Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
The Worship of God · March 14, 2010
The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Litany and Confession
From Psalm 32
Happy are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered by grace.
Happy are those who are free from the burden of iniquity, in whom there is no deceit.
When I kept silence, my body wasted away; I groaned inwardly day and night.
My strength seemed dried up as by the heat of summer.
We acknowledge our sin to you, and do not hide. We said:
We will confess our transgressions to the Lord.
God forgives, the old is gone and behold, the new has come!
God is merciful, abounding in steadfast love!
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Pastoral Prayer
Jacob Thorne
Gracious God and loving God; we give thanks for this morning and the opportunity to worship you. As we continue our Lenten journey, we look inside the depths of our souls. We know that some days, we are so strong and confident in our faith. At other times, we feel lost. But you, our God, are the one who leads us and sustains us. You walk with us through the paths of life. You are always ahead of us, leading the way. No matter how far we wander, you always call us back to you.
We give thanks for your patience with us, for sometimes, we panic easily. But your calming presence speaks to our souls, for we know your grace surrounds us. Your steadfast love never ends. When we refuse to be pushed, we ask that you gently move us along. We ask that you help us hunger for that which will truly nourish our bodies and our spirits, to love one another as you have called us to be community of faith. Embrace us, O God, with your gentle Spirit. Cradle us in your presence. Hold us forever in your love.
Here the prayers of our hearts, and listen now as we sing together the prayer your Son taught us…
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen, Amen.
New Testament Lesson
Luke 15:1-3;11-32
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable:
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 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! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house; he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 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; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and 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.’”
Message
Lost Before You Know It:
The Long Road Home
Tim Carson
It’s so easy to get Lost… imagine an entire television series that revolves around the question of being lost and how they might be found. But it wouldn’t be the first time in history. The entire 15th chapter of Luke’s Gospel was the Lost series of the first century.
There was a lost coin, and the woman so longed to have it back that she turned her house upside down in order to find it. She was so joyful about the lost becoming found that announced the news with all the neighbors.
There was a lost sheep that just wandered away from the flock. The good shepherd left the vulnerable many in order to seek out the lost one. And then he carried it home on his shoulders.
Whether it’s someone finding the kingdom of God or the kingdom of God finding them, the lost is found and it’s always an occasion for great surprise and rejoicing. And which one of us hasn’t been lost before?
Somewhere around 4th grade, my father’s company transferred him back to Kansas City, and so we made another big move. We had moved into our new house and were getting adjusted. And I took the school bus to my new elementary school. I remember that my teacher’s name was Mrs. Karr. Eventually the school bell rang at the end of the day, and we all flooded out to our school buses. On the way home, however, I got off the bus at the wrong stop and began to walk. None of the landmarks looked familiar. Minutes stretched into over an hour. And I had no idea where I was. Remember, this was the time before cell phones. Just before I decided to walk up to a house and ask to use the phone, I spied an office building near the highway – it was the realty company that my parents had used to buy their house. I walked in the front door, told them who I was, broke into tears, and before you know it, they contacted my mother, and she came and picked me up. “How did you get lost?” she asked.
It’s so easy to get lost. It’s not hard to get lost.
It’s a terrible feeling to be lost, in an unfamiliar place, disoriented, out of your comfort zone, uncertain where to go next. And it’s easy to find yourself in that kind of situation. Just ask a toddler who wanders off in the department store or the hiker who somehow loses the trail up in the mountains just as darkness begins to fall. It’s not hard to get lost, not hard at all. And of course, we get lost on the inside in ways much more complex than getting off at the wrong bus stop.
Once upon a time, said Jesus, there was son with a bad attitude. His attitude was so bad that one day he asked for his share of the family inheritance. This was a colossal insult, of course, because asking for your cut before the parent is dead is tantamount to wishing them so. And since he is the youngest son and the inheritance automatically goes to the older sibling, it was like wishing his big brother dead, too. So, there.
Notice that the father didn’t obstruct him. He didn’t have to grant his youngest son’s request, make this premature distribution into his trust fund, but he did anyway. This is important to remember later in the story.
In a few days, the younger son packed his bags and hit the road without so much as a “see you later.” Off he went into his exciting adventure. Finally, he was out from under the oppressive authority of the house. He was so intoxicated with this freedom that it didn’t take him long to get really intoxicated. And more. He was living in the fast lane, rolling the high life, until, that is, his money ran out. He wondered, “How in the world could I have gone through all that money so fast?” When you’re not keeping track and spending like there is no tomorrow, it doesn’t take long.
So he takes a minimum wage job down at the animal shelter cleaning out the cages. He slept in the park and cleaned up over at the bus station. No one would hire him for anything better because he looked such a sight. And slowly, slowly he lost hope until he became like one of the trapped animals in the cages he cleaned.
One day, as he eyed the pet food in one of the feeding bowls he almost reached in and took a piece. At that moment, in the reaching, as he knew that he was starting to become an animal, he had a revelation. And he said to himself, “Here I am, a stranger with no one to love or to love me, starving and working like a slave. And if I’m going to be a servant, I might as well do it for the people I love. I’ll go back and beg for mercy, and maybe I can live out in the bunk house with the rest of the ranch hands.”
To say that this young man bottomed out would be so trite. He did, of course, but more than that, he found something at the bottom and that something was hope. And his hope had to do with being some place other than where he was at the moment. So often, when we are at the limits of our ability to cope, discouraged, living a life we never could have imagined for ourselves, it is hope that keeps us alive. And in the center of hope is always God.
In the movie, Crazy Heart, the down-and-out, country musician Bad Blake (played by academy-award-winner Jeff Bridges) has made his way to the proverbial pigpen. After drowning in Jack Daniels and having squandered a real chance at love, he is left unconscious on his bathroom floor, covered in his own filth. In a flash of apprehension, he reaches through the ether and calls a friend and asks for help. In the words of the theme song, “The Weary Kind:” “Somehow this don’t feel like home anymore … pick up crazy heart and give it one more try.”
That’s the moment of grace, and I don’t mean only at the bottom of an addiction cycle. That’s the moment of grace whenever the road stops, breaks, and a new way opens in its place. It is the grace reflected at every place where the road stops. It is the grace reflected in the song, “God bless the broken road.” Roads get broken so new ones can get born and God is in the breaking, and God is in the birthing.
I want to suggest that the story of the prodigal son is more than a story about a good boy gone bad and returning to where he should have never left in the first place. I want to suggest that this story is epic in its scope. This is the story of the entire spiritual quest, a quest that demands us to follow, even into places of shadows and lostness in order to get where we ultimately need to go. And that quest requires discarding and surrendering in order to be open enough to find the next thing.
These Necessary Losses, as Judith Viorst puts it, include jettisoning some of the concepts and understandings of God that we have accumulated along the way. One day, we realize that our concept of God is way too small, or too distant, or too contrived, or too much a projection of head and not our heart, or just some self-serving tribal God who protects my group, and our concept of God breaks. It breaks, in part, so that we can be taken to a deeper understanding, a fresher more profound understanding of God that the Spirit takes us to.
As the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote:
And this is true, no <one> can live
who does not bury God in a deep grave
and then raise up the skeleton again …
who does not break and make his final faith.
(From “No Man Believes,” The Poems of Dylan Thomas,
New Directions, 1952, p. 61.)
Ultimately, the story of the prodigal is that of making and breaking, breaking and making, and the necessary risky losses, the deaths that are required again and again to help us find and practice the faith.
William Blake: “If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.” That is, if we were foolish long enough, it would give way to wisdom. The spiritual journey is about wearing out roads. We wear out the way we are going until it doesn’t work anymore. When it wears out, then there is hope for a new way.
Imagine all the things that must be worn out on the way to a greater truth or deeper wisdom: misguided passions, misplaced loyalty, self-serving ego, the illusion of happiness as presented by the culture. “You know… if you would only buy this, you would be happy.” “If you could only look this way, you would feel good about yourself.” “If you could only live there, or there, you will have arrived.” It is the illusions that the culture presents. And when we get in those illusions, they want to take us captive. They want to take us, keep us, and hold us until they don’t work anymore. Then we realize our path is broken, and we have no choice but to strike off on a different one. We become lost in these things, and when taken to their ends, these things wear out. And that is where the work of the Spirit is most conspicuous.
And so we must move beyond the level of simple moralism to hear the deeper truths of this story of the prodigal. It is not primarily a cautionary tale to warn us about the consequences of immoral living, though that is there, too. It’s not enough just to say that the younger brother took the wrong path and the older brother took the right one. Soon enough we find that the older brother, who never left home, carried the wrong state of heart all along.
Was the older brother’s problem that he never departed on risky spiritual journeys, and thereby sacrificed his soul to the god of the safe, conventional, and respectable? Did he secretly regret it and resent it every day, secretly envying his younger, irresponsible brother? In fact, did he ever take any path that wore out so that he could discover the new grace? Did he ever awaken to a strike of grace, even once, as he sat in his corporate office, or baked the casserole in the kitchen, or lived out the life everybody else thought he should? Who is really the one who has been starving to death? The one in the pigpen or the one who never left?
No, it is not simply a story about the good one and the bad one, the right way and the wrong way. It is a story about choosing and following a way at all, whatever it takes, and if we will, or if we will remain frozen in our spiritual green zone, listening the explosions in the distance where we never dared go.
We are both, of course, both brothers. We are the ones who go for the wrong reasons but at least do go, at least dare to find what doesn’t work and put it all on the line. We are also the one frozen in the ice block of fear and living everyone else’s life for them. We are both, and we feel the tension of each and love for each, much like the father loves them both. These two live inside of us.
Some have said that this parable of Jesus is better named, “The Waiting Father,” because it is the father, not the sons, who rings the bell of grace in all places. For the son, whose broken road has come to an end and staggers home on broken feet, there is a robe on his shoulders, a ring for his finger, and sandals for his bruised feet. For the son who stayed behind, whose own path was broken by standing still, who fears he is loved less, there comes a powerful word that he has always been loved, regardless. The father loves both sons even as the father loves both of the sons who live in us, pushing and pulling against one another as they do.
The path that we walk is the path that must be taken until it wears itself out and delivers us to a new place of Spirit, a new land of trust, humility, openness, and vast confidence. This is the path we must walk, the great spiritual path wherever our feet are walking. Each one must see through the illusions that take us to the pigpens, the false claims that lure us away from life and love, because in the end, as we discover, the pigpens can’t deliver. You know it when you spend time there. And in the hunger, in the sense that this is no longer home, we long to find another one. What helps us come to ourselves is a voice on the other side of being lost. It is a voice we somehow recognize, as though we have heard it before, as though in a dream, and it speaks again, wherever our feet are walking.
If God is always everywhere, then God is with us always now, always here. And when we awaken to that, to the always–everywhere presence of God, it seems as though we have pulled into the station after a long journey, that the gate is opening wide at the end of the lane that leads to the home of peace, and we hear the sound of a voice saying, “This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And then, they had a party that the neighbors are still talking about.
Thanks be to God… Amen.
Benediction
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
