Don't tell me how to play with my toys

I've preached sermons that people have ignored.  It's true, I'm sure.  And I've worked hard to preach sermons directly targeted at certain people in the congregation (flagrant sinners, mainly), and they got nothing out of it, but someone else, someone totally unconnected to the situation got something totally great out of it.  Something I'd never even thought of.

And this is how preaching works. Once the words leave my mouth, then they're just sort of our there.  And it doesn't do me much good to say to someone "Oh, that really helped you in thinking about your son's addictions?  Sorry, it was actually about sexual immorality.  You lose."

That's sort of the way that the Spirit is supposed to work.  It's supposed to do what it's supposed to do.  The Spirit does not return to God void, it accomplishes its task.  And that's what happens on Sunday mornings, when people get all sorts of stuff out of what I say.  And that is primarily the spirit working on them, on their hearts, and all that.

But here's the other thing.  As much as it wouldn't do for me to tell everyone how to interpret my particular object lessons, to tell them how they weren't supposed to get that out of my sermon, so too do our Bibles get into a bit of trouble sometimes when they get all interprety for us. 

To wit, study Bibles that don't just give you hot tips, but tell you what everything means.  And that's a bit more problematic.  It gets problematic because of parables like this one.  The parable of the prodigal son.

Seems legit

As I mentioned on Sunday, this parable is one of the best known parables of all time.  When Jesus speaks, when he teaches using parables, he explains them very rarely.  More often than not, he ends his parables with 'He who has ears, let him hear.' In other words, pay attention, if this is about you, pay attention, find out how you fit in with this parable, and apply it. And the reason that the parable of the prodigal son is so great, is because it's so BIG.  And what do I mean when I say big?  I mean that it's all encompassing, it's massive, it's perhaps the biggest of his parables, because it has so many layers.  You can see yourself all over the place, you can see people you know, you can see God himself, it's so big!  And what does the study Bible say?

 

The Father represents God, the prodigal represents a sinner, and the older brother

represents those who consider themselves to be 'righteous persons who need no

repentance'

 

Thanks, Study Bible, I was almost getting interested.  I was almost beginning to see myself in this parable.  Where in the parable?  Man, all over it!  And not just in the place that I'm supposed to see myself.  Yes, it's easy to see myself as the younger son, who blows his inheritance on all sorts of nonsense.  It's easy to see myself as the one who has realized and recognized his sin, and who is coming back to beg for the Father's forgiveness. 

 

Thomas Benton's "The Prodigal Son"

But more often than not, even though I parrot the confession and absolution during the service, it is wildly contingent on nobody actually bad showing up.  And Christmas and Easter are the two big testing grounds for this.  They're the big testing grounds, because that's when the prodigals show up, and that fires you and I, John and Jane churchgoer, into insane levels of older brother syndrome. We look around and grumble at those who show up to ostensibly throw themselves at God's mercy.  How dare they just show up now, when we've been serving on boards and committees, when we've been doing the hard work of running the church ,and they just show up now?  For shame!  

 

Yes, we can be cruel and spiteful.  And the strange thing is, we end up being both brothers at the same time.  Or, more accurately, we begin as the younger, and end up as the elder.  It's real easy to come and confess your sins in God's holy church until someone faithless shows up and sits in the same pew as you.  Then, all bets are off.  It's when you come in from working in the fields, and hear the celebration that you start to get a little bit peeved.  You were all ready to take part in a standard church service, but when you see the people who just sort of casually show up, who have no involvement in running the church, who use it when it's convenient, then we get a little bit upset.  Then we talk to God, and say 'I know I'm a sinner, but look at these guys!  They're unbelievers to the max, who just show up twice a year!"

 

Feeding these dudes would be okay, though.

Here's the thing.  Strangely enough, we've got this whole parable flipped around, for the most part.  The word prodigal goes with son like good goes with Samaritan, and we're so used to the idea of the younger son, that it's almost a badge of honor to be that son.  It's the expected outcome that we might be the younger son, but our problem is that we always ALWAYS skip to the end of the parable.  We skip to the part where the repentant son comes back.  We never dwell on the devouring the property with prostitutes bit, we never think about the wild living that would get the son to realize his sin.  We skip this stuff because we Christians live beneath the thin veneer of respectability.  We live in a world, in a worldview at least, of mild perfection, in which we and people like us are actually not too terribly bad.  Yes, we're repentant sinners, but what are we repenting from?  Anything vaguely like the wild reckless living of the younger son?  Not likely. 

 

But the big sin that we inside the church need to deal with, and the one that we don't seem to see, is our priggishness. Oh, sure, we may claim that everyone is welcome in our churches, but how do we actually feel about that?  Do you, as an individual Christian, feel as though you should be spending time with someone who was just out feeding the pigs?  Or do you feel as though God should be giving you a young goat for you to feast with your friends?  

 

Be honest.  Be honest about how you feel when all the prodigals come back.  Is it anything like the father in the parable, or is it more like the elder son?  As with the rest of the parables of Christ, he who has ears, let him hear.  Stop looking for yourself only in the part where someone comes off looking good.  That is gospel, and it's supposed to give comfort to the repentant sinner, which might be you.  But it may very well not be.  The real work of this Christian life is to look deep into the eyes of the elder brother, the one covered with the veneer of respectability, the one who is wrapped in a cloak of good deeds but inside is filled with self-righteousness, to look deep into his eyes and realize that there is your mirror right there.  You, within the church, you who have gotten comfortable, you who have beaten back all the unacceptable sins, like devouring property with prostitutes, like reckless living, that's probably you.  All you have left is the cold-hearted acceptable sins.  The ones where you honestly and sincerely believe that you are right, always have been, and that these sins of reckless wild living are far worse than anything else you may be up to.

 

But the real difference between the sons is that one, who is up to his elbows in pig slop that he would want to eat but can't, realizes that he is a sinner, that he has messed up, that he needs help.  The elder son, who stayed behind, who helps, who is working hard, he sincerely believes that he is owed feasts and celebrations.  He has forgotten something key.  Whether you're leaving and coming back, or staying around for a long time, you're still living off of your father's wealth.  It's not as though the elder son was buying a young goat for himself out of his own wealth.  He was still reliant on his father.  You and I who are Christians, who are deep in the heart of the church, we need to look at ourselves, and how we see ourselves in the church, and in the kingdom of God.  Is it like the tax collector, or the pharisee?  Is it like the younger, repentant brother, or the elder self righteous brother?



 

Heck, 90% of the time, you're going to be a pastiche of both.  The great skill in Christian faith, though, is recognizing when you are being one or the other.  It's in realizing when the money is gone and you're feeding pigs, and it's in recognizing when you're sneering at those who are coming back to God's grace, who honestly look as though they've been up to their elbows in pig slop all day.  But whether fatted calf or young goat, you're all benefiting from God's goodness.  You're all reliant on God's grace.  Don't worry about the younger, repentant son traipsing back in after hard living, and don't worry about the sneering gaze of the older brother from the fields.  Just think about how the father treats the two children.  Robes and rings and fatted calves for one, and for the other, the truth of the sentence 'all that I have is yours.' 

 

Aw shoot.  Maybe the study Bible was right after all.

 

PJ