Intro to Theme – Read “Where the Wild Things Are”  (Slideshow)

Intro to reading Our New Testament lesson is from Luke. It is the story of the Prodigal Son,  It is probably the best known of all the parables told by Jesus.    I didn’t know what  “prodigal” meant until I looked it up. (anyone know?)  It means reckless extravagance.  As we hear this story,  it sounds the younger son is prodigal with his money and the father is prodigal with his love.   Let us listen for this word of Grace.  Read.   ///

In  “Where the Wild things are”  Max wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.   As he makes this discovery about himself  – everything changes for him.  He had swung through the vines, he had stomped at the moon, he had been as free as free could be but he discovered that kind of freedom wasn’t what he really wanted after all.  He wanted to be loved, and he knew where that love was to be found.   His journey to a far country concludes as he comes to discover  a deeper sense of himself and he is turned around within and he turns around literally to sail back home and find what he wanted most of all. 

The parallels to the story in scripture today are many and I’ll let you fill in all the other similarities as you like.  But I want to look at this amazing parable that Jesus tells.  Jesus certainly knew what he was doing as he taught in parables, because for 2000 years we have not exhausted the meaning and depth in these seemingly simple stories.   Every family can see something of themselves in it I believe.  This week the facet of the story that struck me was the phrase “he came to himself”  and all the inner changes that meant.  

Jesus paints a remarkable word picture with his parable.  It captures a moment that is filled with grace.  Although Jesus is using this scene to show us what God is like, in it we see a very  human situation.  We don’t have to glance very long to figure out there are dysfunctional family members here.   Jesus starts this story saying “there was a father who had two sons”.  The first son says “Dad, drop dead, or at least give me my share of what’s coming to me after you do die, so I can get going with my life.  I’ve got places to go, people to see, wild oats to sow.”  It is an amazing and brazen request.  I don’t think that would go over too well in many families at all.  What is even more amazing is that the father says OK.  I accept your rejection of me. I love you.  I will let you go with everything in the world that I have to give you.  Here, take it.  Farewell my son.  How many earthly Dads would do that?  Jesus is pointing to how God is willing to endure that.  

The younger son goes and we know what happens then.  When asked about the story a youngster said (unknowingly I hope) that “he went to town and spent half his money on women and wine.  He wasted the rest.”  This son got as far away as possible from everything that was his former life.  For a time it seemed great, then things really got desperate.  The money ran out, food was scarce and now even the pig slop looked good.  In the story it says “he came to himself”, and sought to come home.  We don’t know what changed within him, how deep his conversion was, or just how sincere he was going to be with his apology.  But we know he headed back. 

He went to start some kind of new relationship with someone he had treated as good as dead.  He did not expect it to be the same, he did not hope for what used to be – for it could never be that again.  By turning around he sought to start something over.  He had an idea of what it might be, he hoped he could be a laborer on the farm he already knew.  In our glimpse we see he is welcomed back, and a grand party thrown.  He is in the door – but will it work out, will it last?  We do know this picture would not have happened at all if the younger son had not turned around looking for something new. 

We have touched on repentance.  The question is always “what does it mean to repent?”  How do you know it when you see it or feel it?  We speak of repentance as being a turning around, the younger son literally did this.  He turned around and went now in the right direction, toward love that was willing to set him free to choose.  For him, repentance was to say “father” again.  Repentance would be to claim his role as a son in the family, and acknowledge his part in breaking things apart. 

For him, the new direction was to know that he was loved first, and figuring out how to live knowing that he was still just as free as before.  He had been lost, and he could be lost again.  This is just the beginning of the new direction.  If things were going to change, then things would have to change.  He will have to change.  It might be all too easy to go back to thinking and acting like he did before.  We don’t know what is next.  We know what is, and he is loved.  The father’s anticipation of his return and his generous actions assure this.  The father had been hoping and longing the younger son might return, that something would change.  One day it does.  We see the father running to greet his son.  Welcoming him home without question as to where he’s been, without scolding or punishment or penitence.  The love comes first.  It has always been there, and now the father can hold the one who was lost and gone.  

The older bother, was in need of repentance as well.  He was lost in different way.  He was the one who tried to do everything right and never learned to party.  He too was lost.  Lost thinking that the father’s love should be conditional, with strings attached, only after certain conditions were met.  The older one would dutifully do what needed to be done to keep things going.  But resent doing it.  The relations between himself and younger brother were obviously strained.  Things were strained between older son and his father as well.  The way that Dad was treating younger son before and after his return drove him nuts.  The older one could not make sense of breaking the rules for this no good brother of his.  To repent for him, would be to call his brother, brother once again.  And finding a way to sit a table of celebration with him.  At the end of this story he is not there yet, he can only call him his father’s son.  He is standing outside and just watching it all.  To repent, he would have to deal with a Dad who could love like that.  One who could love that no good brother, one who loved him just as much.  

Jesus paints a picture.  The loving parent goes out to meet the younger one on the road offering a chance to come home.  He goes to the older one to say come in.  You are home as well.   The offer is for each one.  It is for us.  It is more than a call to come, it is a call to conversion.  A casting off of snugness, of false righteousness, it is a setting aside of prejudice so that something can begin anew..  Each of the brothers has the invitation to change.   The picture of what happens next is up to us.  We see in this instant an entirely different way of being God’s family that is appealing and at the same time appalling to common sense understandings. Most likely we can see ourselves as one of the two brothers, perhaps the younger, having lived a little harder than we’d like to have, looking back.  Or as the older brother feeling that life has somehow shorted us out of some of the joy we had coming for the faithful work we have done.  There is a party going on.  Things can’t be like that?  Can they?

We don’t know if the younger brother has changed for good, we don’t know if the older brother ever lightened up and joined the party.  But every time someone comes back home, truly tries to draw closer to God.  God celebrates.  As we hear this story again, check your own thinking do you say, “yes let the prodigal return home”, but to bread and water, not a fatted calf.  In sack clothe, not a new robe, in tears but not merriment.  We do want people to come back, but first don’t we want them to feel pretty bad and come home with the air out of their balloons? Some say the image of the feasting and party cancels the seriousness of sin, and repentance.

There are some wonderful, frustrating tensions in this story, we don’t really know how it ends.  We don’t know whether the older brother joins in the party.  We don’t know what the younger brother does after the party.  Grace seems to supersede justice and we are left to struggle with what that means.   But as we come to ourselves, and seek to find that place where we are loved by someone best of all, we come home to find God’s love already waiting and a supper that is still hot.  Amen.