Watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agV4MNLLIc4
Sunday,
October 25, 2020
From the Bureau of Justice Statistics: one third of
violent defendants, 33%, were charged with domestic violence.[i] If 10,000 acts of violent felonies are
committed in the U.S. next month, 3,333 will happen in the home. That’s what ‘domestic’ means, people who live
with each other, doing such violent things to each other, it’s a felony.
How many of these violent encounters end in death? Homicide?
How many aren’t felonies by law, but are psychologically and emotionally
damaging? How can we be so rough and
cruel with our own families? Why?
We open spaces in ourselves to welcome others. We enter the space they open to us. Theologian Miroslav Volf calls this
‘embrace.’ I call it living out Jesus’ most important commandments: we love the
Lord our God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength; and, we love our
neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus shows us this way of living and loving in his
parable of the Prodigal Son. A man had
two sons. The younger asked for all the
property he would inherit upon his father’s death. When his father unexpectedly granted this insensitive
request, the young man left his home and life behind. He squandered all that he had and then, when
he was starving because of famine, he came crawling back, offering to serve as
a worker on his father’s land.
Demonstrating grace and deep love, this unpredictable
father ran to meet his wayward child and held a great feast to celebrate his
return home. This is embrace. At this point, we remember the man had two
sons. The older son was not happy.
He was living a life of domestic violence. It was not felonious. He didn’t kill his brother or father. As far as we can tell, he didn’t even bully
his younger brother or disrespect his father.
He points out that all his life he has obeyed the father. So, what wrong did the older brother do? While managing the father’s business
shrewdly, and remaining a hard-working, dutiful, he ignored his father’s top
value: a relationship of mutual delight between father and son. The older brother has attempted to kill this
relationship: death by a lifetime of neglect.
Wait! Am I claiming
that the older brother is as guilty as the younger? The younger declared the father dead, turned
his back on his identity, left home in scandalous fashion, and then squandered
everything by living recklessly. The older
brother lived the right way. He just
didn’t have a close relationship with the father. Is that as bad as the scandal? From Jesus’ standpoint, yes, it is.
He imagines love much deeper than just getting along with
a neighbor. The United States and Canada
get along. North Carolina and Virginia
get along. My neighbors and I get
along. God loves us with a go-the-extra-mile,
die-on-the-cross-for-you kind of love. It’s
one thing to say ‘we didn’t kill each other.’
Jesus wants to see us delight in one another. Instead of tolerating each other, Jesus
invites us to long for embracing one another.
Is Christian living simply
paying taxes, helping the poor, exercising good environmental stewardship,
avoiding abortions, and waiting until you’re married to have sex? All are Biblically-motivated decisions, but
to really walk in the way of Jesus, we have to embrace each other. This love is displayed in the father’s welcome
to his lost son. Compare the attitudes
of the older brother and the attitude of the father.
Start with location. A party was going on in the house. The older son was out in the field. He’s the #2 man in a family operation large
enough to have servants (plural). He
should know what’s going on. No party
should start until he is present. Yet
somehow, he and his father had settled into this uneasy distance. He was always, metaphorically out in the
field. When a party started, he was the last
one to know.
Consider priority. Maybe this elder son had become a numbers
cruncher committed to growing the business, all work and no play. What matters more than the bottom-line? Nothing!
If that’s who he is, how did it happen?
His father runs around hugging and kissing and throwing parties
spontaneously. How did the older brother
come to see life so differently than his joyful, spontaneous, partying father?
Location; priorities; now note
the pronouns. The servant tells the
older brother, “Your brother has come home.”
Having completely written this brother off, the older brother is filled
with resentment. Father’s throwing a
party for this loser? The older brother stays outside, boiling with
anger.
As he did when the younger
son prematurely requested his inheritances, the father again ignored his own
power and position. He appealed to his older
son’s heart. He pleaded with him to come
in. He’s the owner of the estate, but
he’s begging, not commanding, but begging his son to come in.
That’s when the older
brother starts his speech. Remember the
younger brother’s speech? “Father, I
have sinned against heaven and against you.
I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” As he spoke those words, his father hugged
him, placed a robe on his shoulders – the best robe, and again named him:
son!
Now, the older brother gives
an even longer, lamer speech. “All these
years I have worked like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your
command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so I might celebrate
with my friends. But when this son of
yours comes back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed
the fatted calf for him!”
He told his father he had
worked like a slave for him. The
father thought they were partners, his son working with him. The son talked about obedience. The father preferred creative
collaboration. The son griped that the
father never gave him a goat for a meal with friends. This confused the father most of all. Gave you goat? Son, you are always with me. All that I have is yours. All the way back to the beginning of the
story, we remember Jesus said that when the father gave the younger son his
share, he actually divided everything between both sons. The younger would receive 1/3 of the wealth,
the older, 2/3. This older brother never
needed to ask for a goat to celebrate with his friends. All the goats were already his. You don’t
have to ask for permission to use your own things.
The pronouns and
prepositions tell the story. The father
calls the younger son ‘your brother.’ The older brother refers to the younger ‘this
son of yours,’ not my brother.
The older brother wants to hang out with his friends. The father wants both sons with him. ‘Son, you are always with me.’
However, in his mind, he
was not. In fact, the older brother was
as far away from the father as the younger.
It worse though because he left emotionally, b ut stayed
physically. He left without actually
leaving. Everyday he broke his father’s
heart by rejecting his father’s embrace and then holding that rejection before
him.
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 tells
what should happen to a rebellious child who rejects his parents’ authority. “The men of the town shall stone him to
death.” That was law, Torah! The older brother wanted to enforce the
rules, Moses handed down.
The father knew the rules,
but he loved his sons. He respected the
rules. God is author of justice,
including punishment for violations.
God’s justice is perfect. But he
loves us. When love and justice collide,
God stays true to his own character. Do
you know the Bible verse that says, “God is justice?” Me neither.
I know in John’s gospel and in 1 John, the Bible say “God is love.” That’s dividing line between father and older
brother, between exclusion and embrace.
Moving from location (field v. house & party) to life priorities
(bottom line v. valuing people) to grammar (‘this son of yours’ v. your
brother), we finally arrive at what drives us.
For the older brother it was unfeeling adherence to the rules; for the
father it was love that transforms.
The older brother thought
he wanted what his younger brother got in his wild living. He didn’t taste of the forbidden fruit, but
he was resentful of what he missed by staying at home. In truth he didn’t realize that was he missed
was not the party life in the far country.
What he missed was the beauty of relationship his father offered to him every
day.
In church, in God’s new
order, call it the way of Jesus, or the Kingdom of God, the Father extends this
kind of relationship to us, every day. Are
we living in it? Do we accept our
inheritance? Do we, deep down, think we constantly
have to earn it? Will we accept that God
has adopted us, and live as His daughters and sons?
Jesus doesn’t tell us if
the older brother ever dropped his grudge and entered the party. He wants us to finish the story. Are you holding onto grudges, still
committed to exclusion? In Christ you
are a new creation. All God’s love is
yours. Receive it.
The differences between us
and our neighbors, need not divide us. Stop
trying to earn God’s love. Receive
it. Then, open your arms to embrace
others, and see them as you see yourself: forgiven sinners Jesus died for,
people he calls you to love. See them as
your brothers and sisters in God’s family.
AMEN
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