.JPG)  Meditations...... |
   |
Lost and Found
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
March 14, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Carrie Benz Scott
If you’ve been around church, you’ve probably heard more sermons on this parable than you can count. Someone (1) did some research on sermons preached on the Prodigal Son and discovered that 90% of Southern Baptist sermons focus on the negative example of the younger son, with all the juicy details about his sins, while 90% of Presbyterian sermons focus on the unhappy older brother. I’ve played both roles in my life. I suspect you have, too. Both roles are about the ways we can be lost and both are about the ways we lose each other.
You don’t have to dig very far into most of our families to find prodigals who have run off and thrown away everything we’d hoped would be dear to them: a relationship with us, for one; things the family cherishes and values, our faith, our church, our community. They’ve taken everything the family has given them and thrown it away. Maybe they didn’t set out to do that. Rarely do alcoholics set out wanting to be alcoholics or drug addicts wanting to be drug addicts, but piece by piece, inch by inch, the alcohol and the drugs start taking the person away. And it’s not just alcohol and drugs that take our loved ones away. There are plenty of things that help us get lost in life.
We’ve been told that what has to happen is what happened to the younger son – you have to hit pig-sty-in-a-hostile-land rock bottom before you come to your senses and want to go home. It’s the gift of desperation and that gift of desperation is what made the prodigal head back home.
But even as Jesus tells the story, he knows it’s not a given that the ones who leave will come back. A lot of us have relatives who are lost and they’re not coming back. If they would come to their senses, if they would realize what they’ve done, if they would have just enough remorse to rehearse a speech asking for forgiveness, most of us would rejoice. But instead they stay lost.
Which is exactly what Jesus wants us to think about: being lost. In this brilliant parable, we’re lost if we’re the one who’s squandered everything, and we’re lost if we’re the ones who refuse to forgive or begrudge God his radical grace. I know why 90% of Presbyterian sermons focus on how we’re like the older brother, because so many of us are. When the younger brother popped up and urged his father to split the inheritance before his father had the decency to die (poor Dad!), so he could run off and play with his portion, it meant that when the younger brother returned and Dad threw the party, the older brother’s share was footing the bill…for this son of yours, dad, who’s no brother of mine. I think that’s why he was so mad. Yes, it hurt that his father had never thrown him a party that way; yes, it hurt that he was good and faithful and felt unrecognized for it. Yes, it hurt that nobody went out to find him in the field to tell him the party was starting. Yes, it hurt that Dad didn’t give the younger son a nice, long, very long lecture about responsibility and facing the consequences of his actions. But the worst part was, the older brother was footing the bill for the party. It’s one thing for God to be gracious. But when I have to pay for it, that’s a whole other deal.
The bottom line is that everything the older brother had and everything the younger brother squandered belonged first to the Father and was only theirs by the Father’s grace. The fact that everything we have and everything we squander belongs ultimately to God, is a fact that we tend to forget, too. Don’t expect me to pay for that party…with the money you gave me, Dad. We’re so much better at being controllers than we are at being stewards.
But if pressed, the older brother likely won’t say it’s about that. He’ll say it’s about the justice issue. Grace should be merited. Those of us who are responsible should get more brownie points and more parties. The son doesn’t see what the father sees – the treasure of having all those years together, all that time together. When this father, this loving father, finally does die, the younger son will fully know just how much he’s squandered and the older might finally realize just how much he had. Maybe, maybe then the older son could finally hear and understand the depth of what his father was telling him when he called his brother, “this son of yours,” and his father replied, “this brother of yours.”
There are so many ways to be lost and so many ways to be found.
Scholars say it’s too bad we know this parable so well because it’s lost the shock value it first had. The Scribes and Pharisees were complaining that Jesus was dining with sinners and this is the story he told them and they were stunned. When you have a whole religious system built around earning God’s favor, this parable really messes things up. And when you are trying to get people to behave, to stop squandering God’s grace, telling them there will be a party at the end of it when they come to their senses frankly didn’t make much sense to the Scribes and Pharisees. The idea of God longing for the lost didn’t make much sense to them, either.
There are so many ways to be lost.
Just because the parable is so familiar doesn’t mean it has to be less powerful for us. Let it get under your skin. Let it come into your heart. 90% of Southern Baptists may focus on the younger son and 90% of Presbyterians on the older, but either way, we all know who we’re not: we’re not the Father. We may know what it’s like to yearn for our child to come to his senses; we may know what it’s like to keep waiting for a child to come home, watching in earnest for the familiar headlights to come into the driveway, but we’re still not this Father. We’re still the ones for whom the Father waits; we’re still the ones for whom the Father leaves the party in order to get us into the party. Whether younger or older, we’re the lost whom God wants to celebrate FOUND. This parable, this good news, has changed people for centuries. The question is will it change us?
© Carrie Scott 2010
Youth Ministry
Children's Nurture
Mission & Food Pantry