Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

Honor Vs. Reconciliation: A Father and Two Sons

Transcribed from the sermon preached March 14, 2010

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

St. John’s Presbyterian Church

2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705

Telephone 510-845-6830    Fax 510-845-6837

http://www.stjohnsberkeley.org

Scripture Readings: Joshua 5:9-12, 2 Corinthians 5: 16-21, Luke 15:1-32

Today in Matthew, the Pharisees, the keepers of the law question the fact that tax collectors and sinners are coming to hang out with Jesus.  So Jesus responds with a series of parables: the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost or prodigal son.  I have seen photos of Bedouin shepherds carrying their sheep on their shoulders and I imagine the care and concern a shepherd must develop for his sheep.  I don’t know much about sheep, but we have a big dog, part black lab and part rottweiler.  She now weighs over a hundred pounds. 

When she was eight months old, when she only weighed 65 pounds, the boys and I took her up to the Sierra for a camping trip at Mono Hot Springs.  To get to the hot springs we had to hike a short way and rock hop across the river.  Now the river was cold, snowmelt, and Sassy had never experience cold water.  Our friend had an older more experienced dog who just jumped into the water and swam over.  At first Sassy jumped in and followed her to the other side.  But by the time she got to the other side, she decided she wanted nothing more to do with the water.  So when we got ready to go back, Sassy would not budge. So basically I had to drag her along, and because she wouldn’t stick her paws in the water to go around, I had to pick her up and lift her over a large fallen tree.  The whole time, both boys and I were attempting to coach her along, and at times yelling when she would frustrate us.  Then, just as we were almost across the river, Sassy, confused and discombobulated puppy that she was, turned around and ran, tail between her legs in the opposite direction, back under and around the giant tree, back across the river.  Of course, by this time I was discombobulated too, and just about ready to kill her.  But I still loved her, so I had to go back and get her.

Never the sharpest tool in the shed, Sassy couldn’t understand why we would be going through this cold water again, she couldn’t understand why we would toss her over a massive tree, she couldn’t understand which direction our home camp was and couldn’t understand that all our yelling was our attempt to help her out, because we cared for her.  So finally, I had to run down this sixty-five pound wet puppy and carry her over trees and wet rocks all the way back to camp. 

Sometimes I think we get confused like Sassy. We can’t see very far into the future. We can’t see that sometimes we have to go through a bit of discomfort, through a little cold water to get back home where we can get dry and comfortable.  And then the advice of those who love us just seems to add to the confusion and heighten the tension and all we want to do is run away.  We don’t care where, just not here.  So, with our tail between our legs, we take off. 

We don’t know why the second son in our parable wanted to cash in his inheritance and leave home, but we can take a couple of guesses.  Maybe the first son was a workaholic, and keeping up with him in the competition for the father’s favor was getting old.  I’m guessing the sons over-exaggerated the need to compete for their father’s love. Father clearly loved them both regardless, but sometimes growing up itself is discombobulating. Maybe all the responsibilities to the father and family, the hard work on stuff that didn’t seem to make sense, didn’t seem to have a payoff down the line, and only seemed to evoke orders and admonitions from the father.  Or, maybe he was lazy, or just wanted something new, an adventure, some fun and partying.  Or, perhaps a little of all the above…perhaps he was just discombobulated and wanted to run anywhere but there.

Last week we heard about a couple of other siblings, Mary and Martha.  Martha was the first to welcome Jesus into their home.  She was busy working in the kitchen to please everyone.  And she got annoyed that Mary was just lazily sitting listening to Jesus while she was doing all the work.   Maybe this second son was a bit like Mary.   Perhaps he wanted to go hang out with a great teacher and learn, but instead of finding a great teacher he found great temptation.  Running away from difficulty he ran into greater difficulty. 

After he left with his pockets filled with cash, he wound up in Vegas rather than Jerusalem.  He found a city with lots of temptation where he could be anonymous, no worries about the family reputation, or even his own.   It feels good to have the freedom of anonymity, to be able to do whatever you want without anyone caring, without anyone trying to push you through cold water or over a big tree.  The heck with the water and the tree. 

At this point in the story I want to throw in a couple of warnings, to point out a couple of common pitfalls of interpretation.  First, we keep finding in our Gospels iconoclastic stories where those who don’t do it according to the tradition and rules are favored.  Martha welcomes and works hard in the kitchen, but Mary is doing the better thing by hanging out with Jesus.  The prodigal son blows his inheritance in riotous parties only to get another party when he comes back home.  Meanwhile the older son sits grumpy.  The emphasis in our Gospels on God’s love for the ones who don’t follow tradition, who seem to come out of left field at the end of the day to receive the same pay as the workers who have been there all day reflects the fact that Christianity is second in line to Judaism. 

Up until the war with Rome authority in Israelite culture had been found in the temple of Jerusalem.  After the fall of the temple, the culture was faced with determining anew, where authority and meaning would be found.  An internal family competition ensued.  The Pharisees emphasized the Torah, or law while Jewish and a growing number of gentile followers of Jesus emphasized the grace, love and spirit of Jesus.  Rome was the big enemy; Rome was the land of luxurious parties funded by dispossessing foreign patriarchs of their sons and daughters, land and faith.  But because the question of meaning and authority had to be answered from within the family, from within Judaism, it is the family feud that we see reflected in the Gospels.  The vast majority of the first followers of Jesus were Jews, but his message of liberating love, stronger than oppression and death soon spread to gentile poor and oppressed and eventually to gentile intellectual elite, people who were not followers of the Torah.  So Jewish Christians were accused of leaving the home of tradition, and gentiles were coming into the family of God after knowing nothing of the long work and faith the covenant people had put in. 

The result for our purposes is that we can see that we are not so concerned in this story with the fact that the second son came home alone, that all the lost people he was partying with apparently continue in their lostness, and don’t come home to be adopted into the family and have a party thrown for them too.  That doesn’t concern us so much.  But we do see the grumpiness of the first son, who stayed home and faithful yet can’t accept the fact that the father would so easily renew his relationship with the second son. 

The danger arises from this perspective when the second son, like Jacob tricking Isaac into blessing him instead of his twin brother Esau, the once small cult Christianity supercedes Judaism when Constantine makes Christianity the official religion of the empire.  The prodigal son gains power, and unlike the father who goes out to his first son and declares, “everything that is mine in yours, come on in and enjoy”, the prodigal locks his brother out and throws him to the pigs.  Historically the prodigal Christianity doesn’t give the mercy and forgiveness to his Jewish brother that he received from the Father.  We have continued to fight over who is worthy of the party when the father is just concerned with reconciliation.  This kind of behavior doesn’t reflect the new creation in Christ, but a story as old and Cain and Abel.

The second pitfall of interpretation of this parable comes from the fact that in our individualistic and mobile culture, most everyone is expected to leave home.  From our culture’s perspective, the problem is not that he left home, but rather that he failed to be successful.  Now maybe that he has been humbled, yet finds that his father still loves him, he can retool at home and be successful in the future.  Told in this way it is about our individual relationship with God.

But this parable comes to us from an agrarian culture, a culture that is dependant on farming the family land, land that stays in the family for generation after generation.  And in ancient Middle Eastern Agrarian societies, there is a tremendous emphasis on honor and shame, and honor is tied to the patriarch, and the identity and honor of everyone else in the family tribe depends on the honor of the patriarch.  Barbara Brown Taylor, the great story telling preacher elaborates: “Patriarchs did not run. Patriarchs did not leave their places at the heads of their tables when guests were present.  Patriarchs did not plead with their children; they told their children what to do.  According to the rabbis “three cry out and are not answered: he who has money and lends it without witnesses; he who acquires a master; he who transfers his property to his children in his lifetime.”

Told in this kind of culture, today’s parable becomes the parable of the dysfunctional family—a story about a weak patriarch with an absentee wife and two rebellious sons he seems unable to control, which is willing to sacrifice his honor to keep his community together. It’s a reunion story, not a repentance story. It’s about the high cost of reconciliation, in which individual worth, identity and rightness all go down to the dust so that those as good as dead in their division may live together in peace.”  (Barbara Brown Taylor. The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family. 17 April 2006. http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com/newsletter374062.htm)

When the father gives his son the inheritance, the son sells the land right out from under his father’s feet.   Both father and mother (if she is there) are counting on their sons taking care of them in old age.  But this younger son is not thinking of family land, clan honor, or the honor of his father or mother, or the honor of livelihood of future generations.  He is thinking about himself, his needs, his wants, who he dreams of being. 

But his dreams only last until his money runs out and he finds himself in the mud with the pigs.  Starving and humble, he rehearses a confession and plans to beg his father for a job as a hired hand.  The way he dishonored the whole community, he knows he will be lucky even to get that much.  But with no other choice, he heads home.

Aristotle said, ”Great men never run in public.”   But when the father sees his son “still far off,” he ignores such advice and runs.  Taylor again: “Father runs to his son – runs so that everyone can see his pale ankles, runs so that his robes get wedged between his legs and flutter out behind him like an apron – he runs like a girl, like a mother instead of a father – he runs and puts his arms around his son, and kisses him right there on the road, where everyone can see them…The father runs like a girl to greet his son, before anyone can treat him like a hired hand.”

He orders his servant to bring a robe and sandals, and he puts the family ring on his son’s finger.  And before the rest of the clan can form a lynching party, Dad kills a calf and throws a banquet.  ²⁴For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ All is well and honor is restored, well almost. 

This first son, unlike his father,, still has the family honor to uphold.  The heck with reconciliation.  He is not about to run in and pretend everything is fine like before.  He is the one who has done everything right, where is his party?  “The elder son refuses to come in the house – a terrible insult to his father, right there in front of everyone. 

So the fathergets up and leaves his guests.  “So he goes out to his good son the same way he went to the bad one – only not running this time, because honestly, he’s worn out with the warring, wasteful children of his – of how little it means to them to belong to one another, of how much more interested they are in being fulfilled and fed, or blameless and right than they are in being reconciled with each other – as if securing their own identities were more important to them that living in peace with him and one another.

“If they would just ask him,” Taylor continues, “he could tell them that peace always involves a profound crisis of identity. You can’t have peace and stay exactly who you are, or even who you want to be. Sometimes you have to make huge concessions, sacrificing things as concrete as fields that have been in the family forever, along with things as intangible as honor, greatness, rightness and self-respect. Sometimes you have to run like a girl to protect your kin, even those who have done you irreparable harm. It’s all a matter of priorities, and for this father, reunion is all that matters. Reunion finds the lost and brings them home. Reunion brings the dead back to life.

“The father makes this case to his good son, who is as pig-headed as his bad son, but it is not clear that this child buys his argument. It feels good to stand in the yard, after all, even when that dishonors the family and divides the village. It feels good to know who’s right, who’s wrong, and which one you are, even when that shames your father and breaks his heart, causing him to die a little right before your eyes.

“Meanwhile, there is a banquet going on. You can hear the music and the dancing even out in the yard, and there is plenty left to eat. Your father won’t make you go in the house. He’ll just stand in the yard with you to protect you, the same way he protected his brother. What’s left of his honor is in your hands. You can go to the party as you are, as long as you don’t insist on staying that way. The father’s banquet is for the reconcilable, thrown for anyone who will come. “ http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com/newsletter374062.htm)