Sermon for the 9 th Sunday after Trinity, August 9, 2009
“ 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. ”
THE most desperate and dangerous act of creativity we ever engage in is the propagation of the species, the extension of the human family, the conception of offspring: having a child. To give life is to share the role of the Creator, and what a chance He took by creating us! One might think it wasn't a very good bet after all—humanity. This free and powerful creature might do just about anything, become anyone he wanted to be. To have a son, or daughter, is to start the whole thing over— and how might it turn out? What have we done? What have we unleashed upon the world? Solomon wrote: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord , The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.” Psalm 127:3-5 If we shoot our children like arrows into the world, what will they hit? Who might they hurt? Will their course run perfectly according to our aim, or go wildly and recklessly amiss?
What would be your idea of the perfect son? When he's grown up, what kind of man would you want him to be? Would you prefer him to be brave and independent, able to make his own way in the world, choose a path and follow it and learn by what he does and finds along the way? Or would you want your son to follow closely in your own footsteps, never stray far from your side, perhaps be your apprentice in the family trade and take over the business when you're older, carrying on the family name and fortune?
Jesus tells us a parable that has been considered the greatest story of all, what we call the Prodigal Son . Here we find an old father and two grown sons whose mother isn't mentioned and has perhaps died giving birth to her younger offspring. This younger son now asks for his inheritance, the portion that would have been his someday when his father died, but he demands it today and is given it at great loss to the household. Then, continuing to act like his father is dead, the young man packs his fortune to leave the country and live his own life. He turns his back on his family and departs. Once abroad, the pleasures and liberties offered him, while he has the money, lure him to waste the entire inheritance on parties, luxuries, drink, immoral and foolish ways. He plunders the entire fortune and winds up destitute. All his good-time friends desert him and he sells himself to a pig farmer, feeding husks from the barley harvest to hogs and he would even eat that empty straw if he could. Then he has an idea . His father treated his servants better than this. Why not go back home, fall on the mercy of his family and simply become their servant where at least he would get three meals a day and work with some dignity? He practices his speech—one he must give most sincerely and carefully to his father, the man he's treated as dead. It'll be touch and go, but he trusts that his dad won't let him starve.
Back home, the father has never stopped watching the horizon, fondly hoping for his lost son to return. Word has reached him of the boy's wasted fortune, subsequent poverty and desperate straits. If only he would return home, he'd never lack for love or food. To hear his son had died so far from home would break this dear father's heart. One day in the distance, far up the road there comes a weary and bedraggled figure, staggering, footsore, nearly naked, fainting with hunger. It must be him! The father races toward his son and grasps him around skinny arms and chest— how thin he's become! Oh, Lord, he's barely alive! The young man recognizes his father, out of the dimness of a world he barely sees, and starts his plea: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and right before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son…” He would continue with the request to be a servant, but his father cuts him off. The real servants have arrived, excited and confused, so the father shouts out orders: “Get a robe for him, my best one. Here, set this ring on his hand. Fetch him some shoes for heaven's sake. And you, go get the calf we've fattened, slaughter it and prepare a great feast. Go!” The father and son stumble happily back to the house as joyful word goes through the homestead. But the older son is too far away, working the distant fields, to know any of it.
The party begins. Music, dancing, the smell of barbequed meat rises in the dusk as the elder son walks wearily into the farm yard. What could this be? When he finds out that his little brother has returned to get a warm welcome and feasting in his honor, the heir's chest gets very tight. That scoundrel, that whoremonger, that little wastrel besotted worthless cheater! How dare he come here now, after abandoning us to the work. How dare he bring his sick lifestyle into our home. There is no way I am setting foot in there! I do not greet this prodigal, not even if my father has gone soft on him.
The father hears of his elder son's refusal to step inside, and so again he makes the trip toward this other son to entreat him. The elder son has his own speech to make: “I have served you all these years, I've obeyed anything you ever asked me, and never once have you even killed a goat for me and my friends to have such a party. Now the minute this, your son, returns from wasting our life's savings on harlots, you kill the fatted calf we were saving…” The father grasps his big manly son and gently puts his hand to his mouth, quieting him down. “My dear son, you have always been with me and you always will. I know what you have given me and everything I own already belongs to you. Now, it was fitting that we should celebrate and be happy today, you and I, because your brother was dead—dead, son, dead to us and gone. But today he is alive and is here with us. He was completely lost to us, yet now he is found.”
What is the perfect son? Is he independent, courageous, adventurous and, if we be honest, willing to do the things we were always afraid to do? Or is he a great big chip off the old block, the spittin' image of his old man, living in his father's shadow and working toward the day when this all will be his? Are either of these sons ideal? In truth, both had gladly counted the other one dead. In truth, the elder brother envied the lifestyle his prodigal brother had lived, resenting his lot of hard work and conservative choices. Both questioned the wisdom of their father and chafed at his steady, unchanging love. Who is the perfect son in this story? A perfect son is not depicted.
The father is unblemished in this rendering—his love is steadfast, his hope unstained by resentment or betrayal. Surely he had his moments of anguish, perhaps rage at his younger son's choices—they merited real anger, because he was brought up better than that. He wondered if he had failed his son somehow, not been direct enough about the evils out there and what they will inevitably do to your life. But the father is forever inviting, loving, welcoming to his two very different boys. He gives his life to them. If there is no ideal son in this story, there truly is an ideal father.
Do we give up hoping for the perfect son or daughter? Western society has, for a couple of generations now, bought into a theory that overpopulation threatens our lifestyle and we must curtail big families down to one or two kids per couple. The 20 th century notion of engineered families, planning each child's birth, with no surprises, has resulted in a number of real horrors. One is, of course, the killing of each surprise child through abortion. Another is the unnatural imposition of chemical or mechanical means to stop the process, all of which have resulted in illness and death to women. And finally, our nation like every industrialized country on earth has been under -populating itself, causing an economic crisis at the lower end of the work force and making us import labor—Mexican laborers into the American southwest, Middle Eastern Moslems into Europe, in great numbers that now alarm these nations' native populations. America would have shrunk these last decades were it not for immigration. Same for England, Germany, France, Holland, etc. Fear of having children, our own children , has led us to cut off our own future and leave it for others to inherit. Fear of having a theoretically unwanted child has exposed us parents as being far beneath the character of the loving, welcoming father of those two sons in the parable.
There is a perfect son in the story, however. The Perfect Son is the one telling the story. He is a major character, for look: Jesus is God's own son, born of the Virgin Mary, living in poverty, working with his hands, learning from adults, obedient to his parents—yet this is the Son of God, the only Perfect Son of any parent ever. In His wisdom, He devises a story to tell all the imperfect sons and daughters of lost and wasteful humanity just who we are. Here is the Perfect One, seeing us as only He can see us. Is He harsh toward the prodigal? Is this story about how evil the boy is, how his family would be right to turn him out to starve, as no doubt a jealous righteous God would do? Is this a story about an envious religious elder son who won't forgive and only hates his brother, choosing darkness and exile rather than joy at his brother's return? Is it a story about the mistakes a father makes in raising sons? We might take it this way, but look how Jesus Christ takes his own story. “This thy brother was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.” From the lips of the Perfect Son, the only man who ever had the right to condemn us in our selfish, foolish, sinful ways, comes understanding, clear insight, and unconditional love . That is why it's the best story ever told. It's the story of God and humankind. He could wish for handsome perfect sons and beautiful perfect daughters. He does wish them. But He sees us , and loves us, and transforms us. We were lost. We were dead. We did squander His fortune on junk. We did treat Him as though He were dead to us. And we suffered the outcome of these dreadful mistaken steps. And as that father did, He runs to greet us back.
Someday, when our earthly tabernacles have completed their sojourn here, we will pass from this mortality, from this fallen planet, into a Perfect World. No imperfect man or woman may enter there, for they would spoil it. And yet, He has gone there and built us mansions, gone before us to prepare the feast. If His promises are trustworthy and His words are true, we will be there, and thus we shall be perfect, perfect sons and perfect daughters . His gamble in creating us, that great risk of giving a human race life and free will shall pay off in a new world, where He holds us, wipes our tears, and shares our joy in holy celebration forever.
PFH+