The Prodigal Son

I get a lot of my entertainment and information now from the internet. I watch funny short videos on a site called "Stupid Videos", listen to my own radio station on LaunchCast, read a humorous Christian magazine parody called Lark News, read news everywhere from CNN to FoxNews to Al Jazeera and talk to other Nazarenes all over the world on NazNet. I read the blogs of a few friends. A blog is like an online journal or diary on a website, so anyone can read it.

But before the blogger, before the TV newscaster, before the radio star, before the first best-selling author, there was the story teller. A great story teller might make up stories of his own, but he could also re-tell the old favorites that had been passed down from one story teller to the next for many generations. And the stories combined entertainment with information. They told the history of the clan, they told how the world was formed and what made the crops grow.

I think I must have gotten in just on the tail end of the age of the storyteller. I lived in Arkansas until I was 11. In Fordyce, Arkansas in the mid-60's when I was in elementary school, we only had one TV station, and all the adults remembered before TV existed at all. So people still knew how to tell stories. They'd tell jokes that lasted five or ten minutes, just long, rambling humorous stories. I really loved the ghost stories, though. We'd sit in the front yard or on the front porch after dark, just before bedtime, and someone would say, "let's tell ghost stories". The best storyteller in the group would always start by telling us that this particular story was true. It really happened to a friend of her father's. The story itself would be interesting and would keep you on the edge of your seat, but the last sentence of the story would take you by surprise and send chills running up and down your spine. As I got a little older, and heard the same basic story told by a half-dozen people, I figured out they weren't really necessarily true, but I still had my favorites, and it was always fun to hear them again.

Jesus was a great story teller in an age of great story tellers. One of his stories has been called the best short story every told. It's not a funny story, or a romance, and nobody dies at the end, but if you read this story or hear someone tell it who can tell it right, there are points in the story where you feel anger, and points where you feel shame, and points where your heart is thrilled and relieved. And you remember the story for the rest of your life, and at one time or another in your life, you relate to every one of the main characters. This is that story. It’s usually called the story of the Prodigal Son. Prodigal means recklessly, extravagantly wasteful. The prodigal son is the wayward child. (Luke 15:11-32, copied and pasted together from different translations). The story says:

A certain man had two sons: The younger said to his father, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.' So the father divided the property between them. In those days, the main form of wealth was land. So the son is asking for his share of the land so he can sell it for the cash. But a family’s land meant more than wealth. It was how they maintained their identity and existence as a people. It was vital to pass on your land to your own children, to keep it in the family, the clan, the tribe. All worth and identity resided in the clan. You needed each other to survive. You were valuable because you were a part of this clan. Without the clan, you had no support structure, no identity, no worth, no one to fight for you, no one who had your back. This son is telling his father to drop dead, so he can have his inheritance now. These people also cared deeply about honor and duty. This son is insulting his father, breaking up the homestead, and rejecting the clan. A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. One final thing this man could do to bring shame to himself, he has now done. These people didn’t eat pork. They considered pigs to be a loathsome, disgusting animal. They wouldn’t touch them. But this young man is now lower than a pig farmer. He’s the pig farmer’s hired hand. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him anything. Now, here comes the first positive twist in the story. We could pass right over this line without thinking about it, but in this passing phrase, a compliment of enormous power and hope is paid to this hungry, shame-filled young man. The story says: But when he came to himself When he came to himself. All these terrible decisions he’s made, that have reduced him to shame and hunger, unloved and alone and apparently unlovable, these things don’t define him; that’s not who he really is. When he comes to himself, he remembers who he is and whose he is, and where he came from. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! Now, in this moment when he comes to himself, his world changes. In this moment when he remembers that he has a father of such love and provision that the least important people back home have more than enough, he finds in that spark of hope, in the middle of his shame and pain, the courage to say: 'I will arise and go to my father, but still he expects that he’s going to have to grovel and beg. His father has every right, and the village will want to try to insist that his father exercise the right to ban him from the village and never acknowledge any obligation by the clan to him again, because he has shamed them and himself. So he prepares a speech to give to his father, in the hopes of at least becoming a higher class of hired farm hand back home, since he knows he can never be called a son again. So he says: I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand." ' "So he got up and came to his father. Now, stop here. I love words. The first time I was ever paid for work done, I was paid to recite a poem for a neighbor lady who wanted her dinner guests to hear it, when I was seven years old. I love words. Daddy used to read poetry and stories to me before I was old enough to read, and he would talk about the great orators of his childhood, like Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, and he would imitate their voices and quote their speeches. I discovered in high school, that, although I wasn’t an athlete and I wasn’t rich, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask a girl out, that with the right words, with words alone, I could make them swoon and make their hearts melt. I love well chosen words. I’ve read broadly and deeply of the greatest classic English literature. But I think this next two sentences, which might seem merely “nice”, may be the most beautiful, powerful, eloquent, moving words in the English language. These words turn our world upside down – no, these words finally turn our world rightside up. These words turn a dark, scary, empty room into a surprise birthday party. They turn fear into stunned, astonished joy. They turn death row into pardon and freedom. They turn a criminal and an orphan into a child and an heir. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. While he was still a long way off, his father ran to him and hugged him and kissed him. This father knows that the townspeople, if they see the son and reach him first, will perform the ceremony of banishment against this son who disgraced him and them and himself. Now, they have a rule that it is immodest and shameful to show bare legs. They wore robes that go down nearly to the ground, and they take that rule so seriously that they debate about whether it’s okay to hike your robe even when you’re walking through thorns, to keep from being caught in the thorns and getting your robe torn up. But to run in a long robe and sandals, this father has to hike up his robes to keep from tripping over it. But this father embarrasses himself without concern for what anyone else thinks, and he hikes up his robe, exposing his bare calves, and races the town elders to the city gate to reach his son first, so he can embrace him before the town has a chance to condemn him. The son doesn’t get the chance to walk all the way to the father. The father doesn’t stand with crossed arms and contemptuous scowl, waiting for the son to grovel and beg before throwing him a bone or throwing him out. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: 'Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son ever again.' But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going to feast! We're going to have a wonderful time! My son is here— given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!' And they began to have a wonderful time. All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day's work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, 'Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast— barbecued beef!— because he has him home safe and sound.' The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and began to plead with him. Now look at that. The younger son arose and went to his father. The father ran to him while he was still a long way off, but at least he was facing in the right direction, and had given some indication that he was ready to receive the father’s love at some level. But this “good” older brother has his back turned to his father, and is choosing to stay outside. Here the father doesn’t even wait for the older son to say “I will arise and go to my father.” The father goes all the way to him, all angry and defensive though he is, and pleads with him. The father pleads with the son. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!' Isn’t that something? While the younger son, off in the pig pen, has believed he wasn’t and probably couldn’t be loved because of all the bad things he’s done, the older son, has dutifully, lovelessly followed all the rules, doing everything he was supposed to do, but by his own admission doing them with the mindset of a slave, just obeying commands, neither giving nor receiving love, unloving and believing himself unloved. Whether near or far, both sons have lived as slaves, sure that the other was favored. Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. Now, that’s technically, literally true. He’s got two sons, and one has already received his inheritance, so theoretically, when the father dies, the entire remaining estate would be expected to go to the older brother. So the father says all that is mine is yours. You could have barbecued that heifer anytime you wanted. You aren’t a slave; you’re my dear son. All that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'" First believe that you are loved by your father, and then celebrate your brother, rejoice over him, be loved and love.

We have, of course, all at one time or another been the younger son, so crushed by our own pain and our own shame that we think it can never be made right again. We can never really be completely embraced and accepted and trusted again. We can never really hold our heads up again in polite company.

I have to confess to you, though, that I’ve spent most of my life identifying with the older son. I followed all the rules, I didn’t do drugs, I’ve only had sex with one person in my life, I’ve been in church nearly every Sunday since I was four years old. And sometimes I felt invisible, when the younger sons in my life had the dramatic stories to tell, and got all the attention. And I always hated this story in the Bible because the only person who looks like a jerk in the story is me. Somehow it’s the screw-ups who get the hugs and the kisses and the music and the dancing and the big welcome, and nobody even tells me there’s a party, and somehow I’m the only one who has a problem with that. But the father calls him “dear son” and tells him he can freely enjoy everything the father has, both the barbeque beef and the joy in his brother’s return.

Sometimes, I’ve been the younger son, and the father has embraced me and loved me, and drawn me deeper into the circle of his love and his life. And sometimes I’ve been the older son, and the father has embraced me and loved me, and drawn me deeper into the circle of his love and his life.

And the more I let him do that, and allow myself to be loved and to love, the more I allow the father’s words to the younger son to be spoken to me when I’m that younger son, and the more I allow the father’s words to the older son to be spoken to me when I’m the older son, the more it begins to dawn on me that, besides the two sons, there’s one more character in the story that the storyteller calls me to identify with.

He invites me to be like the father. Having learned to receive grace and be a son, like the two brothers, he invites me to go further up and further in, and learn to see like he sees, love like he loves, feel compassion and patience like he feels compassion and patience, celebrate like he celebrates and rejoice like he rejoices. He invites me to experience his joy and his life.

…um…. Yes. Yes. I accept the invitation.

Sermon on Worry

I struggle against worry now. My actual present circumstances are these. I and my family are healthy; we genuinely love and enjoy each other; we have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and in our cupboards; my church is a place where I really encounter God in worship and I can see that others do, too; my closest friends are people at NewStart who love and support me; and I continue to see new people becoming a part of NewStart and finding the same transforming love that we found here.

And yet, I struggle against a paralyzing, distorting, defeating worry. I worry that the last paying client my business got is the last client we'll ever get, and the house will be foreclosed on and my wife and children will be ashamed of me. I worry that the worst decision my kids have made in the past year will be habits rather than exceptions. I worry that my church will become visionless and haphazard on the one hand, or rigid and controlling on the other, instead of the place of freedom and grace and destiny that it began to be and all our sacrifices will be in vain and all our dreams be exposed as foolish. But when worry drives me, it drives me to the very thing I fear.

A long time ago, two boys were born, fraternal twins named Esau and Jacob.

As the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open fields, while Jacob was the kind of person who liked to stay at home.

Gen 25:27

Esau was big and strong and rugged and daring. Hunting took him far from home as he tracked his quarry. Jacob tended the sheep, which let him stay close to home, and was a little more certain of success than hunting, and a little safer. He did a little cooking, too, and he was pretty good at it. He was a homebody who tried to avoid conflict and unnecessary risk. Now, God had made some promises to Jacob. God had promised that Jacob would do well, that he would prosper, that he would be strong, that he would be given prominence. But Jacob was a few minutes younger than his brother Esau, and birth order was important in those days. It would be Esau who would inherit his father's position in the family as the leader, and who would inherit the bulk of his father's estate, not Jacob.

And Jacob began to worry. What if Esau is the head of the family and gets all the breaks and all the resources and I'm supposed to be subservient to him? How can things turn out right for me if that happens? And worry begins to consume Jacob, and he schemes to get what he thinks he needs to be who he thinks he's supposed to be. So one day when he's in the kitchen cooking, his brother comes home from a long, unsuccessful hunting trip, and he's just famished, and Jacob's cooking smells so good, and he asks Jacob for some. And Jacob says: "I'll sell it to you -- in exchange for your birthright!" And Esau, thinking with his stomach, focused on right now, says: "what good is a birthright if I starve to death?" and sells his birthright for a bowl of stew. Later, he tricks his poor, blind old father into giving him Esau's blessing as the firstborn son, as well, by dressing up as Esau and pretending to be him. So when he has a little power, he's controlling, and when he doesn't have any power, he's deceitful. He manipulates and he steals, and at last his brother threatens to kill him, and Esau is big enough to do it, so Jacob has to flee his home. He runs away to the country that his mother came from, and there he finds a wife. Actually he finds two wives, sisters, (it was a fairly messed up culture, and that was legal) and he went to work for his father-in-law in the sheep raising business. And Jacob, who has cheated his brother, worries. He worries that his father-in-law will cheat him. He prospers, but his father-in-law doesn't trust him and he doesn't trust his father-in-law, and his wives are fighting among themselves and he's playing everybody off of everybody else. Finally, although nothing bad is actually happening to him, his worry about the bad things that may be about to happen drives him to flee from Laban in the middle of the night, without notice or warning, with his wives and children and the sheep and cattle he's acquired over the years.

He heads back toward the home that he fled 20 years earlier but in that direction is his big red-headed brother who can still break him in two like Bill Howerton could break me. And in the intervening years, Esau has acquired a small army of employees and followers, and he's found out that Jacob is coming, and he's heading toward Jacob with his army.

So Jacob is between a rock and a hard place, alone in the open country, caught between the brother he cheated and the father-in-law he abandoned.

At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone for a pillow and lay down to sleep.
Gen 28:11

Now let's go back and look at our first verse again. Now lets look at the next one again. A stone for a pillow. Jacob, who loved home, is sleeping in an open field with a stone for a pillow. Jacob has lost his own identity. Jacob who didn't like confronting people, who tried to avoid open conflict, now had open war and mortal danger coming at him from every side. Jacob has lost who he is. Jacob, who wanted to be prominent is alone. Jacob who wanted to become powerful is vulnerable. Worry has driven him from everything that gave him his identity, his sense of worth. Jacob is the son of Isaac, the grandson of Abraham, whom God had chosen, and who was called the friend of God, but Jacob now feels utterly abandoned by a God he doesn't know, doesn't trust and doesn't see. Jacob has utterly lost his identity, and the quiet homebody takes a stone for a pillow, and worries about war and destitution, as his children and his sheep sleep peacefully in the fields around him, and at last, sleep overcomes him.

As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth to heaven. At the top of the stairway stood the LORD, and he said, "I am the LORD, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father, Isaac.... I will be with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. I will be with you constantly until I have finished giving you everything I have promised." Then Jacob woke up and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I wasn't even aware of it."

Gen 28:12-16

In his worry, in his fear, in his desperation, when he thought the darkness would take him, he finds himself almost literally at the gate of heaven. When he thought he was alone, the God of glory reveals himself to Jacob. A lot of bad things had happened to Jacob, and a lot more bad things would happen to him in the future, but the shame of his past and the tragedies in his future never again defined Jacob. This dream defined him. The certain knowledge that "the LORD is in this place" defined him.

Jacob is not the example of a spiritually, emotionally, relationally healthy person. But he is an example of the stubborn work of God in his life, so that he gets healthy after all. At the end of his life, he is, after all, prosperous and secure and respected and he has, after all, become a healthy leader, passing on what God wants to pass on to his children and his grandchildren. And a thousand years later, when the God of heaven wanted to identify himself to someone, he would identify himself as "the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac -- and the God of Jacob.

I've done some praying this past week. I'm planning to do a lot more praying over the next several weeks, and some of you are probably going to be doing a little more praying than usual, as we as a church seek to let God work himself more deeply into our minds and spirits.

There's a great bit of advice, followed by a great promise, written many centuries after the time of Jacob, by someone who counted himself -- and us -- as descendants of Jacob.

Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which goes beyond anything we can imagine. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Phil 4:6-7

His peace will guard our hearts and minds. Even with all the things that may sometimes seem to be stacked against us and hinting at some impending doom, his peace will guard our hearts, our minds, our identities, will cause us to remember who we are and whose we are, and to be who we really are and want to be. Most of what we worry about never really happens, of course, but the promise of God is that even when it does, I can still have peace, and I can still remain the me I mean to be, the me that prompts the God of heaven to say he is the God of Abraham and the God of Jacob and the God of you and me.

May the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.