First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
21 March 2004
The Road Home
Some of you may have read about or even seen the new 30-second ad on TV promoting the United Church of Christ, which is currently airing in select cities around the country, Boston not among them. It's being run in an effort to improve our name recognition, and also in the hope that more people will come to realize that despite the similarity in names, we're NOT our much more conservative cousin, the Churches of Christ. The ad, which you can watch at www.ucc.org, if you're interested, opens with the satirical image of a couple of muscular bouncers standing at the entrance to a church, choosing whom to let in and whom to turn away. In the United Church of Christ, the ad goes on to say, "No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you're welcome here."
Extravagant welcome. It's how the UCC likes to describe itself these days, and it's the vision we at First Church have begun learning our way into over the past year, as we explore what it means to live by a Way of Hospitality. The practical challenges and the emotional challenges of living by such a vision are only gradually dawning on us, as you would expect with any significant culture change. But so far, most of us have responded warmly, even hospitably, to the idea of hospitality. What's not to agree with, after all? No one wants to put out the "Go Away, We Don't Want You" mat at the front door of the church—even if we have taken the precaution of removing the doorknob from the outside of the door so that no one can get in.
When it comes to hospitality, it's easy to speak in pleasant affirmations, more difficult to live out in practice. To live a way of hospitality, after all, means living with the doors of the heart open. Open to challenge, open to hurt, open to the unexpected and to transformation. It's demanding and painful and takes a lot of courage. At times, the very hardest form of hospitality we are called to practice is hospitality toward our own shadows: those things we may not want to look at or acknowledge in ourselves, those things that can startle us into slamming all the other doors in the house.
The gospels, of course, are just one story of extravagant welcome after another. But this one about the prodigal son has got to trump them all. I admire the honesty of the woman I met once who told me that there were two stories in the Bible that really troubled her, so much so that she wished they would just disappear. One was the story of Abraham and Isaac—that fearsome story in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son. The other was the tale of the prodigal son. It bothered her so much, she said, the way the father just welcomed that son back, no questions asked. This woman, you see, was the responsible one in her family. The hardworking, conscientious, self-denying one. Judging from the number of bitter letters to advice columnists (one of my favorite parts of the paper) about adult children who don't lift a finger (or sign over a penny) to help support their aging parents, but cheerfully leave their siblings to carry the whole load—and worse, about the parents who go on loving those children anyway, and even insist on treating them like family—I've got a hunch Jesus was on to something with his story about the two sons. I get mad just thinking about those selfish, irresponsible siblings.
Even so, I find I'd rather not fess up about my sympathy for the hard-working elder brother. It's difficult for me, and perhaps for you too, to admit to, because I think we grasp that in some way this outrageous story sums up the entire gospel. So we suppress that rising cry of protest when the father runs to embrace and kiss that no-good son, to clothe him, and to throw a banquet in celebration of his return. Unless we're like that candid woman I met, mentally cutting the story right out of the Bible, we squelch what we are really thinking as the father places the ring on his son's finger and leads him to the place of honor at the table. Listen closely, and maybe you'll hear a little voice shrieking, "That isn't fair!"
And the little voice is right. It isn't fair. But this story isn't about fairness, or even about moral rightness. This story is about love.
A son leaves home. Jesus doesn't say why he leaves. We might find ourselves filling in the gaps in the story with details from our own lives: He leaves because he doesn't want to be a farmer like his father. He leaves because he can't get along with his elder brother—the one who will someday take the father's place as head of household. He leaves because he's restless, itching to see what the world is like outside his little village. Or maybe he's fleeing something in himself that terrifies him, something that might put him outside the community if anyone found out. Better to leave voluntarily than get thrown out, or worse.
My oldest child, who is starting college next year, is busy making plans to put a large ocean between herself and me. When I was her age I arranged to be on the opposite side of a continent from my parents, so I think I know better than to take this rite of passage as a personal rejection. But the father in our story won't find it so easy to be philosophical. This younger son of his isn't just going out to make his way in the world. It's more as if he's asking for a divorce. He wants to split the family assets and go start a new life somewhere else. Somehow, for him, it has come down to what he can walk away with. He's cashing in. Burning his bridges. From now on, it won't make any difference to him whether his father is alive or dead: He's got his inheritance, and he's going far, far away.
It would be a devastating move for a son to make in any time and place, but in Jesus' culture we have to imagine an additional social dimension of shame and dishonor to the father. It gets worse as word filters back that the son is living a dissolute life among gentiles, paying no regard to the Torah, the covenant, or his God. No wonder the heartbroken father says that his younger son has, in effect, died. It would be difficult to imagine a more complete severing of the past—as if, by cutting parts of himself away, this young man could thereby free himself from whatever it was that was troubling him. It's the "separation barrier" approach to conflict that says that if you build a wall high enough and wide enough, those demons of the past won't be able to trouble you any more. It didn't work in Berlin, it won't work in present-day Israel, and it won't help you and me, either. There's really only one way to rid ourselves of our enemies, and that is to change our hearts. To start on the painful road toward reconciliation.
You know what happens in our story. Sooner or later the money runs out. The illusions run out too. The son begins to starve. Or perhaps we should say that it finally dawns on him that he is starving, dying of a hunger that began when he first turned his back on his father and walked away. This is not just the story of a dysfunctional family Jesus is telling us, after all. It's a story about God and us. Jesus says that there, among the pigs, this Jewish son finally "comes to himself" and realizes that this autonomy thing isn't working out the way he imagined at all; that freedom from the source of love isn't really freedom at all, but emptiness; that when your own resources are at an end, and the source of blessing is far, far away, the result is bankruptcy.
The problem now is, who would want him any more?
Perhaps it was this haunting question that started the son running in the first place, or perhaps it has only just occurred to him. We can't say. We do know that the judgment and anger he dreads are, in fact, waiting for him back at home, just as he fears. They are real; he isn't imagining them. They are there in the person of the elder son, his brother, an exact mirror of the unworthiness the younger one is feeling at that moment. These brothers are like two sides of the same lost coin: the one all shame, the other all blame. You get the feeling that they could switch roles at any moment. You get the feeling, too, that neither one of them is actually seeing the father.
Neither of them sees the father, because their attention is not on him, but on themselves. Where Jesus shows us a compassionate, forgiving, welcoming, rejoicing parent, they see only a judge and a taskmaster. And since they cannot see who their father really is, they also cannot see themselves as they really are, his beloved children, his joy and his delight. Instead, each tries to present himself as a servant. "I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands," says one. The other storms, "For all these years I have been working like a slave for you!" The wonder of this story is that no matter how shamefully or spitefully his sons behave, the father still wants them at the feast, really wants them. The one who has disgraced him he welcomes with open arms, running through the village and embracing him and kissing him in full view of onlookers. The other son shames him before his guests by refusing to take a place at the banquet. To this son he humbles himself, leaving the celebration to go out and plead with him to relent, to come and join the feast. "Son," he says, "you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." There is sadness in his words, but also infinite patience. Thus far the son who is "always with him" has turned himself away at the door of grace, refusing to go in. He has rejected the inheritance that this loving father most longs to impart: not lands, animals, and wealth but kindness. But if this son is lost today, that does not mean he is lost for all time. Jesus leaves the story open, unresolved. If the younger son could eventually come to himself, why not the elder? Why not us? Who isn't there room for in God's household of love?
Luke says that Jesus told the story of the two sons to some scribes and Pharisees who were "grumbling" because they saw him eating with toll collectors and sinners. They were a lot like me and you, these scribes and Pharisees. They were the dedicated ones, the conscientious ones, the ones whose lives revolved around trying to do things right and do the right things, especially where religion was concerned. They were doing their level best to conduct themselves in obedience to God's commands. They were those people Bill Clinton used to talk about who "work hard and play by the rules." Their indignation here recalls many other stories in the gospel in which Jesus affronts the upright by welcoming the lame, the possessed, the sick, the impure, even gentiles— people who, by the Jewish customs of the day, would have been regarded as not only unclean but contagiously unclean. Jesus tells this story to show these good and righteous folks a different kind of response, a response that would welcome them into the joy of God instead of shutting them out. Look again, Jesus seems to be saying. The lost are being found, sinners are being saved, all of heaven is celebrating! Loosen up a little. Stop sulking on the back porch. Don't you know there's a party going on, and you're all invited!?
Here in this household of God, as we have dreamed together of what it might mean to live more deeply as a community into the wonderful hospitality of God, we've called on some of the same imagery Jesus uses in this parable. We've talked about being a church on the open road, going out to extend God's embrace and care to the lost, the empty, the searching, the outcast—our sisters and brothers.
We've talked about being a church with an open table, God's table, where all are welcomed, all are honored, all forgiven and forgiving, where people can sit side by side with their differences and learn from one another—even celebrate together.
We've talked about being a church with a door open to new people, new ideas, new experiences, new gifts, new approaches.
And we've talked about a church of open spirits: open to the amazing, imaginative, liberating, forgiving, joyful, celebrating God who has danced down the road with us this far and who will keep on dancing with us as long as we're willing—dancing the world into new forms and new ways of being, dancing into existence a new creation based on love, mercy, and justice.
It's because we can trust this God that we've agreed to embrace a vision that we know is not only about Open Door, Open Road, Open Spirits, and Open Table, but also Open Me and Open You. By saying yes to the vision, we've committed ourselves to growing and changing right along with our community, and to helping one another grow.
Let's remind ourselves of that when we catch ourselves grumbling. We know the journey will be hard at times. But we also know that our faces are turned toward home. And that somewhere up ahead is a welcome like no welcome we have ever imagined, waiting to catch us up into a love that will take in all that we are—our past, our mistakes, our hurts, our longings, our disappointments—and transform them into something glorious.
Are you ready? Shall we join the party?
© 2004, Kate Layzer