This Sibling of Yours

Lent 4, 31 March 2019, Grace Episcopal Church

My 7th Graders at Grace Episcopal Middle School did a research paper as one of their 3^rd Quarter requirements. They are studying the New Testament, so the list of topics they could choose from included a number of parables.

I received several papers on The Prodigal Son, but one stood out. Indeed, if only I hadn’t handed that paper back to Brandon a week and a half ago, with a nice big “100” and smiley face on, I could read it to you today, sit down, and know that you had heard a perfectly good sermon.

I encourage the 7^th Graders to not just review and summarize for their papers, but to question and to reflect on what they have studied and researched. And it was Brandon’s last paragraph of reflection that made his paper stand out. It went like this….

When I first read this story, Brandon said, I didn’t like it. It upset me. It did not seem fair to the older son who had stayed home and worked and helped his father. That would be me. I’m the older son, Brandon said, and I thought he was right to be upset at his father for being so generous toward the sinful younger son.

But the more I thought about it, Brandon went on, the more I realized the father was right to forgive the younger son. The father gave the younger son a second chance, and everyone should get a second chance. We all make mistakes.

Prodigal Son by Kristi Valiant

Not bad for a 7^th Grader, huh? And I’m right there with Brandon when I read this story. And I venture to guess I’m not the only one who really wants the older son to be the hero of the story!

Where I would push Brandon a little bit is on his numbering of chances. I am confident someday he will recognize that with God, we all get unlimited chances. Each and every moment, and when we draw our last breath, God is waiting with one more chance.

But Jesus was unrelenting in his criticism of self-righteousness, which is what we have on display in the older son.

Timothy Keller is a Presbyterian pastor who has written a quite good little book on this parable. It’s called “The Prodigal God,” his point being that it is the father who is “recklessly extravagant” in love and forgiveness and willing to spend everything to welcome home his lost son.

Keller also points out that in patriarchal society, which was the context of the telling of this story, the older son’s insolence in chastising his father is at least as disrespectful—perhaps more—than the younger son in asking for his inheritance and then spending it on wine, women and song.

But there’s something else in this story that really popped when I read it again—for the umpteenth time—in beginning to prepare for this sermon. Isn’t that what draws us to Holy Scripture over and over again? No matter how often we have read a story or a passage, something new can grab us…. just when we are finally ready or, perhaps, most need to hear it.

So I’m reading the dialogue between older son and father, and suddenly…. my own voice is ringing in my ears. Look at this with me. The older son has discovered the party and is standing outside, angry and resentful. The father comes out to reason with him.

Now that in itself is more evidence of the prodigal love and grace of the father. The patriarch of the family is not obligated to try to reason with a petulant child, to leave his guests, the side of the son who has miraculously returned to life, to go outside to deal with a temper tantrum.., but he does.

The older son reminds his father of his hard work, his obedience, and he criticizes his father for not showing his gratitude. Then he says, But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him! 

“This son of yours.” Can’t you just hear the contempt dripping from those words!

And the father comes back, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found. 

“This brother of yours.” What a different spin that puts on things.

You see, I think, in this contentious age, we have gotten quite good at righteous language that distances us from each other.

Here’s how I heard my own voice in that exchange between the father and the son.

Not so long ago, sometime in the past year or two, I was having a conversation with someone about a person whose manner of life is extremely distasteful to me. Indeed, I see that person as lacking a moral compass altogether.

But at some point in the conversation, I began to feel kind of bad about my criticism, like I was being rather unchristian, if you will. And so I said, by way of ending the conversation, “But he is a child of God, a lost child of God, but a child of God nevertheless.”

And I remember feeling some satisfaction that I had remembered my Good Christian manners and said that.

But it was distancing language. And confronting the fact that the very person I was being critical of is my brother in the family of God is a whole ‘nother matter.

Yes, we are all children of God. But that makes us brothers and sisters with and in Jesus the Christ. Siblings.

What difference does that make? How is it different, down in the gut where we measure such things, to say that the person I am at cross purposes with, or whose lifestyle or decisions or views or behavior or whatever I find problematic… is not merely another child of God, but my brother or my sister in Christ?

I’m not sure I can answer that for myself; I certainly can’t answer it for you. So I’m going to leave this sermon up in the air , just like Jesus left this story up in the air.

Each of us must decide. Will we stand outside, the disgruntled older son or daughter, wearing our righteousness like armor? Being right at the expense of being in community? Or will we go in to the party, embrace our brothers and sisters in Christ, even those, especially those with whom we most disagree?

The door is open. God knows who we are.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.