“If only people applied as much labor in rooting out vices and planting virtues, as they do in raising controversial questions, there would neither be so much harm done nor so great scandal given to the world.” – Imitation of Christ
I’m confused. 1300s or 2010s?
You have all heard today’s Gospel lesson before. Everyone knows the parable of the prodigal son: it’s all about a lost and wayward son coming home, and about his father welcoming him back with wide-open arms. Except, of course, that that’s not the whole story—Jesus has just as much to say about the older brother as the younger brother. The great preacher Tim Keller says that we shouldn’t call it the parable of the prodigal son, but the parable of the two lost sons, and I think he’s right. It’s not just a story about one lost son who comes home, but a story about two sons who are lost in different ways, one of them so lost that he doesn’t even know it.
The two lost sons, you see, are the two groups of people standing around when Jesus told this story. Chapter fifteen starts off this way: “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.’” Jesus heard what they were grumbling about, and as he so often did, he answered with a story.
Let’s be clear: the Pharisees and the scribes had good reason to grumble. To them, Jesus welcoming and eating with these people was nothing less than a moral scandal. Tax collectors were not good people. They were the ones who shook people down to send money to the imperial overlords in Rome, traitors to kin and country who usually skimmed more than a little off the top for themselves. And the sinners were people who had broken the Law and kept on breaking it, and who didn’t go to worship. In Jesus’s day, to eat with someone carried much more meaning than it does for us—it was a highly symbolic act, that meant you approved of their character. It looked as if Jesus were giving the seal of approval to some highly dubious folks. The Pharisees and the scribes, by contrast, cared deeply about God’s law, kept the traditions of their people alive, and in fact were the ones responsible for carrying Judaism forward through the destruction of the Temple all the way down to today. So it’s too simple to see the Pharisees as nothing more than proud and haughty hypocrites. They were good and devout people. And it’s too simple to see the tax collectors and sinners as romantic outcasts. They were, some of them at least, dishonest traitors. So why would Jesus eat with them? Why not give them what they deserve, and lend a hand to the ones who are trying to teach people how to follow the Law, God’s good gift to his people?
That is probably what the Pharisees were grumbling about, standing off to one side as the tax collectors and sinners crowded around Jesus. So, what does Jesus do? Tell the Pharisees they were right, and tell the sinners to take a hike and come back after they’ve cleaned up their act? Or, does he tell the Pharisees off, and say their Law doesn’t matter since God loves us all just the way we are? Well, Jesus said—you see, it’s this way. There once was a man who had two sons.
The youngest son’s story, as Jesus got going, probably sounded familiar to the sinners and tax collectors. My guess is that some of them standing around recognized themselves in the shoes of the younger son in his Las Vegas days. The King James version puts it evocatively: he had, so it says, “wasted his substance in riotous living.” There are many ways to waste one’s substance, some of them more riotous than others, but they all lead to the same place, which is where the prodigal son wound up: alone. Whatever friends he thought he’d made in his good-time days, they clearly weren’t good enough to care that he was starving to death. He’d slammed the door on his family a long time ago. He’d spent his life living for himself, and when you live that way the only people who’ll stick around are the ones who are getting something from you. When your substance runs out, they’re gone, and you find out what a waste it all was. He was lucky to have his substance run out when it did. It brought him to his senses. That doesn’t happen to everyone, and it probably hadn’t happened to all of the tax collectors and sinners standing around. But maybe some of them listened to Jesus, and saw where they were headed, saw the bottom opening up under their feet. To say “I repent” is hard—it often means admitting that following your own path to happiness got you nowhere, that you can’t make it on your own steam, that you need your Father after all. But the prodigal son did. He came to his senses, and he headed off toward home.
Some of the tax collectors and sinners standing there probably heard that part loud and clear, but didn’t think there was any home left to go back to. They’d made their bed and slept in it, and they knew they weren’t welcome where they came from. After all, you can’t go home again. Maybe you can find someplace to move on, but you can’t move back. That would mean confronting the people you hurt, the person you were, the things you’d done. And who could bear it? The past is the past and it’s best left where it is. Some things are just too broken to fix.
That’s what the prodigal son was thinking on his way back home. He had a little speech rehearsed: “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.” He doesn’t go back, you see, with any hope of forgiveness, of going back to the way things were before. In his time and place, asking for your inheritance before its time was a deep insult, which basically amounted to saying that he wished his father was dead. He didn’t think he could fix that. He went back because he had no place left to go.
Jesus told the next part of the story for people like him. “While he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he put his arms around him and kissed him.” The son starts giving his little speech, but his dad doesn’t even let him finish it. All Dad hears are the words ‘Father’ and ‘son,’ and that was all he had to hear. “Quickly, bring out his best suit—you know the one, we got it for his brother’s wedding—get him a towel, get him cleaned up, get him something to eat! We’re inviting everyone over right away, tonight. This son of mine is alive again. Son, let’s be clear about one thing right now. I don’t care about where you went or what you did. You came back, and that’s all that matters.”
It can be very hard to say, “I repent.” It can be even harder to believe that you’re really forgiven. Real forgiveness can be hard to come by down here. But Jesus is telling these sinners and tax collector something about the heart of his Father. His Father is the one who watches for them while they’re still far off. In fact his Father does more than watch—he runs out into the road, and sends his own son to journey into the far country, to eat with tax collectors and sinners. St. Paul says that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “In Christ,” Paul says, “God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” How could we ever come home again if not for this? We are able to come, not trusting in our own righteousness, but in our Father’s manifold and great mercies.
The next part of the story is for the Pharisees and the scribes, for good church people like us. We tend to forget about this part—we don’t think of it as the parable of the two lost sons, but the one prodigal son—and I have a hunch about why. My hunch is that we church people are an awful lot more likely to be older brothers than prodigal sons, and that we don’t like Jesus telling us that we’re just as lost as our no-account kid brothers out in California who never did anything serious with their lives except work on their suntans and explore Buddhism. We didn’t go to California and get suntans and explore Eastern spirituality. We stayed in St. Louis and went to church. Shouldn’t we get credit for that?
The older brother would agree. His father is being completely unfair, and he’s absolutely furious about it. He heads home after a hard day of work and sees some kind of party. He probably has a hunch about what’s going on—he doesn’t go inside to see for himself, and he doesn’t ask his dad what’s up. He has someone else find out for him. It’s as he thought. There’s no way he’s coming in, not after what his blackguard brother did to the family. His dad, making a fool out of himself, always letting his brother walk all over him—how could he fall for this again? And it’s not fair. He’d worked hard his whole life, and did that count for anything? Apparently not. His father can hear him shouting from outside: Why can’t I get any respect for what I earned? For what I earned with my own hands? Why can’t I get what I deserve?
Just like he came out to meet his younger son, his father comes out to meet him too. Come inside, come inside where it’s warm, he says. I know you’re angry. But don’t you see what you’re doing? Your brother wound up cold and alone God knows where, and now he’s back—he’s alive again. Try to forgive him, don’t hold on to this—why should you stay out here by yourself, like he was? And all of this about deserve, deserve. You’ve always been this way, ever since you were a little boy. You’ve worked hard, I know that, don’t think I don’t appreciate it. But don’t you know that I’ve already given you everything? All that I have? My own heart? But all you’ve ever wanted is what you deserve. You never let me give you anything. Come inside, my son—all of this is for you too. Amen.
In the St. Michael School chapel this year, I’ve been telling lots of Bible stories. The windows in St. George’s Chapel, where we meet, provide vivid images and reminders of God’s history with his people, and I’m grateful for the cheat-sheet!
On our first day back after Christmas break, I was inspired to tell the story of Moses and the burning bush. I’d been trying to think of a gentle way to talk about reverent behavior during chapel time. You see, I don’t have any children of my own yet, so I’m still under the false impression that anyone under the age of 15 can sit still and listen for a full five or ten minutes together. So, I hoped that telling them about the way that God told Moses how to behave around him might stick in their brains the idea that they should behave differently around God’s house, too.
I told them about how God called Moses by name, and how he told Moses to take off his shoes. To really drag the point home, I tore my heels off in front of them, right in the middle of the chapel. We talked about what it might be like for us to take off our shoes—not literally, the older children realized, but what a sort of analogous thing might be in our culture and in our way of worshiping.
I asked them what it might mean to take off our sandals. One child, who has clearly heard the story before, quickly raised his hand and said, “it means respect!” …As he realized the import of his answer, he sheepishly took off his baseball cap. Further, he suggested that perhaps we shouldn’t run or yell in the chapel. Another child said, “Well, the bush told him to!” She hit on an important point—sometimes we don’t know why we’re asked to do what God says, but being faced with a burning bush, being faced with God’s presence, we can sense it’s something we shouldn’t question. Like when our parents told us as young children to get down in the basement because of a tornado warning—we may have questioned them about what to wear to school in the morning, but in a moment we know is danger, we simply trust.
I closed by asking them to imagine whenever they came into chapel that there was a burning ball of fire right over the altar—a frightening image that I hoped might help them remember that God’s presence was in chapel with them, and though God’s presence is exciting and wonderful, there are also ways we should honor the place we worship God.
Judging from the running and yelling that went on this week after so many days off of school for snow, I think we still have a ways to go in teaching the children what it’s like to be in God’s presence.
Telling the kids the story of Moses and the burning bush made me think closely and seriously about the ways that we figuratively “take off our shoes” when we come near to God, and what it means for us to “take off our shoes” or to be changed when we enter into God’s presence. We have to learn how to behave, of course, we don’t do it instinctively, just as was revealed by the children’s responses to my questions.
When I visited our newest parishioner a few weeks ago as a one-day-old baby in the hospital, I quietly knocked on the hospital room door, I slowly and calmly opened the door, I tiptoed toward the new family, and gently asked after their health. When the moment came, I very carefully took the little baby boy in my arms and spoke to him quietly and soothingly. This picture is very different from the first time I met my baby brother when I was two and a half years old—my parents had to tell me, “Emily! Don’t poke his eye out… Please be gentle! Don’t scream, speak softly!” I had to be taught how to behave around a little baby, just as Moses had to be told by God how to behave in his presence, “Moses, take off your sandals.”
We “take off our sandals” by standing when we hear the Gospel proclaimed to us, by kneeling to pray—in a few moments, we will stand together as the celebrant invites us to “lift up [our] hearts unto the Lord” as we begin the Great Thanksgiving and enjoy Communion together.
The game changes when we get close to God—our lives are changed. This is a strange, unnatural, uncomfortable thing, just like it was unnatural for me as a toddler to be quiet and calm and gentle to my baby brother. It’s become a natural way to behave around little babies, but it wasn’t, at first. Of course, we’ve learned from the Bible that God isn’t particularly concerned with comfort, he made Moses take off sandals in the middle of the wilderness, for heaven’s sake!
At my last church, in Cooperstown, New York, I met with a parishioner in the local coffeeshop one afternoon. He was a doctor by trade, but had been very active in the local theater company for decades. We started talking about all these various actions we take during church services and all the prayers we say every week. Most of the language is the same week in and week out—how did it help us at all to say the same things over and over? Drawing in his experience with preparing to play a part in a production, this parishioner wondered if our worship on Sunday mornings was sort of like rehearsing for a play. He said, “During the last weeks right before performing, you’re practicing your part so often and so fully that the line between your identity and part you’re playing starts to blur. You take on this person’s mannerisms, attitude, and perspective, you start to become that person.” The process is uncomfortable at first, it’s not natural, because it’s not who you are, but soon enough, you become comfortable with that character, and it becomes very easy to join in the play. The result is that when you know the character so well, if something goes wrong on opening night, you can still stay in character because you’ve become that person, and that’s when the fun begins. When you have practiced so long and so hard, you have become what you’ve practiced being, and you’re able to play.
Images of golden calves, or the thought kneeling before stone altars with animals killed on them have never struck a chord with me. I easily gloss over the temptations of the Israelites to make up their own gods and the devotion to little wooden or stone carved beings. Who can commiserate with such strange, ignorant people? How are we to understand ourselves as parallel to these people who would take a tree trunk and make it into a “god”?
This morning I realized that idols are a way to try to control our lives–it seems that idols, or for example the ancient Greek or Roman gods and goddesses, would scratch your back if you scratched theirs. We rule-loving people could do the right things (give this amount of money, or offer that sort of animal) and we could expect to be safe from this disaster or to receive that blessing. Idols are predictable; they help people feel like they have some power, a few cards to play.
Understood this way, idols have a lot more resonance for me. Imagine the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai after they’ve left their homes in Egypt. Sure, the conditions were bad in Egypt, but at least it was familiar, at least there was a status quo, a stable lifestyle. Abandoned in the shadowed valley of the Mountain of God, the Israelites clung to anything they could get their hands on. Perhaps they thought, “This God that Moses says is ours is all well and good, and we’ve even seen his great work in the Red Sea and in the twelve plagues, but he hasn’t given us the game rules–we don’t know what he wants of us. We know that we can gain some semblance of order if we just solve this problem ourselves, now, by setting up our own life schedule and making our own rules of life. It can’t be too hard!” And they do–they set up their own way of understanding the world and of understanding power, and they even begin to form their lives around this new philosophy they’ve created. Then, of course, Moses comes down from the mountain, literally shining from the time he’s spent with God, full of the Spirit, burning to share with the people the love that God has for them and the plan that God has for them to be able to live well together. And then, of course, more trouble begins–the people aren’t so interested in this demanding, totally transforming, difficult, somewhat obtuse way of living, a way of living that is purposely not status quo and purposely not just a set of rules or boxes to check off.
A sermon from the Rev. Jordan Hylden
What’s Worth Having Luke 4:1-13
I’m tempted to say that temptation isn’t what it used to be. Recently, I came across a column in the New York Times[1] that compared the period drama Downton Abbey with the very much here-and-now HBO series Girls. Much of the drama of Downton, the column observed, comes from the way in which the characters chafe against the duties and restrictions of their roles, in a world where there’s a very specific place for everything and everyone. Can the daughter run off with the chauffeur? Can the servants move up in the world? Will middle-class cousin Matthew ever really be one of them? Can you follow your heart, even when duty and role says you mustn’t? Wouldn’t following your heart be somehow not properly English? And so on, and so forth.
Of course we know that, eventually, the old world of Lord Grantham will give way to the modern world that you and I live in, as portrayed so well by Lena Dunham’s series Girls. The show depicts a group of twenty-something women in today’s New York City, all of them trying to find love and happiness in one form or another, and all of them floundering rather sadly. Apparently, though I admittedly haven’t watched it, the show is a sort of anti-Sex in the City, with all of the freedom but none of the glamour. The girls live at the end of the social process that the world of Downton started, and by now there’s just no drama to be had about resisting temptation, about the clash between duty and desire—the girls are pretty much free to do what they want, to follow their hearts and desires without having to worry about class boundaries or religion or social norms getting in the way. In almost every respect, they’re freer than the inhabitants of Downton Abbey, and in many respects we’d probably judge that to be a good thing. The problem is that none of their free choices seem to have much meaning, carry much weight, make any lasting difference, or lead to real happiness. As the Times critic puts it, “What begins on Downton as a new liberty to follow your heart, to dare love that others find unwise, has culminated in Girls in romantic pursuits that are dully mercenary and often unwise.”
Girls depicts a world—our world—in which we can have anything we want, but there’s nothing to show us what’s worth wanting. “I don’t know what the next year of my life is going to be like at all,” says Marnie, a smart, pretty, rather lost twentysomething on “Girls.” “I don’t know what the next week of my life is going to be like. I don’t even know what I want. Sometimes I just wish someone would tell me, like, ‘This is how you should spend your days, and this is how the rest of your life should look.”’[2]
The struggle against temptation, you see, only makes sense if there’s something better out there that’s worth the struggle, if there’s something worth waiting for that’s better than the things you can have right now. If you can’t imagine something worth struggling for, then you’ll probably settle for the things you’ve already got. But if you really can’t imagine anything worth struggling for, then you’re certain to wind up as lost as one of those very free, very sad girls in New York. It really doesn’t matter if you’re free to have it all. What really matters is knowing what’s worth having.
In our Gospel text from Luke today, one of the things to notice is that none of what Jesus is tempted with seems very wrong at first glance. Jesus had been in the wilderness for forty days without food, and we’re told he was absolutely famished. The devil prompts him to whip up some Wonderbread, and what could be wrong with that? Especially for a starving man, isn’t that worth having? And the devil’s offer of power over all the kingdoms of the world—well, what could be wrong with setting things straight once and for all? Putting an end to all of the injustices of Caesar, restoring Israel’s freedom, bringing about peace and justice and harmony—isn’t that everyone’s dream? Isn’t that worth having? And then there’s the last one, which sounds like trusting God to save him from death. What could be wrong with that? We know from last week’s Gospel text that Jesus had set his face to go to Jerusalem, and that he had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen to him when he got there. If Jesus had only lived longer, just think what he could have accomplished—what a pity to die so young, so tragically, with so much promise and his whole life ahead of him. Never married. Only just started in his career. Friends and family left behind. Isn’t that worth having most of all—life itself?
Luke is telling us something important about how temptation works. I doubt any of you are going to go home tonight and be seriously tempted to rob a bank or club a baby seal, or something positively awful like that. Temptation seldom works that way. It’s usually much more subtle—temptation usually means being tempted to let good things keep us from better things, to let smaller pleasures keep us from what really matters in life, from what brings true and lasting happiness. You probably won’t be tempted to abandon your spouse and kids. But you might be tempted to so dedicate yourself to your work, and to providing for your family, that you find they’ve started to become strangers living in your own home. You probably won’t be tempted to sexually abuse someone, God forbid. But you might be tempted to allow sex to get in the way of any real and lasting relationship. You probably won’t be tempted by anything that you know is deeply wrong, or cruel, or hateful. No, if you’re really tempted by something, you’re tempted because you think it’s good. The things that tempt us the most are precisely the things that we think will make us happy. What makes them temptations, is that they won’t.
So how do we know the difference? How can we tell what leads to real happiness, and what only leads to a shadow of the real thing? How do we learn what’s worth having, in a world where we can have anything we want?
In our passage, Jesus had a choice to make. He could have been a very different kind of Messiah, one who filled his belly with good things, basked in the adoration of the crowds, taken the power to have his way in the world, and avoided an early and humiliating execution. He could have, but he wasn’t. So in order to listen for the voice of God amidst the clamoring din of all of the other voices of the world, to find the narrow and difficult path of true happiness amidst the maze of wrong turns and dead ends, Jesus went out to the wilderness to fast and to pray. In the wilderness, he heard his Father’s voice.
Lent for us is meant to be a time in the wilderness, of setting aside the things that distract us from hearing God’s voice and keep us from following it. We give up things in Lent not to show God how pious we are, but to show ourselves what’s been keeping us from what really matters in life, and most of all from God. It’s to show ourselves how we’ve been thrashing around in the shallows, instead of plunging into the vast ocean of God’s love.
Jesus heard the voice of his Father in the wilderness, and found that the path that led to his Father in heaven was none other than the way of the cross. On this path he found that true happiness lay in loving his Father in heaven with all of his heart and mind and strength, and his neighbors as himself, even if it cost him everything. Jesus went to Jerusalem to give his life away in faith and love, only to find it again on the far side of Good Friday. Jesus showed us the path to happiness that lasts, to a full life of love so indestructible that not even betrayal and death can kill it.
This season of Lent, go to the wilderness. Set aside everything that keeps you from hearing the voice of Jesus, and from following in his footsteps. Spend time in prayer. Read the Scriptures and listen for God’s word. Pray that God will show you the things in your life that are keeping you from what really counts, and that he’ll set you again on the path that leads to what’s really worth having. Amen.
[1] Giridharadas, Anand. “Freedom Has Its Limits,” New York Times, 8 February 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/us/09iht-currents09.html?_r=0
[2] Cited in Giridharadas, “Freedom Has Its Limits.”
hope of things not seen 