Your Family Is Weird!
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
Texts: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 and Luke 15:11-32
Your Family Is Weird!*
Your family is weird! Yeah, I said it. But so is mine. So is everyone’s. I remember when I was a kid and I thought only every one else’s family was weird – not mine. Well, my ignorance was only evidence of the ability of the adults in our family to hide the whole truth. It could be something like an uncle you have that as a kid you think is hilarious but when you grow up you realize everyone else thought he was really annoying and kinda rude. Or it could be something more serious, more sinister, like a brother running off with the families money and spending it all on women and drugs.
Families are weird – every last one of them. Every family has that person that woke up in a pig sty. We even have a name for them – the black sheep of the family. Maybe there are some black sheep here today.
We all are familiar with weird families and the story we are told in Luke’s gospel is a weird family. We have heard this story so often that we probably don’t really hear it today. Like that weird, annoying uncle who begins every Thanksgiving dinner with, “Did I ever tell you about that time me and your cousin Joe went down to the bar,” and you just zone out, having heard this every year for 20 years. This story can be like that.
Not to mention we like to make this an American coming of age story, don’t we? It sure can play that way. It’s easy to imagine this is just another story of a boy finding himself, striking out on his own to discover the American dream only to fall flat on his face. The father probably wasn’t too upset with all this because he probably did the same thing as a boy, too. And so when the boy returns empty handed we might think he could have tried harder and while he may be poorer he is wiser. The world taught him some lessons. And of course the father takes him back. Why wouldn’t he? Those of us who are parents might read this story and think it teaches us how to forgive our wayward, black sheep kids.
While this certainly makes a good story I believe that to read it this way misses the point. Bishop Willimon reminds me in his book Who Will Be Saved? that parables are stories about God before they are stories about us and that they tell us a story about salvation, which isn’t only what God does but what God is – God is a saving God – and salvation is about learning to live with the God we’ve got, now and forever – learning to love the God who saves.
So perhaps understanding what a 1st century Middle Easterner would hear when Jesus tells this story would help us better understand the God we’ve got and protect us from the temptation of creating the god we want.
In Jesus’ world an individual had little meaning outside of his or her family. Being in the rural south I think we understand this a bit better than most. Ya’ll don’t say “There’s James Averette” but “He’s an Averette.” And you all know exactly what that means. You might hear something like this around here: “Did you all hear about the Keeton boy who ran off with the youngest Tingen girl? You know how that just won’t sit right for both families. I wonder if they’ll show up at the spring stew together next week…”
We understand the family name, the family history and the families standing within the community thing. But there are other things about Jesus’ world that we have little understanding about. The way honor worked, for instance. Fathers of a household did not plead with their children. They told their children what to do and they did it. Which makes this story all the more scandalous because a child asking for his share of his inheritance was like telling your father you wish he were dead and that you have no intention of sticking around to preserve the family name and household. We are not told of a mother, but if she is listening you can imagine her fear as she watches half of what will care for her after her husband is gone walk out the door. What the community sees is a father who has lost control of his family and an insolent, ungrateful cuss leaving his father and mother in ruins along with a brother who will be left to care for everything by himself. Why didn’t the father just say “No!”? He certainly could have. No one would have questioned his decision. Why didn’t he act like any other patriarch who is in charge of his family and lay down the law, refusing to allow anyone in his family to ruin his honor and drag the family name through the mud? Maybe, again, it’s because this story isn’t about us but about God. I know what I would have done. I can’t say the same for God.
We are told what happens to the son. We know how miserable things become for him as he loses everything his father gave him and ends up sleeping with pigs. We aren’t told about the obvious pain and shame the father is experiencing while his son is off trying to find himself. Maybe for Jesus’ first audience this would be a given. They would all know the kind of deep suffering that this would cause a family. They would know how they would whisper about this father in their community. “Did you hear about Mr. Clifford? How could he let this happen?” They would know how they would act if someone destroyed their families honor like this. What he does is so reprehensible that the Talmud describes a ceremony to deal with it. It’s called a qetsatsah ceremony, to punish a Jewish boy who loses the family inheritance to Gentiles. Here’s how it works. If he ever shows up in his village again, then the villagers can fill a large earthenware jug with burned nuts and corn, break it in front of the prodigal, and shout his name out loud, pronouncing him cut off from his people. After that, he will be a cosmic orphan, who might as well go back and live with the pigs. And this would, at least in the eyes of the community, restore some dignity to the family name.
The prodigal obviously knows this as he begins the journey home. He begins talking to himself, reasoning out how he will apologize and how he might avoid the qetsatsah. “I’ll offer to be his hired hand,” he thinks. Maybe this will prevent me from being cut off completely, which is exactly what I deserve. He isn’t returning because he loves his dad. He isn’t coming home because he’s sorry for what he has done. He’s coming home because he is hungry.
I think of the many times I have come to church in the same condition. There are times, if I am honest, that I come not out of love but because I don’t know where else to go. I come not because I am truly sorry for the life I have lived but because I am starving. And sometimes I don’t even know just how truly hungry I am until I get home and see the sort of meal laid out for me. Compared with what I was chasing the church offers me a different story to live my life by.
We are so like the prodigal in that we can’t imagine the father accepting us back. We know how we would react towards someone who dishonors us or shames us or embarrasses us so completely. We know how we might treat someone who acts like we are dead to them. And so in our heart of hearts, we assume we know how God might treat us as we have been living our lives as though God were dead to us – as though our father in heaven didn’t really matter that much. And so we make excuses.
I love how Henri Nouwen describes our journey home in his wonderful book, The Return of the Prodigal Son. He writes…
The reason is clear. Although claiming my identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, “grace is always greater.” Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son. Belief in total, absolute forgiveness does not come readily. My human experience tells me that forgiveness boils down to the willingness of the other to forgo revenge and to show me some measure of charity….I know this state of mind and heart quite well. It is like saying: “Well, I couldn’t make it on my own, I have to acknowledge that God is the only resource left to me. I will go to God and ask for forgiveness in the hope that I will receive a minimal punishment and be allowed to survive on the condition of hard labor.” God remains a harsh, judgmental God. It is this God who makes me feel guilty and worried and calls up in me all these self-serving apologies. Submission to this God does not create true inner freedom, but breeds only bitters and resentment.
One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness. There is something in us humans that keeps us clinging to our sins and prevents us from letting God erase our past and offer us a completely new beginning. Sometimes it even seems as though I want to prove to God that my darkness is too great to overcome. While God wants to restore me to the full dignity of sonship, I keep insisting that I will settle for being a hired servant. But do I truly want to be restored to the full responsibility of the son? Do I truly want to be so totally forgiven that a completely new way of living becomes possible? Do I trust myself and such a radical reclamation? Do I want to break away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrender myself so absolutely to God’s love that a new person can emerge? (52-53).
This painting you see here is by Rembrandt, called The Return of the Prodigal Son. When Nouwen saw the shaved head of the boy he thought of a felon, a convict – someone who was treated so poorly, perhaps like a hostage. That is until a woman who was observing the painting with him saw something else. She said the smooth head is the head of a baby who just came from his mother’s womb. It may not be what Rembrandt was thinking but it certainly fits our story. Paul said anyone who is in Christ is a new creature! And remember Jesus’ words? You must be born again. If you want to see the kingdom of God you must become like a child. Isn’t it wonderful to know that by allowing ourselves to be embraced in this way is to be invited into a whole new life?
As you come to this Table this morning you may not come knowing why. It may be that you are just hungry. There are no excuses that need to be made here. Remember, this story is not about us but about God – God is the God who saves. This is a God who puts reconciliation before honor. Forgiveness before rebuke. The father not only looks for your arrival but runs to greet you, throwing his arms around you, inviting you to a huge party. Will you allow yourself to be loved by this God? To the outside looking in, this is without a doubt a weird family. But it’s a family worth dying for.
*Special thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor and Henri Nouwen who’s works inspired and shaped much of this sermon
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RETURNING FROM MY ELDEST BROTHER’S 80TH BIRTHDAY AT Coffs Harbour,NSW, I called in at a friend’s place at Taree. As we had afternoon tea I couldn’t help admiring the poster of the same Rembrandt. He gave me the book by Henri Nouwen, and it has inspired me. One week later my brother passed away but not before asking for a Baptist minister to come into the hospital and speak with him. This pastor ( of Dutch descent ) led him to confess his faith in Jesus by grace alone, and baptised him by sprinkling in front of family members{some very antagonistic against any faith) I have since spoken with the Pastor, and was asked by my brother’s wife to conduct the funeral service at Tamworth Baptist Church. All inspiration came from my brother’s confession and the Rembrandt painting which I had as a powerpoint on the screen. Nouwen’s thoughts influenced what I said (about 7 minutes)and many prayed for me, a 75 year old taking his first funeral service. God was more than able.
Lionel,
Praise God! What an awesome story. Thank you for sharing it!
grace and peace