A Sermon from Falmouth Congregational Church…

A Sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship service of the Falmouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Falmouth, Maine on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 14, 2010. The scripture reading was Luke 15:1-2, 11-32.

“Everything I have is yours!” (15:31)

“The Chance to be Divine”

We have a real-life drama before us this morning. There are three actors on the stage and we, if we are honest, tend to identify with one or more of them.

In what role would you cast yourself?

Are you the parent, or one or the other of the two sons?

The part(s) we take on for ourselves or give to others personalize the story’s meaning. This parable is a kind of litmus test of the nature and quality of our relationships – divine and human.

What does this parable teach us about God’s grace and our personal responsibility?

Every one of us could play each character in the parable, because we have been, at one time or another, each of them. We have been the older, sullen sibling, envious of another’s good fortune, tortured by another’s easy success, and resentful of the way life has treated and mistreated us. We have also been the absent or missing son who finally returns home, walking the long road of self-discovery or self-interest back to the parent who has already set out on the road to meet us. What kept us away from home for so long?

Eventually, we settle down to the final and most difficult role that of the parent. People, and the children in us, always grow up and that is the real moral and opportunity of this story. We are all on the road to maturity. We are to become the same kind of loving parent of others (and not just of the children among us). When we become compassionate, merciful, forgiving and welcoming without thinking, then the parable will have changed from fantasy to non-fiction to utter reality.

The father’s readiness to forgive is the centerpiece of the story. God calls us, again and again, to do the same. To forgive someone is to be true to them in the totality of their living. We begin to see them not just in the light of the incident or events that caused us to reject them – be it their evil, their poverty, their laziness or some other judgment. We now see them as they were before and how they could still be “a child of God.” Forgiveness should be constant in our lives, says Jesus. It is not easy, but it is necessary. It is our chance to be divine.

As a matter of clarity in viewing human behavior, let us recall that there is a thin line between “prodigal” and “wastrel.”

Wastrels, like the younger son, take and use everything in sight for themselves. A true prodigal, check your dictionary, like the father in this parable, gives everything to others. Today, the time may have come to re-title this parable as “the parable of the prodigal parent.” The parent is waiting, watching, sees the son coming at a distance, and runs to welcome him, kisses him, and throws a party for the safe return of the wastrel offspring. It is all excessive. It would not have been in the society and culture of the ancient day.

Does it not make your blood boil? It made the older brother’s blood boil over. He was angry at the lavish reception thrown for the younger brother while he himself was out working the farm.

Still, re-read the parable! Notice how “prodigal” the father is with his older son, too.

His misses the older son at the party, he seeks him out in the yard, he shows him that he wants him to enter into the celebration, he listens to his elder son’s tirade, and responds with love. “Everything I have is yours,” he declares. Legally, such was the case.

Our Christian faith has a word for the way the loving parent acts toward both sons. The word is ‘grace,’ or God’s love in action. Grace does not mean the exalting of one over the other. Grace means that neither parent nor child can buy the things that give richness and value to living, neither can we expect or demand, earn or achieve them by our own valiant efforts. It is all the more important that we be able to give more than that which others have a right to demand or claim of us. “Everything I have is yours,” is to be our mantra. We certainly can say it back to God. “Everything I have is yours.”

Forgiveness and acceptance of the forgiven are the true companions of ‘grace.’ It is all a way of being at home with each other in the household of God. In “The Death of the Hired Man,” the New England poet Frost defined “home” as “the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” We are to be at home in this congregation, and we are to make others be at home, by our welcoming acceptance of them.

Near the end of the unbelievable carnage that was the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was asked how he intended to treat the rebellious Southerners after their certain defeat. The questioner expected Lincoln would take a dire revenge, but the President offered, “I will treat them as if they had never been away.”

The accepting, forgiving, restoring and reconciling love of God which touches our lives and invites us into relationship is the party to which God would have us come. In Lent, the Bible readings remind us, God has prepared a joyous feast for all peoples through the “prodigality” of God spending all God has, even the life of God’s own child, for the sake of the world (John 3:16).

Perhaps, it is God’s love for us that prevents the parable from telling us what the older son finally decided to do. Whether he went into the party or stayed outside, the party went on as planned. The invitation is God’s, the choice and the response are ours to make.

In some ways, the parable never ends. We will always be the younger or older son or daughter in our relationship with God. We will always be the brother or the sister. Who of us cannot say: “I have sinned against you. I no longer deserve to be called your child”? And who of us would not want to hear what both sons heard: “Everything I have is yours!”? And yet who among us is willing to say the same words to another human being?

We live in a world in which not only natural resources but hope seems to be in limited supply. We imagine that God’s love and forgiveness are similarly limited. Not true! We fail to grasp that God’s bounteous gift of mercy; forgiveness and love are available to all recipients without limit. The cost has been long covered; the price fully paid.

Many of us have journeyed and fallen to our knees and been amazed that we are forgiven and loved. We have found the message of grace within the Falmouth Congregational Church and we celebrate that miracle together, each and every Sunday morning.

Let us also acknowledge with deepest gratitude our loving and prodigal parent who is our living, loving God.