Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
June 20, 2010
Luke 15:25-32
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Is there anyone on earth who does not know this song? Now, I know, there are some who don’t like the word, “wretch,” so they sing “child like me” or “soul like me.” (actually, I rather like the word wretch, to tell you the truth), but people who never darken the door of a church, people who have little, if any, faith in God, seem to love this song. Why is that?
“I once was lost, but now am found.” Lost – found- new life. Maybe that’s it. We all like to think that no matter how lost we may be, there is always the hope of being found and beginning again. It’s one of the essential affirmations of our faith – Jesus as the one who seeks and saves the lost; the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to go out and find the one; the woman who practically tears her house apart to find the one lost coin; the father who rejoices and throws a big party when his lost son is found. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. I also love the song, and yet sometimes I wonder, and I’m going to move perhaps into blasphemy here, sometimes I wonder if the amazing grace experience – lost and found – really speaks to my life? A preacher shouldn’t admit this, but, you know, there are times when I wonder about the wisdom of that shepherd who left the ninety-nine sheep behind. I mean, is that really the guy you would want guarding your sheep? I have some sympathy for the son who says to his father, “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you and I have never disobeyed your commandments.”
Because in many ways I am that older son – the one who stayed home, played by the rules, worked hard, did his duty, went to school, began a career, got married, raised a family, worked and sacrificed for my loved ones and I still do. On this Father’s Day, a day when we don’t exactly celebrate irresponsibility, I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of older sons here today, both male and female. And as much as I love the story and the message of the Prodigal Son, I realize he isn’t me. I really don’t have a prodigal history. I never went off to that mysterious and alluring far country, (I suppose you could say three years going to graduate school in Berkeley might qualify for that!) And I certainly never came close to squandering a fortune on wine, women and song. My fortune has gone into exciting things like college loans, mortgage…and of course my weekly offering to the church. My guess is that many of you could say exactly the same. And so, as I was thinking about this Father’s Day sermon, I wondered…just what is the word spoken to the older son? What is the Gospel word for people who are fundamentally good and decent and rather boring, kind of like me.
Well of course, one path is to try to turn the older son into the prodigal son, and I have preached that sermon many times. It’s a sermon that insists we are all wandering and lost, even if we don’t know it. Craig Barnes of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary – who says he is also an older son – likes to call these the “bad dog” sermons. “Oh, you people think you are so good, you think you are so righteous, you think you’ve got it all together, but you aren’t – and you don’t - bad dog, bad dog…shame on you!” Well, I’m not too sure about that approach, especially in this part of the world, but one could make the argument that consumerism, materialism, the mad dash to get my piece of what seems to be an ever-shrinking economic pie leaves many of us older sons lost and wandering, and feeling not quite at home.
Sloan Wilson’s, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, was written in 1955, but there’s still an edge to it and I think it still speaks a word to all of us older sons: I recall one scene in particular: “Tom shrugged again. The thing to remember is this, he thought: Hopkins would want me to be honest. But when you come right down to it, why does he hire me? To help him do what he wants to do – obviously that’s why any man hires another. And if he finds that I disagree with everything he wants to do, what good am I to him? I should quit if I don’t like what he does, but I want to eat, and so, like a half million other guys in gray flannel suits, I’ll always pretend to agree, until I get big enough to be honest without being hurt. That’s not being crooked, it’s just being smart. But it doesn’t make you feel good, it makes you feel lousy…How smoothly one becomes, not a cheat, exactly, not really a liar, just a man who’ll say anything for pay.” How easily, almost without knowing it, the older son becomes the prodigal, lost in some strange land and struggling to find his way home. That’s certainly one sermon that could be preached to older sons and daughters.
But perhaps there’s another sermon here, another Gospel word for all of us older sons. Craig Barnes suggests that most of the older sons he knows are not really guilty of the scarlet sins of the prodigal. If anything our sins are rather dull. And one of the sins we are most guilty of is the sin of trying too hard, because it leaves us feeling guilty, perceiving ourselves as never doing quite enough. “If only I could do this…I should have done that…” And the result is anxiety…so much anxiety for the older son. We are anxious about our children, about our jobs, about our futures, about the lives we have so carefully constructed. Is it all going to hold together for us? Thinking back to our text, could it be anxiety that keeps the older son out of his father’s arms?
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the older brother in my newspaper column in the Sonoma West Times/News. People don’t often comment – positively or negatively – on those columns, but I did receive an e-mail response to this particular column. The writer said, “After reading your article, I have to say that I am most assuredly an elder daughter! And one of the lessons from this cancer business – she is currently under treatment for cancer – has been for me to finally accept and realize my own control issues. And goodness knows I have them!! The trusting and letting go are really hard ones because my own control is the only thing I could depend on for most of my life.”
Anybody here ever feel like that? When all else fails, at least I can depend on my own control of things. It is a classic older son statement. Somewhere along the way we learn that life is a thing to be achieved, something we need to get just right. Make good choices we are told, and you will be able to achieve the successful, self-constructed life. And, in fact, many of us here have done just that. We’re good at it. But at what price? I recently heard the bedside clock described as the Grand Inquisitor. It goes something like this: 2:00 A.M. - Were those looks of disapproval I saw around the conference table today? 2:02 – I know I did a good job on that project, but was there something I missed? 2:04 – No way can I afford to have things go bad at work: 2:06 – Just how much will her college cost? 2:08 – What if they ask me to pick up more of my health care costs? God, what would we do if I really got sick? 2:10 – I can’t believe she’s dating that jerk. What can she possibly see in him? And so it goes. The clock as Grand Inquisitor. Amazing how anxiety builds on anxiety, fear on fear. And no one ever gets talked out of fear. What is the Gospel word for us, the ones who try to do everything right but still feel like we are doing so much wrong?
I think back to that e-mail I received. After talking about her difficulty in relinquishing control, the writer said, “It has been humbling and truly an act of grace to realize the support and caring that is out there. For me to trust enough to turn my very life, to say nothing of the care of my house, kids and myriad other responsibilities, to someone else is truly an act of trust and letting go. Not a bad thing to acquire at age 68. And grace does abound.”
And grace does abound. Oh, it’s easy to say that, but do we older sons and daughters really believe it? Grace abounds…For so much of my life I have worshipped, I have been a true believer, I have worshipped at the altar of the self-constructed life. The next thing I accomplish or reach for will certainly make everything right. But it’s an illusion, an anxiety producing illusion, a fear-producing illusion. I said earlier that no one can be argued out of fear. Nor can we work or accomplish our way out of fear. What did Jesus say…love, and only love, casts out fear. And love isn’t earned or created, love is given, love is received. That’s a tough one. Can we accept a grace, a love that we cannot control or create, a love that just comes to us and asks to be received? It goes against everything we’ve been taught. You earn this stuff, right?
Ah, it’s hard for the older son to receive, to accept life as a gift that is constantly unfolding instead of some kind of challenge or opponent to be overcome and beaten into submission. As I said in that column, the older son just can’t quite trust grace, cannot let go of his firm grip on everything, cannot let go of his illusion of control. It’s so hard for him to trust that if he lets go, even just a little, that there will be something or someone to catch and hold him. And so he stands outside the door. Why is it so difficult to choose love over fear, so difficult in all our disconnected wanderings to receive the blessed gift of being welcomed and at home with God?
Gypsy Smith was an old school evangelist of the early 20th century. He had been raised as a real gypsy in England. He recalled that once, the gypsy band of which he was a part, had completed some fruit picking. They were moving their way across a river. The river was in flood, the passage dangerous. An older woman slipped from her wagon and was immediately pummeled by the floodwaters. Her grown son, a strong swimmer, knowing that she could not swim at all, plunged in after her.
A tragic event unfolded: the son trying to help his mother while she, in panic, flailed away at him and the stream. He could be heard shouting, “Mother, let go and I’ll save you!” But she would not and finally drowned with her son and safety close at hand. On the day of her funeral, as Gypsy Smith recalled it, at the conclusion of the service, the son dropped to his knees by the coffin and cried, “Mother, mother, I tried to save you, but you would not let me.”
We can continue to strive and struggle finally to accomplish the perfect self-constructed life, being dominated by anxiety and fear all along the way. Or we really can choose to relax and trust in God’s amazing grace, to open ourselves to receiving the love and nurture that are already here and always have been. Says Barbara Brown Taylor, “To have faith in God, to have faith that we are in good hands, to have faith that whether or not we understand it, the universe makes sense…that is the hardest choice any of us ever has to make…because we have no proof, no evidence, nothing but the adamant witness of our own hearts that it is so. We simply give up the illusions that are in control of our lives and step out.”
Getting back to the parable, the father opens the door and invites in the son, a free gift. It is left up to the son to accept the grace, to step inside and complete the story.