When you lost more than you meant to

Luke 15:11b-32

One of the beauties of a story like the prodigal son is that there are notes that ring true across the generations.  We resonate. All of us have some awkwardness in our families—or a lot of it.  No family is without its’ drama. Many of us know what it is like to want to run away.  Some of us ran away as children (I marched off as far as the Sherman’s house next door before glancing behind me to see if my mother was watching.  She was). Some of us have run away quite happily and permanently as adults and we continue to keep our family distant. Or they keep us away.  

I’m guessing that all of us have had moments of serious annoyance with our parents—or anger?  I’m also guessing that many of us parents have faced moments where we truly have no idea what to do with our ridiculous children.

And then there are the siblings.  There is nothing quite like a sibling. If you don’t have one, it will take a person down the pew exactly 10 seconds to confirm that siblings are can be best and worst thing that can exist.  She may be your best friend. Or…your is she your arch enemy?

It’s kind of comforting to me that family dysfunction is a real theme in the bible.  Especially when the siblings get involved.  There’s the story where one of the famous biblical twins, Jacob, puts on a costume, fools dad who is half asleep and hornswoggles the inheritance out of him. His brother Esau is understandably enraged. 

There’s the bible story, where one brother, Joseph, gets a fancy new snazzy coat from his dad and the other siblings are so mad about it, they throw him in a pit. …I assume that’s the kind of thing that happens when you have eleven older brothers.  Martha, the sister of Mary, seethes in the kitchen washing dishes while her oblivious sister (who-never-picks-up-a-broom) is compared against her.

Interestingly, let’s just all take notice that the younger siblings sure get a lot of attention and extra TLC in these stories.  Moreover, not only are the younger kids the family favs, they’re also successful, handsome, smart, visionary, they have stunning portfolios, excellent business acumen and hundred dollar haircuts—these biblical babies are shining stars.  King David is the youngest of 7, King Solomon is the second son born to David and Bathsheba. Isaac, the beloved son of Sarah and Abraham, is younger than his brother Ishmael. No, I do not have a bone to pick with biblical birth order, I have a point to make. 

That when Jesus begins this oh-so-favorite parable with, “there was a man who had two sons…” that everyone in the audience around him comfortably settled into their seats because they knew their bible stories and they knew exactly how this story was going to turn out with the shining star youngest child.

Until the story went off the rails. 

When the younger son left home to see the world—which is, by the way, what young people do all the time these days, he had a lot of fun and then things went very bad. Burned the whole college fund, his whole inheritance, in riotous living. He’s greedy, and dumb and makes lots of bad choices.  Perhaps par for the course for many of us were also young and foolish when we first set out to conquer the world.

But while he may not have gained riches, he does seem to have gained wisdom—if we could call it that? (or sneakiness) and after he has lost it all, he returns home where dad, is overjoyed that his fav kid, the baby of the family, is home. All is forgiven. And his dad throws him an epic party. This is the part of the story where we point out that the older, workaholic brother is pouty and won’t forgive, and get over it, and come to the party.

*****

You know, Folks-stories grouped in trios have always been good at the plot twist.  Think of goldilocks and the three bears, the first two chairs were too big and too small, the first two bowls of porridge too hot and too cold. It’s always the third that is just right.  Same goes for the billy goats gruff, the three musketeers, the three three little pigs, Leave it to the third pig to build the house of of bricks, trick that wolf and get it right.  

In today’s story, told by Jesus in succession after 1. Lost sheep and 2. Lost coin, the rule of three does not disappoint. In the first of the 3 stories that we heard about last week, the shepherd goes out to look for his lost sheep and finds it.  In the second story, the woman turns the house over top to bottom looking for her lost coin. She finds it. In the third, the son that the dad goes looking for is not the merry prodigal son, who came home from his escapades with his tail between his legs.  The dad goes out to the field to search for the older son who he, scripture tells us, forgot to invite to the party.  (oops).

While I can affirm that there was something about the younger prodigal son that was most definitively lost, given the shape our world is in right now, the second half of the story has me thinking. 

You see, there is something very comfortable about having an enemy.  When we’re face to face with things stressing us out, it’s nice to know there’s someone to blame.  It’s a convenient to have a scapegoat.  It’s so nice, in fact that we are good at creating enemies. For example, there were a series of studies in the last few years that showed that when you tell folks in this country that technology and automation is taking jobs, people become more anti-immigrant.  Instead of directing their feelings of frustration towards the tech or the people who made the tech, people—across the political spectrum—direct their anger at a human scapegoat.  Because it’s nice to blame someone.

When the dad in this story leaves the prodigal party to look for his lost son in the field, he finds him, and his son lets loose. Years of resentment and family disfunction overflow. Before we jump to some kind of desire for everyone in this family to just hug it out, let’s acknowledge that no one in this room, right here today is a stranger to human dysfunction and even making enemies out of each other.  Whether it’s a parent that favors a certain child, or an inability to talk about why we are jealous or hurt or why we feel awkward or left out or scared, we all know that relationships can be a real mess.  And while sure, relationships can be bruised by misunderstandings, there’s also a lot of human sin like judgement, pride, and arrogance that can cut and wound them.

Here’s the thing that I could not stop thinking about this last week: the son (or both of the sons) are not the only thing that is lost in this story that Jesus tells. 

When we hurt each other, when we take advantage of each other, belittle one another, fail to appreciate one another or build each other up, when our ego is convinced of how blameless we are, we lose something. Something was lost in that field that day. We lose connection, trust, and accountability. We lose our sense of peace. 

Zoom out a little, and take a wider view of this dysfunction: when we get caught up in our money or our stuff, when we make each other the enemy, when we’re snide and disparaging, when we are judged by one another, addicted to cynicism, when we’re stingy and won’t share, when we are in need and there is nothing there for us, when we stop deeply caring about our neighbors, when the one who hurts is forgotten, something cracks. We lose something. Justice crumbles. We lose our vision of a world animated by God’s love.

If we are working to build this world that God calls us to, then we have got to take a look at what is getting in the way.   Sin isn’t some kind of rule that we break that we need to get punished for or get demerits for.  It’s something that robs us of the kingdom of God.  It closes our minds, it makes us not care, it hardens our hearts, it distracts us from what matters. And in the grip of dysfunction, we lose one another. We lose God.

Thankfully, the dad in today’s bible story had the foresight to realize that he had spaced on inviting his child to the party and he went to look for him. heaven only knows how long they stood there talking in that field, with the son, furious and spitting out the truth and his hurt. His dad tried. We got a little bit of the conversation. 

“Child!” the dad says to him. (It’s the same word that mother Mary cries out when she and Joseph finally find 12 year old Jesus who was lost in the temple. “Child!” She says to him, “we were so worried!”)

Faced with so much brokenness, we must wrestle back the tools that we need to get us to God.  We must wrestle back compassion, a desire to understand one another, a deep humility.  We must struggle to practice generosity and patience and forbearance. Even if we grit our teeth while we do it, we have to practice it like a muscle to make it stronger. We must wrestle back grace.  And you are the one that knows what this looks like in your own life. Because grace comes before change. And God has asked us to change this hurting world.

When we think about what kind of world we want to build—and we’re going to think more deeply about that as a congregation this fall—we know that we as humanity are not there yet.  

The poet Cleo Wade writes, 
we say to the world, ‘please change; we need change.’ 
But how do we show up to change in our own lives? 
How do we show up to change the lives of the people in our communities?

Something has been lost. There the dad and his son stand deep in conversation while the party music drifts down in to the field.  How do the two men resolve it? Well, Jesus doesn’t tell us. Given that you know this challenge as well as I, I guess I’ll say, How do we resolve it? What does that look like in your life? 

You tell me.