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Lent 4 Luke 15:1-3,
11b-32 3-18-07
The Road Back Home
As I read over the gospel lesson for today I got to thinking about
one of the favorite activities of some members of this congregation
- Family Reunion Time. More specifically, I was thinking what it
might be like if a member of a close knit family were to leave home
as the prodigal did and then return at the time of a family reunion?
In our gospel, of course, it’s not just a case of a son getting an
advance from dad and taking off to make his fortune, or at least, to
enjoy the high life. What the younger son did in asking for his
inheritance was more like wish his father dead, since you can only
get an inheritance when someone dies.
Furthermore, in a culture that is as family oriented as the Jewish
culture at the time of Christ was, having a son reject his family
obligations and take off brought shame to his family. Thus, the
father would have likely felt rejection, grief, humiliation and
betrayal.
It’s hard to put ourselves in the culture that Jesus portrays in his
parable, but we can bring the story up to date and get a bit of the
feel of it with a story I read this week. It is a reworking of the
Prodigal Son parable with a twist - it is a daughter who leaves
home. Let me share it with you…
THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTERÂ… a modern day version. Luke 15:11 ff
A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse
City,-Michigan. Her parents tend to overreact to her nose ring, the
music she listens to, and how she dresses.
They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. "I hate you!"
she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room
after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has
mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away. To Detriot.
Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car
she's ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a
place for her to stay.
He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she's ever
felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were
keeping her from all the fun.
The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man
with the big car-she calls him "Boss"-teaches her a few things that
men like. Sometimes, she thinks about the folks back home, but their
lives now seem so boring that she can hardly believe she grew up
there.
After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes
her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can't mess
around," he growls, and before she knows it she's out on the street.
All the money she can make goes to support her habit. When winter
blows in she finds herself sleeping outside. "Sleeping" is the wrong
word-a teenage girl at night in down-town Detroit can never relax
her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.
One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden
everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like
a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold
and frightening city.
Her pockets are empty and she's hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls
her legs tight underneath her and shivers. Something jolts her
memory and a single image fills her mind: May in Traverse City, when
a million cherry trees bloom at once,
God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her
heart.
She's sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else
in the world she wants to go home.
Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the
answering machine.
She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the
third time she says,
"Dad, Mom, it's me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I'm
catching a
bus up your way, and it'll get there about midnight tomorrow. If
you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it
hits Canada."
It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between
Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the
flaws in her plan.
What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn't
she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And
even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago.
She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.
Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the
speech she is preparing for her father. "Dad, I'm sorry. I know I
was wrong. It's not your fault; it's all mine. Dad, can you forgive
me?" She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as
she rehearses them. She hasn't: apologized to anyone in years.
When the bus finally rolls into the station, the driver announces in
a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks. That's
all we have here."
Fifteen minutes to decide her life.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect.
Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind
prepare her for what she sees.
There, in bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of
forty --brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins
and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot.
They're all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and
taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated
banner that reads "Welcome home!"
Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out
through the tears in her eyes and begins the memorized speech, "Dad,
I'm sorry. I know... "
He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We've got no time for that. No time
for apologies right now. You'll be late for the party.
It’s an interesting retelling, isn’t it? The important person in the
story though is not the returning son or daughter. It is the father.
What forgiveness is shown as the father who has been so hurt,
humiliated and grieved welcomes the prodigal back into the
family…and not just welcomes, but throws a party for this
irresponsible, wayward child who has returned.
And what grace is shown also. Notice that especially in the Jesus
parable the prodigal son doesn’t really show remorse. He’s going
home because he’s had enough of living with pigs and figures life
could be better as a servant in his father’s house. His
well-rehearsed speech sounds more like a way to soften his father’s
heart than a true apology.
And so he goes home. There the father not only forgives him, but
restores him to an honored place in the family with a big party to
boot.
The parable isn’t over though. Jesus throws in a little more
conflict; for there is a second son - the older brother, due to
inherit two thirds of dad’s estate, who has remained home faithfully
keeping things going. Who can blame him for being in a snit when he
hears that his wandering brother has returned and his dad is giving
a party for him. He’s worked hard all these years without so much as
a little get together of friends to celebrate his loyalty and hard
work.
Can we criticize the sibling of the daughter who ran away from home
and conducted herself in a shameful way if she doesn‘t throw herself
on her sister? Can we criticize the sibling at the family reunion
who doesn’t feel like hanging on every word of the just returned
brother? Can we criticize a fellow member or ourselves when we don’t
get all excited at the return of a member who left in a huff and
joined some mega-church wannabe, but now wants to return to St.
Paul’s?
It really doesn’t matter too much. What matters is that the Father
forgives both obvious sins like those committed by the prodigals and
the less obvious sins of the stay at homes.
In fact, the Father doesn’t just forgive, he totally wipes the slate
clean and throws a party. And he desperately wants all of his
children at the party.
Just as he totally discards his dignity by running out to the
prodigal, he discards it by going outside to reason with his older
son.
It is the same today. Our Father waits with patient longing for the
prodigal to return and he also reaches out to those who have stayed
at home and worked hard who feel unappreciated and resentful.
God’s love is never ending and his longing for his children
continues until all have taken the road back home. There they will
find our Father ready with open arms. There we will be invited to
join the party. There we will become God’s new creation, full of
life and love and joy. All of this, if we’ll just take the road back
home. Amen
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