Embrace Your Brother (Luke 15:24-32)

 

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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[i] https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=235

"Embraced and Named" (Luke 15:11-24)

 

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Kgg1VawWE

Sunday, October 18, 2020

 

            What’s your favorite story about Jesus?  If I just said, what’s your favorite Bible story, you might say, Noah and the Ark, or, David and Goliath, or Paul on the Damascus Road.  These are excellent stories, but for this morning, let’s narrow it down.  What’s your favorite Jesus story? If you’re watching on Facebook Live, type your favorite Jesus story into the comments.  If you’re here in person, just shout out your favorite Jesus story. 

            When I was starting out in ministry, I heard a professor of preaching say the passage from the Bible preached more than any other is Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.  The professor did not offer data to support this claim, so I don’t know if what he said is accurate.

            I do know that the story is extremely popular, even among people who have never read the Bible.  Some might know the story and not even know it’s in the Bible.  It is!  And Miroslav Volf, the theology professor from Yale Divinity School I mentioned last week, cites the Prodigal Son in his explanation of his idea of Exclusion and Embrace.

            Volf uses the term ‘exclusion’ to encompass all the ways human beings hurt and objectify each other.  Racism; genocide; betrayal; unfaithfulness; deception; bullying; in countless we dehumanize our neighbors and ourselves.  We offend God with each injury we cause, including injuries to ourselves, because each person is made in God’s image and is loved by God.

            If ‘exclusion’ is the summation of humanity’s sin against itself and individuals’ sins against one another, ‘embrace’ is the posture of love.  Embrace is when we make space in ourselves for the other, and we simultaneously enter the space the other opens in themselves for us.  It is a literal hug; it is also more than that.  Embrace means, ‘I see you.’ ‘I care for you.’  ‘I love you’; and, ‘I receive the love and care you extend me.  In embrace, we obey what Jesus calls the greatest commandment – to love our neighbor.  In loving our neighbors, we love God. 

            Take a close look at Jesus’ story, the Prodigal son.  First, we see exclusion.

            The son requests his portion of inheritance, normally to be received upon the Father’s death.  In the ancient near east, this young man’s identity would be tied to his family; he was known by whose son he was.  “Younger brother;” that title told us part of his story.  He severed this identity, turning his back on his family. 

            A father receiving such an audacious and disrespectful request would have been in his rights to offer his son a backhanded slap.  But in Jesus’ story the father simply complies.  Where discipline might be called for, he just goes along with the younger sons’s outlandish plan.  What kind of father it this? 

            The son then earns his name, ‘prodigal.’  He goes to a distant country where he has no support system.  Sometimes people, especially during the season of young adulthood, can be a little irresponsible with money; or a lot irresponsible.  I know I was at times.  This young man spent everything.  His savings were gone when the famine hit. 

            A famine hits everyone, like a hurricane striking all residents on the coast, or a wildfire consuming all in its path, or a global pandemic with a virus anyone can catch.  This young man, with no savings and no support system wasn’t ready.  Verse 16 says no one helped him.

            We have seen, in the current crisis, the Coronavirus pandemic, the layered, devastating effects.  First of course is health and possibly even death if you contract the disease.  Second, fear of spread has closed down the economy and cost people jobs.  If someone was barely making it before they lost their job, they’d be like this young man, hungry and desperate.  A lot of people find themselves in this situation. 

            The catastrophes humans face are worsened by our tendency to cut ourselves off.  Famines were common in ancient life, something to prepare for.  And that preparation is communal.  You don’t prepare by yourself but as a part of a community.  The same is true today.  We know hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast where millions and millions of people live.  When they come, if we prepare and cooperate with one another as neighbors who care about one another, even the worst storms aren’t as bad as those we try to face on our own.  The lost son’s fall was directly tied to his cutting himself off from his foundation.

            He excluded himself from the family that gave him name, identity, and wealth.  Volf says he “un-sonned” himself. [i] If you read the genealogies in the Bible, you see people are named by who their family is.  Luke 3:23 tells us Jesus was (as was thought) the son of Joseph, son of Heli, son of Matthat,” on the genealogy goes all the way back to “Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God” (v.38).  How do we know who Joseph was?  He was the son of Heli? 

            We do it differently, but we do this too.  How do you know who I__ is?  He’s a Tennant.  And H__, what of him?  He’s a Tennant.  Who is this young woman, M__?  She’s a Tennant.  Much more could be said of each of us, but we start with a name.  The name says we are part of a family.  We belong.  The Prodigal cut himself off.  He un-sonned himself.

            Where in life have we seen this, or ourselves, done it?  Where have we been cut off, or intentionally cut ourselves off from God, friends, and family?  And having been cut-off, have you faced the desperation he faced, or desperation within your own experience?  Do you know what it’s like to take stock of your own life and feel like all is lost?  What do you do?  He remembered the character of his father.

            Jesus says he “came to himself” (v.17).  Despairing, starving, longing to eat pig slop – the refuse humans reject and feed to animals who will literally eat anything, he remembered.  My father.  My father’s heart is so big, his servants eat and live well.  Embarrassing as it will be, serving there will be better than dying here.

            In his mind, he’s still excluded.  He remembers his father, but only now will he understand the depth of grace, the fullness of embrace.   He thought his name, ‘son’ was done.  He had ‘un-sonned’ himself.  But, with the true father, we don’t choose our name.  We don’t tell God who we are.  He tells us who we are.

            Think about someone you know who is deeply wounded.  It might be you, or someone close to you, or someone you’ve observed.  Maybe the injury is the person’s own fault.  The injury results from a series of mistakes that beget more mistakes.  Maybe the injury is something that happened to the person.  He’s a victim of terrible acts.  Most of time, it’s a combination.  The longer he has lived as one injured, lived in a far country away from support with savings gone and disasters piling up, the harder it is to remember.  ‘Broken,’ becomes his name, ‘lost’ his identity. 

This is why hurt people cause so much pain and why it is so hard to come back.  It’s a failure of memory.  We forget who tells who we are.  We forget our names: ‘son;’ ‘daughter;’ ‘beloved.’

What happened when he went back?  While he was still far off, the father who never accepted exclusion and never believed his son was completely lost, saw him.  He saw him because he never stopped looking.  He saw him and ran to him and then the literal embrace enveloped the one not worthy of it. 

Give me inheritance; you are dead to me.  Embrace!

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  Embrace!

No longer worthy?  It was never a question of worthiness.  The day we look into the loving eyes of Jesus, the Holy Spirit awakening our hearts, we are called ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ not for our worthiness but out of God’s grace and love. 

“He ran and put his arms around him and kissed him” (v.20).  As the Father is pouring his love onto the son, the prodigal is stumbling through his lame exclusion speech.  The father doesn’t even acknowledge the young man’s words.  “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one!  Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Kill the fatted calf.  We must celebrate.” 

It’s not that the father ignore the son so much as they are telling and living two different stories.  The father determines his story of embrace is the one that will win out.  The son, ‘un-sonned,’ comes with a story of a desperate man willing to live as a servant, even a slave, but the father reconstructs his identity. 

Do actions speak louder than words?  The son is delivering his prepared remarks.  The father is weeping, hugging, kissing, robing, instructing, and celebrating.  The identity he gave that this son rejected, is still there, given again, with even more love and passion.

As we walk through Jesus’ well-known story and see what embrace looks like, I have to ask.  Have you experienced embrace?  It’s as wonderful as Jesus depicts it.

Do you need to experience it?  Do you need Jesus to reconstruct your identity?  Do you need help remembering that you are loved?  You are made in the image of God?  You are a blessed child of God.  There’s no country so far that God will stop looking, ready to run to you kissing, hugging, robing, celebrating, and naming. 

Bask in the joy, remembering a time you received God’s embrace.

Or, are you hurting, and in that far country?  Turn to God now, confessing your sins with bare naked honesty; turn into the arms of the loving God.

Or, you’re walking with God, you know your name, but you also see into the world.  With patience and an abundance of grace, help a lost soul find her way to the arms of the father.

Jesus began the parable saying, “There was a man who had two sons.”  We will look at the older brother as we continue learning about embrace next week.

AMEN

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[i] M.Volf (2019), Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation: Revised and Update, Abingdon Press (Nashville), p.164.

God Wants you at the Party (Luke 15)

Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 31, 2019

            You love the punch.  It’s ginger ale and some kind of sherbert and something else.  You can’t quite place all flavors, but it is fantastic.  Does the wonderful conversation you’re having make the punch taste better, or is it good by itself?  You’re not sure, but you’re enjoying both, the tasty drink, and the conversation. 

You’re surprised that you are talking with the person you’re talking with.  It’s the mayor!  This surprises you because the mayor is not usually at your church, or any church.  When he was elected, he was very public about his atheism.  And just last week, he was involved in a public scandal of a sexual nature.  It wasn’t enough to have him removed from office.  But he was painted with embarrassment and shame.  It likely killed his political ambitions.  Would he ride out his term in seclusion?

No!  Here he is, the scandalized, atheist mayor in a delightful conversation with you here at your church’s reception.  You talk about how much you both love the town and how you both enjoy the spring weather.  Eventually he moves on to talk to other people.  As you contemplate why he might be there, a friend from church sidles up.

“Can you believe that scumbag has the nerve to show up here?”  She asks, her face joyless.  Her negative mood has thrown a wet blanket onto your warm feelings. You look into her eyes, peering out from her frown.  She looks down and grumbles, “This is too fruity.”  She throws out a full cup of the punch you’ve been enjoying. 

In Luke 15, Jesus has something for all the party poopers in the church.  God wants you at the party, whether you a scandalized mayor, a self-righteous church busybody, or whomever you might be.  God wants us to understand that church is a party with laughing, drinking, dancing, good food, and good conversation.

There are people outside who don’t realize the gathering of God’s people is supposed to be a celebration.  Worse, people inside the church don’t know that either.  In some churches, the people inside who don’t know are the ones who run the church.  They think church is for them.  It’s not.  Church is the body of Christ.  We in the church who have already put our trust in Jesus are to spend our lives getting to know Him.  To know Him, we have to be with Him.  To be with Him, we have to be where He is.  Luke 15 makes it clear that Jesus is out in the world, looking for people who don’t know Him so he can help them find their way to his party.

“Tax collectors and sinners were coming near” Luke writes.  The Pharisees and scribes - religious leaders, kind of like pastors, elders, and deacons - grumble.  “This fellow welcomes tax collectors and sinners, and eats with them.”  Tax collectors was a catch-all phrase for the immoral people decent individuals avoided.  When Jesus welcomed them and ate with them, he invited them into intimate circles of friendship.  When he heard religious leaders complain about his sinner-friends, he told parables of lost things, a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son.  

In these stories, we see three ways of being lost and three ways of seeking the lost.   Among the many lessons of Luke 15 are these certainties.  People are cut off, far from God, and in that condition, they’re in trouble.  God seeks the lost and expects His church to do so.  And finally, many of the lost are lost inside the church. 

Jesus begins with a lost sheep.  How does a sheep get lost?  It wanders off.  It is a stupid animal.  It’s not willfully ignoring the shepherd.  It just doesn’t pay attention to Him.  Due to the animal’s own carelessness and ignorance, it ends up lost.  It didn’t know where it was going. 

So many people within blocks of our church are in this exact condition.  Having grown up in the church or at least with a sense of who Jesus is, people don’t understand how important it is to be connected to Him.  Spiritually, they know they’re hungry, but unaware of how to be filled.  So they try this religion or that church; they try to be filled by wealth or status; maybe it’s an obsession with fitness or extreme sports; maybe drugs and partying.  How does God respond to us when we are oblivious and blindly wander away from Him?

The shepherd in Jesus’ parable leaves 99 sheep in the wilderness to go find the lost one.  That’s crazy!  Won’t they all get lost too?  Probably.  When they do, the shepherd will go into the wastelands to find them.  This shepherd is reckless and that’s Jesus’ point.  Being lost is so dangerous for the sheep, the shepherd will search recklessly because he is urgent to save the lost one.  When he does, he celebrates!

God expects us to be just as urgent in our concern for people who don’t know Jesus.  If we truly want to follow Jesus and love others, we have be driven to help others find their way to the salvation Jesus offers.  When we do that we are truly sharing hope.  We are called to recklessly seek out the lost as Jesus does. 

In the second parable a coin is lost.  The sheep got itself lost by ignoring the shepherd.  Nothing the coin did led to it being lost.  Someone else lost that coin.  We know so many people who have been raised in families that have no connection to Christianity at all.  Or, we see people raised in abusive church situations.  In church, they don’t experience love.  They don’t meet Jesus.  Church is a place of judgment and guilt.  They end up driven from the church. These poor souls, these lost coins, are far from God because people have driven them from Him.

Note that Jesus compares God to a woman who will stop at nothing until she finds her coin.  The shepherd recklessly sought the lost.  The woman relentlessly searches.  She is determined to find the lost coin, and God is determined that your non-Christian neighbor will come to faith in Jesus and be saved.  Furthermore, just as God wants us to care about lost people the way the reckless shepherd did, God also wants us to evangelize with relentless determination like the woman.

We are to seek out the lost that they might meet Jesus and be saved!

The third story in the Luke 15 trilogy is the most familiar, the lost son or the prodigal son.  The sheep got itself lost by being careless.  The coin was lost by someone else.  Both needed to be found.  The lost son willfully turned away from the father.  He knew who the father was, what the father was like, and still he turned away.  He knowingly chose to reject the father in favor of a life partying and sexual promiscuity.  His was open, honest defiance. 

How does God react to this overt rejection?  Differently.  Unlike the shepherd and the woman, we do not see the father go out to the far country to seek out the lost son.  The son made a choice and the father honors that choice.  That doesn’t mean the father has given up on this wayward one. 

The son’s life falls apart as our lives always do when we reject God.  He finally realizes his only hope is to go back to his father.  While he is still far off, the father runs to him.  The father could only do that if he had been watching for him.  The father could not have known which day the son would come if he ever came home.  So, the father spent time every day watching instead of doing his work.  He should have been managing all his holdings, overseeing his business, but to him, watching for his son mattered more. 

The shepherd sought the lost sheep recklessly.  The woman sought the lost coin relentlessly.  This father watched for his lost son restlessly.  He couldn’t go on with life.  He harbored a foolish hope that his son was alive out there and would one day come home.  When we turn from God and reject Jesus, God keeps an eye on us longing for that day when we will choose to turn back to Him.

The body of Christ, us, God’s church in the world today, needs to live with that same watchfulness.  We never know if today will be the Sunday God has led a lost soul through our doors.  So every Sunday, we have to be ready to heap the love of God on everyone who comes through our doors.  Through prayer and worship, we have to present our hearts to God that we may be transformed, moved from the competition and destructiveness of our society to the grace of God.  We need to be a community of grace ready to receive and love and encourage the lost when they find their way to us.  That’s our work as a church, helping the lost meet Jesus and be saved.

Church is supposed to be a party, a gathering of people who are joined together in Christ.  He didn’t just tell tax collectors and sinners how to be saved.  He welcomed them into the deepest levels of friendship, sharing the table with them and doing so with loud laughter and deep draughts of joy.  

God wants church to be a party when we gather.  Furthermore, God wants us to know we’re at a party and experience the happiness of not just any party, but the best of parties.  The older brother in the prodigal son story missed the joy of the father.  He spent all his life in the father’s house and never entered that joy.  He didn’t leave, but he was as lost as his younger brother.

Many churches are full of older brothers like that, complainers.  Many who have spent their lives in church are like the member I mentioned in the opening story, the one who complained that the scandalized atheist mayor would dare show up at church, at my church; when they are done griping about the sinfulness of lost people, they mutter about the way punch is too fruity.  They’ve spent a lifetime lost at church. 

It’s not their church or mine.  It’s not our church.  It’s God’s.  We are guests at God’s party, invited to stay forever.  We only enjoy it when we realize we are at a party. 

Tax collectors and sinners were coming near [to Jesus] to listen to him.  God wants us to be near Jesus and, with the Holy Spirit, to go out to lost people and help them draw near to Jesus.  Because God wants them at the party too.

AMEN