Sermon for the 9 th Sunday after Trinity – July 20, 2008
“ A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. ”
IT has been called the perfect story. Authors of novels, Pulitzer Prize winners have read the account of a small family of three men and wondered at the brilliance and simplicity of it. It is straightforward and simple, while powerful and strangely familiar. It is a classic story of the East. It's the perfect story.
Others have called the Gospel, the life of Jesus Christ, the “Greatest Story Ever Told.” We'd have to be careful with our definitions here however, because the word “story” may mean a tale that someone made up. Four men, close to the real events of the life of Christ, gave their own accounts of who He was and what He did and what it meant to all mankind. They also gave accounts of His stories, or parables: simple and comfortable tales of people and farms and plants and animals, tales that tell us something. “The kingdom of heaven is like…”
It's like a bit of yeast hidden in dough. It's like a pearl great in value that a man found buried in a field. It's like a man sowing seed for his farm. It's like ten virgins sleepily awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom, like a king who gave his treasure into the keeping of his servants, like a shepherd separating sheep from goats. The word “parable” literally means placing beside or comparing two things, and thus telling the audience that this thing is very much like the other. As Jesus uses this technique, a heavenly thing is likened to an earthly thing. And as with all Scriptures, when we read a parable of Jesus, the parable is reading us.
It has been said that God created man because God loves stories. How is that so? From our earliest childhood, we have loved to sit and listen to cleverly told tales, in colorful language we may use to spark our imaginations, picture the hero, think of his great deeds, feel his fear or anger or love. A story enriches us, gives us something to think over, and imparts a value to us. I've always preferred the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, for instance, over the Brothers Grimm because his are more likely to have a positive moral, and theirs simply dark and horrible. If we are such natural story tellers and avid story listeners and readers, isn't it reasonable to infer that God Himself is the creator of stories, and made us to story together?
The great story of God and His creation unfolds: “In the beginning, God…” It's like the opening to Beethoven's 5 th . The people we meet from the first chapter on are more than characters in a book; they are family to us. Their lives and good and bad decisions have made our lives, our stories what they are. The garden and its forbidden fruit, the ark and the great rain, the call of God for Abram to go south, Joseph's coat and his envious brothers: these are family accounts, like home movies or family photo albums, but better. Every family has a story, and our story begins In the Beginning.
Something happens when a story is told. A story teller sits down in the middle and his or her attitude cause a hush in the assembly. “I will tell you the story of…” A contract is struck, a covenant made, as the teller engages with the listener. Culture is being created, imparted, and a great learning experience given to the young. Story tellers have a great art that the television can't emulate. Funny or sad, colorful and imaginative, a good story has something in it for all of us. A good story needs someone we can identify with, or at least feel for. It needs dramatic tension, a problem to solve, a conflict to fight out or let go of.
The stories of Jesus, His parables, were not necessarily those of real folk. They didn't have the fantastic elements of fables, such as talking animals or monsters. They always had a moral, thought it might lay hidden behind the symbols of people and everyday things. He hid them this way so that only those ready to understand spiritually at a deeper level would get the point, while others waded in the familiar waters of a story of a man and his two sons, a good one and a rather bad one, I'm afraid.
This younger son asked his father to apportion him the full accounting of his inheritance, just as though his father had died and left the estate to the older brother, and a third of the goods and money to him. The young man wrapped up his money, turned his back on his family, and ran away to a foreign land where he wasted everything on wine, women and song. A generation ago it was called sex, drugs and rock n roll: same thing. His money ran out and his friends abandoned him and he began to starve. He got a terrible job and began to think of his home. Even his father would treat him better as an employee than this oaf. Well, what if he were to go to his father and simply ask to be hired on as a hand. You see how far he had sunk in his estimation of himself, not just by starving, but in the riotous living itself. He knew he wasn't worthy to be called that man's son, that he had sinned against God and his family. He was without any defense, and his pride was at low ebb. He got up and started walking.
Now back home his father had not stopped looking for the return of his foolish but beloved son. He knew what would happen. He knew that the school of hard knocks would teach the boy, in time, but prayed and hoped that it wouldn't damage him too much, or kill him, or perhaps drive him farther away. It would be even worse if he succeeded in his new life of sin. But he wasn't built that way. He must come back home, sadder but wiser, an appreciative heir of more than just money. One day the old man's longing eyes were rewarded with the sight of his son walking back down the path to his home. Unable to contain his joy, the man ran to greet his son, threw his own cloak about him, put his ring on the boy's finger, and called for the servants to prepare a feast, kill that calf they've been fattening up for such an occasion. He won't even listen to the prepared speech about an unworthy son who just wants to be the houseboy.
The story could end here, and we would know the love of the Father in heaven for us, foolish prodigals, of his vast forgiveness, his eagerness to greet us as we turn back and forswear our sinful lives. It would be a complete story, but for the other character in the plot. What about the older brother?
He comes home and hears a party already under way. Asking a servant, he finds that it's his delinquent brother, home again, buttering up the old man, taking what isn't his, making fools of us all again. Why does his father even allow him back? He stays outside and sulks. Father goes out to him—makes a similar effort to reach this son also—and consoles him. “How could you do this?” begins the heir. “You've never even given me a goat to throw a party for my friends, but this your son comes back from wasting all your money on harlots, and you kill the special calf!”
“Son, son, all I have is yours. You are ever with me. You lose nothing in this, but think. Your brother was dead. He is now alive! He was lost and now is found.”
The perfect story. No one is left out, not even among the hearers. We might be prodigals, which means wasteful loose spenders who throw money away on junk. It denotes a man with misplaced values, raised right but now off to discover the pleasures of sin, only to find out the high price and the pain of it. We can identify, most of us. I can. Sex, drugs, rock n roll—they were all in Berkeley during the summer of love and the hippie revolution. My family felt they'd lost a son. I was not the oldest. Oh, I can identify with this.
We might be the good son who dutifully and faithfully stays in the path, doing what is right but secretly envying and resenting the fun his brother had in his debauchery. Not knowing nor valuing the treasure that is his in the presence of his loving father, living on the estate that shall be, is in fact, his own, the older brother feels dispossessed, unrewarded for his hard work, his righteousness. It's a real mistake: integrity is a gift you give yourself. Its good feeling, its satisfaction is proof that doing good does not need to be rewarded further, for goodness is its own reward. Nevertheless, he will inherit the whole farm. What is his complaint? He doesn't see what is his. And he doesn't care at all for the state of his brother. The father's loving talk is a reminder of these things.
And we may be parents, fathers or mothers to either or both kinds of these kids. They can break your hearts, even when you thought your life would get easier. You pour your life into them, and they spurn it. You give them all the values you know will see them through life and they reject them in favor of the worst ideas taught to them on MTV. They go off, aren't heard from for months, and run out of money. “Send money. Oh, and happy birthday.” But your heart aches to see them, to hear them return not just in place but in character, finding their old sweet selves at the bottom of the rubble and ruin of the path they have taken. We only want to hold them again, love them and assure them that it can be right again, not lecture them and tell them how they hurt us, how wrong they were—they know that.
It's the perfect story, and it is told by the Perfect Storyteller. His life is truly the greatest of stories, and more impressively, every word is true. It really happened that way. For us God's own Son comes to be one of us. For us He lives among us and teaches and heals and raises the dead to life. For us He confronts the religious teachings of the day that are distorting the character and purpose of God. And for us He faces the powers that be, oppose them, and is falsely accused, tried and executed—not for His sins, for He is Perfect—but for ours. And for us He rises triumphant over death itself, to lead us back to His Father. A warm welcome is assured us there, if only we will turn from our pride and imprudence, making ourselves His servants, so he might raise us up to be His sons. It's a true story. It is our story. We were made for such a story, to live in it and have it shape our road, the road away from a pig sty, the road that leads back home.
PFH+