March 21, 2004
John Auer, Pastor
Scripture
Scripture text: Joshua 5:9-12, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
"Displaced Disgrace: What Part of Jesus Is
‘The Lost Son’?"
At least two huge stories came out of Seattle this week. In one a
United Methodist pastor with some idea how good God is found herself
acquitted by a jury of her peers. In the other a UN-R basketball team
with no idea how good they can be found they have no "quit" in
them! God bless them both and all.
I’d like to begin and to end my meditation with words of the priest
Henri Nouwen and say as little as possible in between. Nouwen says in
his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, "Leaving home is
much closer to my spiritual experience than I might have thought. . . .
Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look
far and wide to find one." What is behind this impulse to
"leave home?" To lose ourselves in such a way that only God
can find us?
Elie Wiesel marvels over so many Bible stories at how God appears to
delight in being defeated by God’s own children, at points where God
learns from them how to be even more merciful and just and to do an even
better job of being God! What is this Lenten desert life of wild
wandering all about? These "far country" years of
"riotous living," at the end of which we are "starving
and dying," as good as dead, until we "rise up" and seek
out our roots among "day laborers" and "hired
hands?" Only to be greeted as the long- "lost sheep" of
the family and celebrated, not only as if there would be no tomorrow,
but also as if there had been no yesterday, either? As if our whole past
had been cancelled out!
The desert prayer of Brazilian Bishop Dom Helder Camara, part of our
Lenten study materials, speaks of a time to lose our illusions, our
naiveté, our expectations of finding it easy, of walking on roses, of
people thronging to hear us and applaud, of being always "aware of
divine protection. If we are to be pilgrims for justice and peace,"
claims Camara, "we must expect the desert." Hear him now, as
if we are motherless children, "a long way from home," –
"Our weariness spreads from the body to the soul. Which is worse
than any bodily exhaustion. "We feel the desert around us as far as
our eyes can see. Soft sand which we sink in up to our knees. Blinding
and burning sand storms, which hurt our face, get in our eyes and ears .
. . .
"We reach the limit of endurance, desert all about us, desert
within. We feel that the Creator’s own self has abandoned us. ‘Why
hast thou forsaken me?’ . . . "We must not trust in our own
strength, we must not give way to bitterness, we must stay humble. . . .
Knowing that we are in the hands of God, we must want only to share in
the making of a better world. Then we shall not lose our courage or our
hope. We shall feel the invisible protection of God our Creator." I
can only imagine, as I watch and hear this story played out by the
wonderful "chancel players" of the Nevada Shakespeare Company
this morning, -- this story that has been called the most perfect of all
short stories, -- I can only imagine if Jesus did not live this story
out in what are called his own "lost years," between twelve
and thirty, then at least this story came to him during his own forty
days in the desert.
The people of Israel wandered there forty years! As former
well-provided-for slaves in Egypt, it took them forty years to
internalize "the invisible protection of God our Creator" to
the point where they might be ready to live in a promised land, but as
if they still belonged to a promising God. The promised land is, there
is no promised land! And here it is. For that seems the point of the
wilderness: learning to live by the promise of where we may find
ourselves, and be found in the end. The challenge now and always to
those of us who have reached our promised land, surrounded by milk and
honey, is to keep on living by simple request, "Give us, this day,
our daily bread." Keep us from all hoarding. The shift from being a
nomadic desert people provided directly by God everyday, to a more
settled agricultural people, with stockpiles to bargain for the daily
provision of others, is haunting us all to this day. Even as Abel haunts
Cain.
To live by promise, to live open-endedly, in assurance of things only
hoped-for, in conviction of things not-yet-seen, is to live not by
contract but by covenant, to live not by religion but by relationship,
to live not by law but by love. In our memorial tribute to Doris Van
Citters of this congregation yesterday, because she worked so long and
so well as a legal secretary, informed by her faith, we said she lived
not so much by the "love of law" as she did by the "law
of love." That is the choice we face in so many parts of our lives
and our life together: Do we live by the "love of law?" So
tempted by the fixed and static to cling to forever? Or do we live by
the "law of love?" Not so much by the letter of the law that
binds us to Egypt, as by the spirit of the law that sets us free now to
seek justice and peace?
Many have pointed out often, the really radical, really prodigal one
in this story is the father, love-crazy old father, and so it is with
our God! We cannot know for sure if the father understands, or just
accepts beyond understanding, the son’s early claim on his
inheritance, which would come to him at his father’s death, so, in
effect, he is saying to his father, I would that you were dead, so that
I might get on with my life. What part of us has gone through times of
leaving home, even of rejecting families of origin and of squandering
their expectations? And what part of us has not done so but has imagined
what it might have been like if we had, and then has grown in resentment
that we did only what was expected of us, served years without
disobeying, allowed ourselves to be so perfectly taken for granted? Is
there any pain, and grief, quite like that of our own lost
self-righteousness? We ask of the "elder brother" part we find
in each one of us.
The father makes the real news of this story. By some grace he is
willing to risk losing all prestige, all honor, all reputation, as well
as a major portion of wealth, to love this son enough to let him go,
never to deny him, never to stop being his father, though the son lives
as though the father were as good as dead. The father gives up the perks
and prerogatives of being in charge and control here. What may we, as
fathers and mothers, as older generations, be faced with the need to
give up? That our sons and daughters may learn to find their own ways
through the deserts of life, to discover "the invisible protection
of God our Creator?" Most striking of all, this father would run
down the road to greet his lost son! No person of wealth and privilege
in that culture ever would run in public! Certainly not for the sake of
someone less honorable and less reputable! If Jesus comes home from his
"lost years" to such a reception as that, little wonder he
goes on to say and to do as he does. Wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we!
So what is this new "world of welcome" represented by
lavishing love? Our brothers and sisters at South Reno United Methodist
are calling their campaign to raise funds for new building
"Widening Our Welcome." WOW! Our entire United Methodist
Church has been advertising "Open Doors, Open Minds, Open
Hearts." We would hope some day for "Open Arms" and
"Open Borders" as well! How might we think of ourselves as an
"Open Church?" A "Downtown Church?"
A church open to a leading Spirit of a loving God in a living Christ?
A Spirit not done with anyone yet, a Spirit making all things new? What
would worship look like with such a Spirit? Whom would such a Spirit
lead us to seek out as the "lost" of our own congregation and
our community? How might we long for and look for them, wait for and
watch for them? I ask us to begin to raise such questions in Church
Council today. We are even proposing specifics today, – around
"Safe Places" for runaway youth, neighborhood "Wine
Walks," Conscious Business and Community Network, and "Artown."
For this is our promised land.
Nothing, no one in all of creation is so "lost" as to
wander beyond God’s finding. I need to hear that again: Nothing, no
one in all of creation ever is so "lost" as to wander beyond
God’s finding! God is so plainly a saver, a gleaner, a rescuer and
recycler of all our lost and our wandering lives. God don’t make no
junk to begin with, and God don’t let no junk stay lost. That is who
Methodists were in the early history of our culture: circuit riders
along the edge of frontiers, where no one else ventured to go, rescuing
those who slipped through the cracks and got lost and left out to all
the more landed, established churches.
That is where John Wesley began, widening the unwilling welcome of
the insular Anglican Church. God is just not a condemner. God is both
giver in creation for all, and, in Jesus, we find God as forgiver in
redemption for all. Jesus is the very human face of God who wanders, as
lost, as least among us, all over this earth. Jesus knows he can be
anyone, anywhere, at any time. Not BUT by the grace of God there go I,
but BY the grace of God there go I! Jesus goes in everyone! With Jesus
there is place at the table for all. There is food at the feast for all.
Henri Nouwen writes in a essay called "Lecture" the words
of "Listen to what God is saying to us." To each and every
lost, least and last one of us –
You are my child.
You are written in the palms of my
hand.
You are hidden in the shadow of my
hand.
I have molded you in the secret of
the earth.
I have knitted you together in your
mother’s womb.
You belong to me.
I am yours. You are mine.
I have called you from eternity and
you are the one who is held safe
and embraced in love from eternity
to eternity.
You belong to me. And I am holding
you safe and I want you to
know that whatever happens to you, I
am always there. I was
always there; I am always there; I
always will be there and hold you
in my embrace.
You are mine. You are my child. You
belong to my home. You
belong to my intimate life and I
will never let you go. I will be
faithful to you.
Let a grateful people, dead yet alive, lost and yet found, dare to
say, AMEN!
Rev. John Auer
