Dear Hate - Love Is Gonna Conquer All 4/21/19 Easter C

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Dear Hate - Love is Gonna Conquer All

April 21, 2019     EASTER C

On Maundy Thursday evening, I ended my meditation with a reference to this country song Dear Hate, sung by Vince Gill and Maren Morris.  Its a good song for Holy Week - Maundy Thursday and Good Friday - and the promise of Easter.  For this Easter day, it connects the hate and fear that led to Jesus’ execution, to the love in Jesus’ actions, fulfilled in God unexpectedly raising him to new life.  In our current world climate of hate, division, terrorism and polemic, we might wonder about where love is, where the resurrection power is.  The song  captures some of this in its words ---

Dear hate - I saw you on the news today Like a shock that takes my breath away.  You fall like rain, cover us in drops of pain - I’m afraid that we might drown….You could poison any mind - just look at meine...  Don’t know how this world keeps spinning round and round….  But even on our darkest nights, the world keeps spinning round. ... I hate to tell you- love’s gonna conquer all.

The last chorus is addressed to Dear Love,which we experience as mixed in - not absent - 

Dear love -  You were there in the garden when I ran from your voice.  I hear you every morning through the chaos and the noise.  You still whisper down through history and echo through these halls, And tell me love’s gonna conquer all, gonna conquer all. 

My friends, Easter is the celebration that God’s Love Conquers All.  Love conquers hate, love conquers fear, love conquers injustices, love conquers all.  Hate could not kill God’s love for us and for the world.  Hate cannot kill God’s Life.  According to the apostle Paul, in Jesus’ death and resurrection, death is swallowed up in victory.  Jesus, who never uttered a word to counter the violence and hate thrown at him, who was executed by both religious and civil leadership for speaking God’s loving word to people, bore that hate to the death --- and God raised him up again, a new creation, for eternal time. 

Hate is a terrible thing --- anti-life, anti-compassion, anti-justice, anti-good of people.  Hate denies the right to exist to that which is hated; hate denies flourishing for any people or idea which is hated; hate seeks to destroy, and not to lift up, or to renew life, or to welcome all things and people in God’s name. 

God’s love and compassion, however, are more than adequate and powerful to overcome the hate in the world.  Jesus’ resurrection proves it; God’s triumph denies the power of hate and brings new life into being, recreating a new kind of resurrected Life.  Love conquers all.. 

Let’s look a little closer on just what Jesus did, what we celebrate at this Easter day.  Jesus did  NOT react or respond to hate as we humans do. 

Our human response to being hated is, unfortunately, to hate back. If we are vilified, how quickly we begin to vilify back.  If we are scorned, how easy it is to send scorn back.  If someone does us violence, this urge to do violence back to them grows in our very veins.  If hate threatens or denies my very existence and worth, then it feels like the right defense is that old, “eye for an eye,  a tooth for a tooth,”  kind of thing.  I’ll do unto them what they did unto me.  Their use of violence justifies my use of violence back. Getting angry back is easy, and feels natural. Someone tries to put you down because of your weight - or skin color - or religion - or your favored political leader - make them of no account by vilifying them back.  Someone in church says God is rejecting you because of your theology, talk louder about God putting THEM down because of all these other theological errors THEY are making.  Quote verses to prove your point, even out of context, and you sound more holy and more on God’s side.  Someone cuts you off in traffic, tell them they’re a jerk with a hand gesture.  Or, like I saw once in Chicago, turn your car around and chase them down the street.  Someone leaves their bright lights on too long or forgets to turn them off, shine your brights back at them or try and scare them.    Your former spouse tries to hide money from you to not have to do their fair share, sic your lawyer on them and try to distract them with a diversion.  Do unto others BEFORE they do unto you. He who yells the loudest wins.

Friends, that’s is not what Jesus did - Jesus did not return hate for hate.  Nothing that’s recorded of Jesus’ actions and words on those last days shows scorn, hate, anger or violence.  Instead, Jesus heals a soldier who came to take him and got his ear cut off by a disciple.  Put the sword away, Jesus says, and goes with the soldiers.  He only speaks to Pontius Pilate with words about the truth of why he came.  He asks God to forgive those executing him, and commends his mother to the care of his disciple John.  He responds to the thief next to him that he will be in paradise that very day. 

Hate is not the way of Jesus, even hate of those accusing, persecuting and executing him,.  Rather, the way of Jesus is compassion - Jesus knows and understands what terrors and fears and hatreds can make people do.  He takes what is done to him without retaliation, and gives back understanding and compassion.  That is how love swallows up hate.  That is how love conquers all. 

Friends, this is the gospel of Easter, and the victory of Easter. If we are followers of Jesus the Christ, this is our model for living.  Hate doesn’t drive out hate, Martin Luther King Jr said - only love drives out hate.  Only deep, sacrificial, compassion can conquer hate.

This model of compassion, sometimes called the path of non-violence, or the path of peace, takes a strong spirituality, and a sure trust in God.  Its not easy to come to this kind of sacrificial love. 

We know how to defeat hate,  In a simple example, remember how we teach our children. When my children were young, they’d get mad at me for something like, oh, saying “Remember to tie your shoes!” or something mild like that, but they would feel like it threatened their autonomy.  I distinctly remember each one of them saying, at one point, “I hate you!”  But because I loved them like crazy and understood about kids’ immaturity and how to deal with their strong feelings, I was able to say, “I hear how mad you are right now,” and not haul off and slap them or yell at them, or something reactive.  I knew they were speaking out of their young years, their frustration, they were overwhelmed by their emotions, which were not mature at all yet.  So I could respond in my compassion and understanding, and not just react in verbal or physical violence myself. 

Yet even with our own children, that takes a certain maturity from us as parents - as we can see when some parents DO react to children like they, the parents, were the same age, and hit out.  Maturity realizes its not really about me, but about their immaturity.  Part of my parental job is to model how to deal with feelings, and to teach about appropriate behaviors. 

But its often a way more difficult thing to do with other people, whose words may pierce us, and deeply wound us.  Staying in that space of understanding and compassion is really, really hard - and often we can’t.  What Jesus did while he was attacked on so many levels, was overwhelmingly difficult.  We might remember that when he prayed in the garden just before it all happened, he sweat blood.

We have a high calling, this call to follow Jesus, this call to help people be reconciled with God, this call to show ourselves as Christ-followers by the way we love. Yet this is what we are called to do as we learn from Jesus, and its how we show we are his followers. Sometimes we do a better job than other times.  Sometimes our differences are difficult to deal with, and our intentions to be understanding and compassionate kind of collapse.  Unfortunately, sometimes we even forget that we want to be understanding and compassionate, and fall into the way of worldly fights.  Sometimes even though we manage to curb our tongues, the anger and hate in our hearts is still there.  Our hearts are not yet fully transformed into the image of Christ. 

I hope that by pondering how our fears, angers and hates can hook us into ugly behaviors, we can more deeply appreciate just what Jesus did, and how hate was therefore defeated, conquered and made nothing. Love casts out hate. That Jesus stayed true to his call, that he stayed in trust with God, and that he could stay in compassions and love even in the most severe testing, is why God could raise him up in a new, resurrected life, the first of a new kind of person.  And this is the life Jesus calls us to share in, learn to walk in, to follow him, and be transformed into this new model for humanity. 

In one way, the call to respond to God’s love is easy - God’s love affirms us, welcomes us, forgives us, restores us, tells us we are worthy, tells us we can be made new. We bask in it, we are drawn to it, we are grateful for it.  However, in another way, this call to follow Jesus in love is a high ideal, and takes all our life to work out. Following Jesus leads to our own secret and dark places we’d rather not see.  Following Jesus leads us to our own death to the old ways of living in order to be born into Jesus’ new ways.  In this way we die to our small s - self, and find our new capital S - Self in Christ. 

We say it at baptisms, when we say we die with Christ, and are raised in CHRIST to new life. We turn from evil and hatred and all the things that kill the spirit, and are made alive again to be transformed into the image of Christ.  We acknowledge the trust of this even though we have no idea how difficult it will be to fulfill.  In a sense, we are in that process as long as we live, and we say at our services of Witness to the Resurrection (funerals) that our baptism is now complete in death, because we are with God.

Friends, this Easter, let us strengthen our desire to follow our risen Christ, and learn from him the ways of love that can conquer hate, the ways of compassion that can conquer our fears and angers.  Our country and our world needs Christ followers who strive to respond to hate with compassion and understanding, people who sacrificially know the power of love to bring new life, resurrection life.  Walking in the steps of the One raised to new life, may we seek to have our lives be transformed, may we determine in our hearts to do the difficult work of learning non-violence and understanding and compassion, and living it in the world.  AMEN.

The Loss Before the Life 4/7/19 Lent 5C

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

The Loss Before the Life

4/7/19       Lent 5C

            This may seem like this is a better sermon title for closer to Holy Week, a week from now.  However, this is my chance, because next week we will remember how Jesus was greeted that last time he came to Jerusalem, riding on a prancing white charger and surrounded by soldiers - wait a minute, that's what kings and Caesars did  - Jesus rode a poor little donkey and people threw down their coats and called him a king.... And our choir, augmented with some guest musicians, will move us from that glory to the events later in Holy Week.  To get the full drama of the end of Lent and Holy Week, may I remind you all of the Maundy Thursday service that we are hosting in our Fellowship Hall, a somber service that precedes the great mystery and triumph of Easter.

Lent and Holy Week confront us with one of the obvious truths of our faith, as well as among the most difficult to understand truths of our faith -- that before the glorious resurrection and victory of God that we all desire and anticipate with joy, there has to come a death.  Duh!  There has to be a death before there's a resurrection!  The texts for this week in Lent carry reminders of this: Isaiah tells us to not consider the things of the past, because God will do a new thing. We have to let go, say goodbye to the past in order to embrace the new thing God is doing.   In Philippians, the apostle writes that he regards all his former glories as garbage, compared to the delight of know Jesus Christ.  He forgets what lies behind as he presses towards the goal of life in God.  The Psalm text for today speaks of those who go out weeping even as they carry their seeds for planting, but return in joy with full sheaves of grain.  And the gospel text tells how Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha, uses funeral oils to anoint the feet of Jesus, speaking of his coming death.  They are sober texts.

I was in a church once where the choir leader's programs  never included a meditative piece,  a slow piece or a minor key.  I joked that his concerts were big, bigger and biggest - starting from the first song, it got louder and fancier until a crashing finale.  Sometimes the Christian faith is presented like that - joy, bigger joy and biggest joy. Yet the profound understanding of Christian faith, the understanding that is so important that its is built into the very nature of creation, is that there has to be loss, death, or descent into darkness, before the miracle of a new creation, a new life, a resurrected life, comes about.  Christianity does not overlook the pain and loss of living; in fact, that very pain and loss, that painful realization of confusion and chaos, is a necessary precursor to the new things that God is doing.

            I have to say that loss and death and the descent into confusion are not my favorite parts of living. Pruning, cutting back, letting go - these are not easy things to do or endure.  In fact, God usually has to force them on me, because I sure don’t choose them.  I’d rather just keep adding happy things, and not have any pain.  So would we all.  Its easy to say “God is certainly with us!” when good things happen. Its not so easy to remember to say “God is certainly with us!” when money is getting tighter, work is tenuous, friends move away, and family is separated by death or by miles. 

            Its not so easy to say “God is surely with us!” in our church life when numbers are dropping, giving is down, attendance is not like it was 20 years ago, ages are rising, and the outlook is discouraging.  Its not a wonderful moment in life when we hear a verdict from the doctors that brings our mortality into view. During those long years between birth and death, we can ignore the fact that humans are created beings with a start date and an end date, and none of us get out of here alive.  Certain milestones and events remind us and may make us anxious. I had a rough time anticipating turning 65 and having to sign up for Medicare, for example.  It was a hard birthday. 

Everything created, however, has its life cycle - Nations rise and fall.  Leaders have a heyday and then pass.  Discoveries are made and then surpassed, and sometimes even proved wrong.  Records set in the Olympics become targets to break in the next generation.  Smart ball players know they have but a few years of their top earning power: as they gain in wisdom about the game, they lose in physical prowess. Even the long-lived redwood trees eventually die, just as surely as the spring daffodils.  The Bible puts it that the grass rises up in the morning and is cut down - and all flesh is as grass. 

In the great salvation story of Christianity, Jesus comes to inaugurate the Kindom of God, which he proclaims loudly and clearly, where the standards of heaven are brought to confront the standards of earth.  And earth’s people rise up to kill him and his vision of the kindom - the realm of Christ is too different, too far from how we play the game.  Jesus must die.  And yet,... yet,... at the same time, in a creative move by God,  this death becomes the very doorway for God to recreate life, to show the power of new life, and call folks like us to be born anew, born into this realm of new life, and live out the realm of God while we’re still alive here.  Life wins.  Love wins. 

But death and loss are the pathway. 

We see this in our own lives - we have to say goodbye to our former house when we move to the new one.  We have to grieve a pastor leaving before we welcome the new pastor.  Our children graduate and leave home to make their own places - yet an adult relationship with them comes next.  As we grow up, we put away the cute stuffed animals and Barbie dolls, and replaced them with teenage and adult interests.  When my own children were dealing with the complexities of relationships and love, I told them to be sure they let go of the old love before taking up with the new love.  Good closures make for clean new beginnings.  The trapeze we’re swinging on has to be let go as we reach for the next trapeze.  Again, the apostle Paul talked about how a seed has to fall into the ground and die so that the power of new life can be unleashed in new growth.  Remember the seed in the little paper cup….  Seeds have to swell, warm and split, - no more seed - it explodes itself into the roots and stems and potential plant. 

We see it in our universe - stars burn bright for billions of years until their material is gone, and gravity pulls the matter inward as a dark star, which explodes and throws the elements and atoms and molecules of life out into the space to take new forms as planets and eventually plant and animal life. 

Women’s and men’s lives go through stages of change, too. We women lose our independent maiden status when we marry and become mothers - and when our ability to be mothers passes, we become wise women - the old generations called us crones.  Maiden, mother and crone.  Although I looked forward with anticipation to marriage and family, I also grieved the loss of the time when I could do what I wanted without really thinking of someone else and setting myself aside for the needs of children. When they left home it was another loss of the identity that motivated me for 20+ years, until I found again who I was as an older single again. Daniel Levinson, is his book Seasons of a Man’s Life, explores the changes for men as decades pass. 

The daily devotions I receive from F. Richard Rohr have been, this week, about how death can be a master teacher for us, to let go of the lesser things and find our center in the larger reality of God.  To be present to today, the good as well as the difficult, to not dwell on past events, to let go of attachments that hold us back, as Paul writes about laying aside the unneeded in this Christian race.  Use the reality of death, he suggests, to ask ourselves, “How should we then live?”

There is gain in these ponderings, both for us as individuals, and also for us as a church.  Indiantown Pres is at a turning point, and it seems to me we all know it, as different ones of you have discussed it with me. The knowledge of this tipping point is underneath the decision to call a new pastor, even though it means dipping into the savings of our forebears - we realize that the rainy day they saved for is here.  We need to do something to move into our future. 

Its difficult to think about, isn’t it?  Its hard to admit it, and face it.  Its easier to remember the past years of full parking lot and full pews and large Sunday Church School. We grieve the passing of those years, when living in this agricultural region was different, too. Change has happened, and wishing it hadn’t is not a viable strategy.  And talking wishfully about those days coming back somehow is a pipe dream. 

So what do we do? 

As your Interim Pastor, or as we are being called now, Transitional Pastors, part of my job is to assist this congregation to assess the current realities, and decide how to move forward.  To be open to changes, doing things differently, because the setting here has changed.  No, we’re not throwing out Jesus and church; no, we’re not trashing traditions with random changes.  Our task is to look again at what living the faith calls from us, to look again at what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ, to reconsider what our mission is from God in large terms and then in more local terms.  Its not so much an ending as it is the cusp of a new thing God wants to do.  God is always creating new life, and we have the opportunity to join in that creativity and help get where the Holy Spirit wants to go.

How we are the church is not written in stone. Early gatherings met in houses and in caves.  They gathered around meals, they cared for the needy among themselves.  They sent money to other gatherings that were having trouble.  They supported the mission outreach of Paul and others.  Through the decades of church, there have been small chapels, meetings under trees, and glorious cathedrals.  Sometimes people have gathered to live together in cloisters and shared gifts with the local towns. Pastors have been married and unmarried.  Churches have been integral to communities and out on the outskirts of communities.  Because the followers of Christ have sought ways to live into their calling despite the changes of time and culture.  And we will do it again and again until Christ returns on earth.  The truths of our faith are too compelling to be set aside and forgotten.  And our God is a creative and life-giving God who is always present and always working. 

Indiantown Pres is not yet on its last legs.  We have resources and we have people, and we have a connection to other churches in our region through our Presbytery.  What we need is to seek a vision and a mission for what God is calling us to do in the future - a new vision, laying aside what is past, and pushing for our leg of this relay race of the church.  What we need is to let go of how things were done in the past, and be open to how to fulfill our calling now.  God, as Isaiah reminded the people, made a way in the desert; God made a way  in the sea; God made a way in the wilderness and made rivers in the desert to give us to drink.  God continues to make a way today.  AMEN.

Lost and Found or Who's Lost? 3/31/19 Lent 4C

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Lost and Found   OR Just Who Is Lost?

3/31/2019        Lent 4C    Luke 15

When I was in junior high Sunday School, this girl started attending by herself, no parents with her - she was kind of different from us, wore dresses we wouldn’t wear, and she didn’t know that you were supposed to brush your hair out after letting it dry in pin curls - her hair looked like she just took the bobby pins out and left it at that.  I didn’t want her to sit next to me, although in my heart I knew she was probably someone God loved, and probably needed the support of us at church.  But she was just too different for my comfort.  So I didn’t make the effort I wish I did. She didn’t know our songs, she wasn’t there with her family, her voice was louder, she didn’t know the culture there at Sunday School.  I felt guilty about it, but not guilty enough to put myself out for her.  I was partly afraid the other kids would think I was weird, too.

Another time, my mom went with me to a musical put on by the high school, where the lead young man had this absolutely gorgeous voice to swoon for, even for my mom.  I clearly remember my mom exclaiming, “Oh, if only God would save him, what a great witness he could make with that voice!”  We were very fundamentalist Baptist, of course, and no other church folks but us were really saved, according to us.  I knew what mom meant, but as I was teenager, I had to be critical of her…so I argued with her that it was wonderful when God saved people even with bad voices… I knew quite a few odd Christians by then, different backgrounds, different ways of acting - some with rather tough childhoods, different from mine.  I welcomed them, although I had trouble being gracious with my mom…  I looked down on her for wanting this guy saved just because he had a nice voice. 

That’s all just so human, isn’t it?  I didn’t read the 2 Corinthians text for today, as the Luke story was rather long.  But the 2 Cor text starts out, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view;...” because we are all new creations in Christ.  And we are all in Christ.  The ‘human point of view’ doesn’t make it when we are in the kindom of God.

Making distinctions, for example "like and not alike," starts in the early grades in school - we learn to notice differences - its part of learning to think, to see where things diverge, to see what fits together.  We’ll need that ability to discriminate when we get to higher level thinking.  Intelligence tests including the later SATs and ACTS for college include sections about what words fit together, and which word isn’t connected - its testing vocabulary as well as the ability to see connections. Its important in our faith lives, too, to judge what God would guide us to do or not do, how certain principles of faith are applied to different situations. 

Yet one place a larger principle is in place  - if we are in the realm of God, its important to know that the love of God sees people as people - people for whom Christ came and died and was raised.  God does not see according to a 'human point of view,' and when we are of God, we see that way, too. .  Not that we don’t remark differences - we notice, of course, who dresses like money and who doesn’t; who is of European ancestry and who is of African… or Jewish, or Arab, or Korean, or Mexican, and so on.  We notice who is attractive and who isn’t; we notice who smells clean and who doesn’t.  We notice who smokes, who is married to whom, who one dates, what one’s career is. We notice what accents people have, whether they wear a hijab, whether they buy beer, whether they celebrate the same holidays as we do, whether they go to church - or what church.

Yet we see the differences without  discriminating - we do NOT use this human ability to see outer differences for keeping people out.  There’s a larger principle in operation here - all are loved by God and sought by God, and the angels rejoice when one who has been “lost” turns to Christ.  In considering who God loves, all people count. Even the ones we fear; even the ones we hate; even the ones we disagree with; even the ones we’d rather not sit by us; even the ones who worship differently.  These distinctions disappear in knowing who God loves, and who Christ died for.  Because God so loved the WORLD, and Christ desires that ALL come into the kindom and be made whole. 

This whole chapter of Luke has Jesus telling stories of lost things that are sought and found, which makes the angels rejoice.  The first story was the shepherd seeking and finding the sheep that either wandered off or fell somewhere - anyway, it wasn’t there in the pen at nightfall.  The next story is about how a woman scoured her house to find a valuable coin that fell off or fell out of where she kept them.  She’s so happy that she throws a party that probably cost a good bit of that coin’s value itself!  And, Jesus adds, just so do the angels rejoice over one who is found by God, or comes to God, or returns to God.

This chapter setting is given in the first verse:  “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 the context of these stories is how bent out of shape people got because Jesus welcomed people who, seen from a 'human point of view,' didn’t make the grade socially.  He even ate with them, like they were okay folks, and important enough to be noticed.  This bothered folks who were making those distinctions to discriminate between people, deciding who was okay and who was not. 

The longer story we call the Prodigal Son is told as the third of three stories with the same context.  Jesus hooks us because the story of a good son and a bad son is so human - even these days, its often a theme in a movie - almost a stereotype. We project our own values on them - to me, the good son pleases his parents, makes the accepted choices, chooses a good career.  He probably colored inside the lines, was quiet in the lunchroom, made good grades and joined the right clubs.  And he got a lot of kudos for that, the praise and recognition of the adults.  He probably had a good voice and used it in the church choir.  He was neat and clean, and did the right things. Held the right opinions.  Anyone would be proud of such a child!  

The bad son in this story - I picture him as the class cut-up, mediocre grades, doesn’t try hard except at having fun, cuts class, gets drunk or high at parties, stays out too late, maybe even has gotten in trouble with the police a few times. If he sings, he sings raunchy songs when he’s under the influence. His mom and dad worry about what kind of person he’s going to turn out to be, as he seems to flaunt them at every chance he gets.  We can describe the stereotypes with no problem.

Now my dad loved this story - not that he was a bad son, but he picked up some bad habits in the Navy during WW2, even though he was a good sailor, followed the rules, and even sent $$ home to his mom for the rest of the family.  But he considered himself a sinner, and loved the picture of the Dad running out to greet him in total forgiveness and welcome.  It IS a beautiful picture of restoration and reinstatement of one who removed himself or herself from the conventional fold, had some wild years, one who has not been pleasing but has never been given up on, never forgotten.  In a way, this is a picture of all of us who have come to faith in God - we have acknowledged our distance from God, or to use a Bible word, our sinfulness.  We have realized our need for God, and God has forgiven us, welcomed us and restored us.  And still forgives us when we fall again, as we continue to do, being imperfect as we are.  So we are all the prodigal.

Somewhere in our story with God, however, we turn into the one who has been here longer, pictured by the older brother. WE have done right, WE have followed the rules, WE have adapted to the church culture, WE have curtailed our partying, WE have not thrown away money, WE have not run after loose men or women, WE have never had to feed pigs to live (except maybe those who have been farmers!).  HE could have done it too, HE could have made himself behave right - HE got to do all the bad stuff and still get away with it, get his inheritance, have Dad pleased - even more pleased than he’s been with ME, who has been here being good all these years!!!  NOT FAIR!!!

Now I’m an elder sister, and I did my best to do everything right and please everybody around me.  I didn’t scatter any wild oats or run with wild boys - I practiced my piano and never sassed back. I did manage to scare my parents, though, by almost being fanatical about religion...And I could argue real well.  My sister was more normal, mostly good most of the time - we didn’t have a bad child in our family.  I admit I had some envy of folks who had gotten in trouble earlier in life, because they had such great testimonies about coming back to God and giving up their debauchery.  My testimony was pretty boring - I’d always been in church, always loved God and always tried to do my best and obey my parents.  Sometimes I wished I’d had those experiences, kind of….tried some of those things - as long as there had been no consequences, of course.  So I understood the elder brother a bit - my sister and I were as jealous of each other as other siblings are - getting our feelings hurt over who got the most praise, who got the best grades, who got the biggest piece of cake, who mom and dad seemed to like the best.  

As I grew older and wiser, though, I learned that there's a down side to being the adaptive child - my behavior was almost totally oriented to outward praise and outward authorities - I had a difficult time knowing what I wanted to do, because I was not used to asking what it was I wanted for my life.  Outer authorities have had power over me for a long time; my behaviors only pleased me because they won me favor, not because I valued those things in myself.  I was proud of how disciplined I was - it made me feel superior - it wasn’t all just for love of God.  Like that older bro, it never occurred to me to throw parties for myself, or ask myself what I wanted, or celebrate and enjoy being with God.   My view of God was that of a score-keeper of wrong decisions versus right decisions, of when I sinned and when I resisted; and who only loved me when I was good - of course God loved me when I was bad, too, but would punish me until I was good again.  That God would kill a fatted calf for me in joy with my presence, or give me extravagant gifts - that was not my inner experience of God.  I’d have stood outside with that elder bro while the younger, bad son was feted. 

******

You notice that Jesus doesn’t resolve this story about the elder son, nor show a healing of the elder son towards his father, nor his brother.  (And there’s no mom in the story, which is weird, although at least there was a female presence in that story of that woman scouring her house for the lost coin.)  But Jesus  leaves us to work things out for ourselves, those of us who resent and resist the welcome of those we’ve deemed ineligible and unworthy.  God rejoices - how about us? God welcomes - what about us?

Jesus is obviously telling those folks who criticized him for eating with tax collectors and sinners, that they are the elder brothers in this story - like him, they are standing outside the party and totally upset that those misbehaving sinners were welcomed.  Even though dad comes out to urge him to come in, he can’t do it - his judgmentalism is too great, his perceptions of the sins of his brother are skewed, his view that he has earned his own righteousness is wrong, and his desire is to see the brother ‘get his’ has overridden his joy that the youngster is returned.  He does not rejoice like the angels. 

Now I don’t particularly like the Prodigal son - I don’t think his repentance is sincere - it sounds calculated to me, like a con, to pull the wool over old dad’s eyes and get back in favor,  looking out for #1.  He sounds rehearsed and not authentic to me.  Of course that’s my projection on him - once a scoundrel, always a scoundrel, always working an angle.  And I also think that the dad knows it, and will continue to accept him and work with him.  Dad isn’t taken in - and  Dad celebrates anyway.  In my take on the story, this is another thing the elder bro is upset about. 

And yet the elder bro is wrong, in the kindom of God.  As the dad says, he’s not been rejected, he’s not been treated poorly. The elder bro also has his unacknowledged prodigal side, he also has his sins - maybe not as flagrantly visible on the outside, from a 'human point of view.' But since he’s not at the party, there’s something wrong going on IN him as well.  And yet ...and yet...Dad is working with him, too, with his faults of pride and his need to be perfect that interferes with his ability to love and rejoice.  He’s actually the one who’s still outside, after all - as this story ends, he’s the one who’s lost.

This is a message to those of us who have grown up in church, doing it right, accepting church culture and looking down on those outside.  This is a message to those of us who think we deserve God’s favor because we’ve worked hard, curbed ourselves, controlled our desires to at least a public view, and looked good to our peers.  This is a message to those of us who’ve lived right, according to our culture and church, and think we’re better than those others who’ve not done as we’ve done.  THOSE are the sinners -  those who have loved a lot of partners, or the wrong partners; those who have lied or stolen or been underhanded or never come to church or partied too hearty - whatever it is that makes us feel superior to them, whatever it is that creates this us and them thing anyway. 

Well, if we're not at the party, we’re in the wrong.  God delights and rejoices when people who have not turned to God finally accept that grace.  Even if their turning to grace is not perfect the very first moment - and it won’t be, of course.  God welcomes those who have not followed the way of Christ when they do begin to turn and follow the way of Christ.  When, as the scripture puts it, the lost are found.  How can we, who have known God’s grace already, be upset that others are finally responding to it?  That’s God’s point of view.  All the riches of grace and heaven are been ours. 

Of course, if we’ve been doing these good things just for the reward or the recognition, or because we think we are unworthy unless we do, or out of fear that God will hate us if we do anything wrong, then we’ve not experienced the joy of faith to start with - we haven’t understood fully at all. If we’d rather see those who don’t act like us be punished, and not share the kindom of God with them, we need to rethink.  This parable will make us do that, as we stop to feel the emotions and admit what they really are. 

And once we see it, what do we do?  How is this story concluded in a good way for us?  How do we “elder brothers” get in to the party, and enjoy own status as a child of God?  Naming what’s going on in our hearts is an important start.  Realizing those strands of envy, our accommodation to outer authorities, then finding our own centers in God, realizing the sin of feeling superior, the wanting for others to be punished for being ‘bad’, thinking our need for forgiveness and grace is not the same as THAT person’s need for forgiveness and grace. 

God’s kindom is radically welcoming, no exceptions - the only requirement is turning to God for grace, with love and gratitude.  That desire of the heart to seek - which is actually a response to God seeking us first - that’s what counts.  Nobody gets it totally perfect, even those of us raised in church.  Hopefully we have grown in our faith, but there are always blank spots, attitudes and prejudices, wounds unhealed as yet, lessons we haven’t got to as yet. 

Its not for us to tell God who to love and who to welcome; our gate-keeping is not necessary.  Do we really want to keep someone OUT of the realm of God?  Maybe our discomfort with having different folks around is good for us - actually an invitation to learn how to celebrate better.  When we celebrate the Lord’s supper, we always remind ourselves that it is God’s table, and God is the host, God invites.  The call is to adjust our sight to God’s, not visa versa.  The church is not a sorority or fraternity, it is not a club where one has to be a certain way; the church’s motto is “whosoever will may come,” and God rejoices every time one does. AMEN!