a glimpse of reality; he experiences another kind of hunger - the hunger of repentance. And so he goes to his father.

The loving father breaks all of the manners and customs of his position by running out to meet his son - essentially the father risks being seen a fool in the eyes of others he is so overjoyed - because what was lost is now found.

And so the missing piece of the family is returned - however everyone is not “at home.” This loving father’s house is not yet a home, because just as one son who was lost is found, the elder son who was always “found” is now lost. One comes from the wilderness of passion and another goes into the wilderness of self-righteousness.

It seems that the world of the elder son is knocked off its axis when there is this music, this laughter, these tears of joy, and the smell of roasting meat - one of the father’s most prized possessions - all offered up on the altar of his shipwrecked younger brother. Could you blame him?

For years, through the excruciating repetition of daily living, the elder brother has been true to the compass of duty, of living in the “right.” His position impregnable; as the “good” son, the “good” seed, the consolation in the eyes of others, for his father’s misfortune in The Prodigal. Perhaps even a kind of personal martyrdom for the sake of the family and the father’s heart.

The elder son has held a unique position: on the one hand receiving sympathy, admiration, for being the loving father’s suffering servant; while actually living as a master, or heir-apparent. And curiously it is the reintroduction of the shipwrecked Prodigal that reveals the true motives in the elder brother’s heart. A family reunion is taking place, and yet all of the family are not present - not at least in heart and soul.

“Listen! All these years I have worked like a slave for you . . .yet you have given me nothing.” Interesting that it does not read “Listen! All these years I have worked like a son for you . . .”

Someone has been keeping score. In his own eyes, by his own admission, the elder son is one who has given in order to receive. Keeping tally. Shoring up the moral and familial high ground. Which is precisely why the elder brother cannot understand his loving father’s generosity - which is precisely why the scribes and pharisees are scandalized, offended, by the extravagant grace of God. In the end it shatters our notions of fairness and scorekeeping.

We cannot earn what can only be received - the love, the compassion, the actual kindness of a father who loves us more than our need to be justified in our own and others’ eyes.

You see, Jesus is sending yet another message to the scribes and pharisees, that we may be physically present, but that does not necessarily mean that we have made our home with God. Like the loving father of these two sons, each of whom become lost in different landscapes of the human heart, God comes rushing out to meet us in our decision of repentance, or reassure us in our moment of self-righteous insecurity. God is rushing out to us with love, inviting us to be “at home” with him, telling us that we are indeed his children. God risks being thought a fool in order to embrace us.

God will go where we so often cannot go in order for his house to actually become a loving and joyful home. When we are lost in the wilderness of either of these landscapes, self-indulgence or self-righteousness, the loving father is never far from us. He is near, desiring that we make our true home with him.

The first steps are always the most dangerous, the most frightening, because with it we admit to ourselves and to others that we have been lost and would like to be found; that our destiny lies in a land far from our own abilities.

What we hear Jesus say today is that there is indeed a sanctuary waiting for each of us, a place to put down the crushing weight of passion and pride. That there is indeed a home for each of us where there is music, where there is a feast, where there is a loving embrace.

This is our home - the place where what was thought dead . . . is alive.

This is our home - where the lost are being found.