“Letting go of resentment. Cultivating grace.”
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
March 31, 2019
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
Even Jesus couldn’t put God into a neat and tidy box. This God that our ancestors worshiped….that Jesus revealed to us through his very presence...that we still struggle to engage and encounter. This God will not be explicated, made palatable, contained.
We try, with words, to approximate our experiences of the Holy….but words fail, no matter how carefully we try to choose them. I think this is part of the reason that Jesus spoke in parables...even for Jesus, there were certain aspects of God that defied neat and tidy explanations. And so it made more sense to speak of them in stories. Stories that engage our senses. Stories that invite us to be participants, not merely observers, as we seek to understand and experience God. (As a side note, this is also why rituals, like gathering at the table for Holy Communion, are so powerful. They don’t explain God to us, they invite us to participate in the reality of God.)
Of all of the things that are difficult to understand about God, one of the most difficult, I think, is God’s grace. Words may only be approximations, but these words from the Rev. Paul Zahl resonate with me: “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is loving coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable…” [1]
When Jesus tried to explain God’s grace to his followers, he often used parables. “The kingdom of God was like this:
...a sower went out to sow…
...a master went out early in the morning to hire laborers to work in his vineyard…
...there was a man who had two sons…
You know, I never liked this parable about the prodigal son when I was a child. Because, of course, I saw myself in the role of the older son: responsible, dependable, dutiful. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand if you identify, but I know I can’t be the only one here who TOTALLY understands why the older son was so grumpy and resentful when his younger brother came home and was warmly received. And so, for many years, I primarily thought this story was a cautionary tale. Just one more thing to check off on a long list of things to check off if I wanted to be a good person. “Don’t be resentful like the older son.” Check.
And that is one way to read the story, for sure. But to put the older son at the center of the story is to miss a lot of what is happening here. For starters, the older son is not the main character (as much as he might like to be). In fact, if you stopped the story after verse 24, it would feel very different. Because verses 11-24 are all about the younger son and his father. The younger son asks for his inheritance early, he goes off, wastes it, falls on hard times, finds himself shoulder to shoulder with pigs (actual pigs, eating out of the trough with them), and finally, at the end of his rope, decides he needs to go home, head hung down in shame, to beg his father to take him in as a servant.
He arrives home and before he can even apologize for his actions, his father runs to greet him, embracing him warmly, welcoming him back to the family, and throwing a party in his honor. “Let us eat and celebrate,” he says, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”
If the story ended there, it would just be a warm, fuzzy, feel-good story about God’s grace and love, right? How sweet that God loves us even when we are unlovable. How nice to be held in God’s tender care even when we mess up big-time.
But then (but THEN!) we are reminded there is another character in this story. At the very beginning, Jesus said, “there was a man who had two sons.” And the older son is toiling in the fields, just as he’s been doing day-after-day, year-after-year. When he comes back after a long day’s work, he is surprised to discover a party. Music, dancing, the smell of a juicy steak roasting over the fire.
He is filled with anger.
The resentment of the older son is certainly easy to understand. And that cautionary aspect of the story, is a good teaching. Because when we allow ourselves to be cast in the role of the older son, we miss out on so much in life. When we constantly compare ourselves to others...when we work ourselves to the bone hoping to be recognized….when we hold onto anger and resentment because the people we are closest to don’t behave the way we think they should….well, when we do those things, we miss out on a lot of parties.
When we cling to resentment, we often miss out on joy. We often destroy relationships. We often find ourselves on the outside looking in, alone.
But the reaction of the older son does something else, too. It highlights what is, I think, the more important message of this story. The older son’s reaction invites us to grapple with the scandalous nature of God’s grace.
I imagine someone in the crowd as Jesus told this story sputtering at the end, “But that’s not fair! The father was wrong! He didn’t treat his sons fairly!” And then maybe Jesus smiled, answering only with his eyes.
God’s grace doesn’t seem fair to us humans. If there’s a force in the universe that loves us completely, no matter how messed up we are, well, then, where’s the incentive for good behavior? How is that fair to those who work hard to be decent human beings? Where’s the justice?
These are good questions.
(Lengthy pause.)
Oh, you thought I was going to answer them?
Jesus told stories to try and approximate the radical nature of God’s love and grace and care...which seemed as unfathomable to ancient ears as they are to us today.
I was listening to a podcast with Father Richard Rohr earlier this week where he talked about how we humans struggle to understand the depth of God’s care for us. Rohr said that he’s been told that human brains are actually unable to conceive of the infinite, so maybe it’s not our fault that we struggle to understand God’s scandalous grace and love. [2]
But again and again, Jesus invites us into the story. He doesn’t give pat answers. He simply weaves stories that seek to unveil just the tiniest bit of who God is….and what our life might be like if we were to live more fully aware of God’s presence around and in and through us.
When words fail, art sometimes steps in to fill the void. This is why all the great world religions are full of art. Music, visual arts, poetry, architecture. These are all ways that we try to enter the story.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to read Henri Nouwen’s classic book The Return of the Prodigal Son. Nouwen was a famous pastor and theologian who was from the Netherlands and spent most of his adult years in North America (fun fact: as a young man he trained in psychology with Karl Menninger in Topeka). Nouwen was a prolific writer and often wrote about his personal and private struggles. He wrote about complex relationships, loneliness, depression….and the messiness of trying to live a faithful life.
A few years before he died, back in the 90s, he visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to spend time in contemplation with Rembrandt’s work from 1669, the Return of the Prodigal son. You may have noticed you have a reproduction of it in your bulletin this morning. From this encounter flowed an entire spiritual journey which Nouwen shares in his book.
One of the things you’ll notice as you look at the painting is that the focus is on the father and younger son. The older son stands alone, at a slight distance, receding into the shadows a bit. Our eyes are drawn to the place where the younger son encounters his father. Nestled into the father’s body, warm and strong hands grasping his shoulders, the son is welcomed home.
Nouwen notes that Rembrandt created this painting near the end of his life. The wisdom contained within was hard-borne from pain and suffering during his life. As a young man, he lost three children in their infancy. Only his fourth son survived, and his young wife died shortly after the child was born. Later in life, struggled immensely to make ends meet. One of the greatest painters Europe has ever known was buried in an unmarked paupers’ grave. This painting of the Prodigal Son was made shortly after his son died.
Nouwen says that Vincent Van Gogh once looked at this work and said, “You can only paint a painting like this when you have died so many deaths.” [3]
Rembrandt and Nouwen knew what it was like to have died many deaths. They knew the relief of falling in front of God, utterly destroyed, and trusting that God’s warm embrace would be there to catch them as they fell.
God’s scandalous grace may seem insufferable, unfair, inconceivable when we stand at a distance like the older son. But when we stumble, when we fall, when we die those many deaths that are ours to endure over the course of a lifetime….God’s scandalous grace feels like good news indeed.
Thanks be to God for all of the things about the Holy that make no sense at all.
Amen.
[1] Sprinkle, Preston. Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us, foreword
[2] Another Name for Every Thing podcast, season 1, episode 5.
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