Fourth Sunday of Lent: Prodigal Grace (a sermon about dumb monkeys, awkward parties and the transformative power of anger)

 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Robert Pirsig once wrote about a time he visited Southern India and he described a certain monkey trap. Now pay close attention so you know what to do the next time you want to trap a monkey. You hollow out a coconut you fill it with rice and you attach the whole thing to a stake in the ground.  You make a tiny hole in the top of the coconut just big enough for a monkey’s hand to fit through.  And then you leave it and you hide and wait. You know, rice is very delicious.  The monkey’s hand fits through easily and it grabs the rice.  But then, with its fist full of rice, it can’t pull it’s hand out of that tiny hole. If it would just let go and open its’ fist, it would be free. Instead, it squats there bellowing and jumping around but it will not give up its’ rice in exchange for its’ freedom.  And then, you’ve captured your monkey, coconut and all.

Before we laugh too hard at this dumb monkey that won’t let go of the rice, take a moment to ask yourself if you’ve ever done the same thing.  Have you ever longed to be closer to a family member but you’re still seething about that thing that happened that one time. Or you wish you could fix that relationship with an estranged friend, but you’re still stewing over something.

Today’s “Parable of the Dysfunctional Family,” -- I mean “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” there are three main characters. This is a story from the Greatest Hits of the Bible album so you may have heard it before. In this one, the younger son asks his dad for his share of the inheritance--which is a pretty bold move--and blows it all on “wild living.” The older son stays home to tend to the farm, take care of the business and mom and dad which means not…living wildly. When the younger son comes home having spent everything, we don’t know if he’s an excellent manipulator or if he actually feels remorseful. He comes home with a rehearsed apology hoping for a seat back at the table. We know his father is overjoyed that he’s home and throws him a huge party. 

No one tells the older son what is going on. The older son, the responsible one, he was out finishing up a hard day’s work when he hears the music and dancing and he asks someone passing by, “what’s going on up at the house?”

“Your brother came home,” the person said, “and your dad is throwing them a huge party.”

“Wow. You’ve got to be kidding me,” the older brother says. 

The Bible says he stands there in the field angry and fuming lost in in all until his dad comes out and they have a conversation—a heated one. The bible says that the dad pleads with him to come into the party and there Jesus ends the story.  Does the older son go in? Do he and his dad stand there talking all night in the field?  We don’t know. In fact, there’s a lot about this story that we don’t know:  Was the older son exhausted from years of worry just trying to keep the farm going while his parents stressed about the younger brother? Was he shocked that his little brother actually made it home and is alive after years of dealing with all this? Is he trying to process it?  Is he genuinely hurt by all of the family dysfunction? We do know that he’s angry. 

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It can be easy to name anger as “bad” because it’s great when everyone “just gets along.” But anger can be that thing that wakes us up to when things aren’t right.  Anger can signal to us that things need to change.  In fact, in marriages, (those relationships where people make these formal promises to try to work through conflict and all that) there’s no correlation between anger and separation or divorce. Anger isn’t bad for marriages. Anger makes us take a hard look at something and then can bring people back together. The problem is when anger goes to contempt. 

Contempt is when you feel like the person in front of you is “less than” or worthless, even disposable or a waste of space.  The older son’s contempt is visceral. We can feel it.  His brother doesn’t deserve this party. His dad hears him out while he embellishes the details of his brother’s “raucous living” and all the other imagined outrageous behavior. Indeed, his indignation might be warranted. His dad listens.

Question is: will this moment with the homecoming and the party and the sheer unfairness of it all be a reason (or one more reason) for the older brother to withdraw or harbor resentment? Will it drive the angry wedge in further? Scripture says that the dad pleads with his older son.  (Also: let’s let the dad be the dad in this story and not necessarily a stand in for God the Father. Maybe he is, but maybe he isn’t. The story doesn’t say.)  The dad is begging his oldest son. Maybe he’s begging him to come to the party. But maybe, the dad is just pleading and trying to keep his family together. Everyone is at a crossroads there in the field.

Is the goal here for the older son to suck it up and go to the party, smile and give his little brother an awkward hug, make small talk with the neighbors as he’s expected to.  To just show a little grace? Is that what grace means in this story? Just smoothing thing over while the fire smolders under the surface? 

Is that what grace is?

Ouch.  

Here’s what I think grace is not: I don’t think that grace must be quietly acquiescing or being a doormat.  Grace isn’t some sort of B-level attitude where we just graciously excuse someone else’s bad behavior for the sake of harmony.   Grace is not the opposite of conflict. 

I hope and pray that the dad and his son worked it out, or at least began to talk about it out there in the field. The goal of grace isn’t to try to get everyone hunky dory on the same page. Sometimes the conflicts run deep.  Sometimes we are really hurt by those closest to us (or we hurt them).  Sometimes people’s opinions are a lot to stomach right now sometimes, there is a rude neighbor, or a doctor who screws up, or a selfish pastor, or the intolerable boss, or a family member that did something horrible.

Grace is what helps us maneuver through these differences and not lose sight of each other’s God-given humanity while we do it.  

Grace won’t let us stay with contempt for someone. It won’t let us see people as worthless. It is, as African-American theologian Willie Jennings says, “the ability to see someone through God’s eyes for a moment.”

Sometimes, yes, grace absolutely is the thing that tells us not to make a big deal out of things, to not mountains out of molehills. (hello, welcome to my marriage).  But grace is also what helps us take a deep breath, acknowledge the pain or the conflict or the differences, pull the chair up to the table and participate in the conversation.

Grace is favor that is unmerited. It is undeserved kindness. When we direct it towards other people, grace won’t let us be vengeful it won’t let us drop the person’s humanity. It won’t let us. It won’t let us throw daggers for the sake of meanness or to humiliate folks who we think have said or done stuff that is immoral or unethical or on the wrong side of history, or just, the wrong side of the dinner table.

Grace is extraordinary.

When we direct grace towards ourselves, grace, as Kirsten powers writes quiets “the…inner critic that tells us we are too much, too little, too fat, too thin, too good, and not good enough. It invites us off the treadmill of relentless achievement and success…[grace] shrugs at [our] unachieved new Years’ resolutions and teaches [us] to be kind to [ourselves].”

Grace doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t follow the rules of tit for tat. Which is why the older brother is mad:  (hey, little brother, when you ask for your share of the inheritance, and then act reckless, when you spend all the money, when you pull the wool over dad’s eyes with this whole victimized “woe is me, I was eating the food of pigs, oh please let me come home,” business. No way, You pay for your mistakes, bro, you should get what you deserve.) And instead, the younger brother gets a party. Do you feel the burn?

Just come to the party, the dad says to his eldest.  

Grace is a practice. It’s a lifestyle. An orientation. It’s a way of being in the world. It’s a way of treating people. Just like grace is a practice, UNgrace, as Phillip Yancy calls it, is also a practice. And believe me, I have practiced it. And I still practice it sometimes (and I hate myself for it—which is, for the record not gracious) UNgrace can poison us.  And it can poison our world.

It is when we hang on to the disappointment we have in another person, another place, an institution (like the church, whatever) we hang on to disappointment or resentment and we won’t let our anger help us level up and learn. When we practice the opposite of grace (ungrace) it can makes other people feel not-needed, even disposable, even a waste of space.  We have this way of seeing people that disagree with us as worthless. Our ungrace cultivates and fosters pain in this world.

Did the older son feel excluded or even ungraced out in the field? Did the younger son feel it when his big brother didn’t show up at the party? Lord have mercy, no one should feel this. When we follow Jesus around the gospels, we see that he brought out the best in people and didn’t look at them as if they were disposable.

Grace is the balm that lets us come together with all of our different opinions and beliefs and convictions. It is the grease that keeps the wheels from grinding.  Kirsten powers writes that grace “is about understanding how to stay grounded in the mist of the tornado; speak your truth without spitting contempt; and coexist with people you don’t even want to share a planet with, let alone a country.” People of God, grace is our superpower, it is our calling and it’s so hard. 

Grace is scandalous. This grace of Jesus is scandalous. It will not let us get away with half-love. At the moment when we have our hand on the door and are ready to slam it, Grace pushes us to reach for, and to offer a love that isn’t earned or won or merited.

What is that!
Who does that?

I’m going to finish with these words of Kate Bowler who offers us a blessing today:

Blessed are we, the graced
We who don’t deserve it
Who’s failures haunt us
The things we said, the things we left unsaid
The decisions and addictions and broken relationships that have ripple affects that we still feel today. 
Somehow we are the recipients of this mysterious gift.
Grace doesn’t erase the pain or harm we’ve caused but 
Grace still [is] for us, the redeemable. 
Despite what we have done and left undone we are graced
So, Blessed are all of us that wrestle with unforgiveness and ungrace
You who make amends
You who are reaching out for forgiveness
You who say you’re sorry even when sorry will never be enough
You who find the bridge to forgive someone the wrong they’ve done 
even when you can’t forget or can’t go back 
or they aren’t nearly sorry enough
Blessed are we who live here in this mystery, in this scandal of grace.