First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Luke 15:1-2, 11-24
June 17, 2001
You don’t have to be very old to know enough Bible to win a pot of money on Jeopardy. But you have to have a few years under your belt to understand enough Bible to win (or even survive) in the game of life. Where the Bible is concerned, you can learn it by reading it. But you are not likely to “get it,” until you’ve lived it. And while it helps to walk around in its pages….and, if possible, in the land where its pages were written….the best way to get the real “skinny” on the scripture is to walk around in its skin (by which I mean the actual “flesh” of the people who populate its stories).
Which can take a lifetime, don’t you know. Take the “Prodigal Son” story I’ve just read. We all know it. Most of us like it. But there’s too much there for any one sermon….or any one season.
When you are young, I suppose it’s the younger brother who interests you most….the one they call “the prodigal.” He’s impatient. He’s restless. He’s chomping at the bit….chafing under the limits….itching for something he hasn’t got, doesn’t have, and doesn’t know when he will (get it or have it, I mean).
Who knows what he wants? The text doesn’t say. You can speculate on his impatience (or his impertinence) all you want. But you will end up writing more of your own story than his. The text is rather sparse concerning his request. What he asks for is money. The inheritance that will come to him some day, he wants now. And before you look down your very proper noses at that….or fall too quickly for the scholar’s reminder that such requests were never made in the Israel of Jesus’ day (making this young man too gauche for words)….ask yourselves how much of daddy’s money you got before daddy died. Then ask yourself what you did with it….where you would have been without it….and wasn’t it wonderful you didn’t have to ask for it directly….just hint a bit, or stand around with an opportunistic grin on your face and an aura of hopefulness in your bearing.
Some of you had dreams. Others of you had schemes. And mommy and daddy backed them….in part, because you were “going to get the money anyway, some day.” And some of your dreams and schemes made mommy and daddy cringe, when they turned sour. But others of them made mommy and daddy cheer, when they turned sweet. The fact of the matter is, daddy bankrolled some of you and went broke. But daddy bet the farm on others of you and got rich.
With me, it wasn’t money. And it wasn’t daddy. But I do have a “younger brother” story. One day, when I wasn’t even 29….and when I hadn’t had but four very green years under my belt (not that I wasn’t as cocky as I was hungry)….a bishop rolled the dice with me and said: “Ritter, even though you are a bottom-rung associate on a big, tall staff, I’m going to drop this 700-member church in your lap and dare you to run it.” And he didn’t have to ask twice, I’m here to tell you. Like most preachers, I figured my chance would come in due time. But I got it early. And while I didn’t demand it, I greedily grabbed it. As did another pair of “younger brothers” whose last names were Price and Hickey. The bishop’s name was Loder. And, as best as I can tell, there hasn’t been a bishop that gutsy….or that stupid….since. Although it paid off for everybody concerned.
What am I saying? I am saying I didn’t wait in line. Neither did Carl Price. And there were a whole lot of elder brothers (along with a few elder sisters) in the clergy union who didn’t like it. No, they didn’t like it at all. They wondered why Carl and I got ours before they got theirs. But it happened. And that’s my “younger brother” story.
It would, of course, be a juicier story had I screwed it up. Debauchery. Riotous living. That sort of thing. Some do, you know. They get it “too soon” and it goes to their head. Or they dribble it through their fingers. That’s when you know you are in the “far country”….when the last place in the world you want to go back to is the place where half the people are going to say, “We believed in you,” while the other half are going to say (to no one in particular), “We told you so.”
So much for the younger brother. If you live long enough, you are going to be the father, don’t you know. Maybe you are going to be father-boss. Or father-bishop. Or maybe you are going to be father-old timer….father-veteran….father been-there, done-that, seen-it-all, been-through-it- all. Or maybe you are just going to be plain old father in the upstairs bedroom, waiting for sounds too-long absent, or too-late in coming….sounds like cars in the garage….steps on the porch….keys in the lock….voices in the hall….doors on the refrigerator (swinging open and shut)….sounds of home….sounds that say all is well, everyone is accounted for, and none is missing. Those sorts of sounds.
“We’ll keep the light on for you,” said Tom Bodette for ever-so-many years on behalf of the people of Motel 6. But until you have had to keep the light on for one who has not yet seen the light….or for one who has not yet come to the light….you have no way of knowing what it feels like to be the father in this story, or any father in any story, for that matter.
Which brings me to the third character. I am talking about the one most of us mock, but most of us are. I am talking “elder brother” here. I am talking about the one who makes it all go….the one on whom it all depends….the one who, were he or she to blow it all off (even for a day), it might all come apart. I am talking about those responsible folks without whom no self-respecting church or business could survive. I am talking about employees for whom sundown and Sabbath are just two more times of the week to work through….who come early, stay late and take work home….and who boast (at the end of their careers) that they have 17.4 years of accummulated sick time and vacation days earned, but not taken.
And I am also talking about “soccer moms” and “swim team dads” who would rather be caught dead than caught not coaching, not driving, not baking, not chaperoning, or not selling 50 cent Kit Kat bars to their friends and coworkers for five bucks, so that there will be a stash of cash for trophies, jerseys, and road trips at tournament time. All of which can be written off as a labor of love. But when confronted with others who do not pull similar weight….or any weight….there has got to be resentment. I mean, if the “elder brother” in you has never felt resentment, let me nominate you for sainthood.
Eight years in this church has taught me that not many of you toot your own horn. Or, if you do, you toot a muted horn. But there are a lot of you who are quick to notice the ones who are not even carrying a horn. And you are not necessarily bashful about pointing out the non-playing, non-paying, hitchhiking freeloaders among us. But why should this church be any different? Most preachers know that when they stand up to preach the story of the prodigal son, they are preaching to far more people coming in from the fields than coming back from the far country.
Which introduces all the major characters, don’t you see. All that is left is for them to come together on the night of the party. Which, in itself, has tended to bother folks in church. The party, I mean. Fred Craddock preached one Sunday in a neighboring town when the regular minister happened to be away. Fred preached on this text…not by choice, so much as by assignment. Leading a fellow to say after the service: “I really didn’t care much for that, frankly.” Fred continues:
I said, “Why?”
He said, “Well, I guess it’s not your sermon. I just don’t like that story.”
I said, “What is it you don’t like about it?”
He said, “It’s not morally responsible.”
I said, “What do you mean by that?
“Forgiving that boy,” he said.
I said, “Well, what would you have done?”
He said, “I think when he came home he should’ve been arrested.”
This fellow was serious. He’s an attorney, I thought. I thought he was going to tell me a joke. But he was really serious. He belonged to this unofficial organization nationwide, never has any meetings and doesn’t have a name, but it’s a very strong network that I call “quality control people.” They’re the moral police. Mandatory sentences and no parole, mind you, and executions.
I said, “What would you have given the prodigal?”
He said, “Six years.”
I suppose that fellow was happy on Monday. I suppose a lot of people were happy on Monday. I can understand that. I really can understand that. Justice has to be served. Laws have to be enforced. Crimes have to be punished. There has to be some way a society can say that there are things so abhorrent….so unconscionable….that they cannot be tolerated. I understand that.
Not that Monday’s way was necessarily my way. Nor would it have been “my way,” even if one of the lost ones had been mine. But I’m not going to get into it with you over that. In the Church of Jesus Christ, there is room for us to disagree. And I have not come to parse the house.
All I have come to do, really, is invite you to return (one last time) to this old chestnut of a story and enter it on the night of the party. Not by putting yourself in the position of the prodigal. Not by putting yourself in the position of the father. Not by putting yourself in the position of the elder brother. And certainly not by putting yourself (as did one playful colleague I know) in the position of the fatted calf….“every time a sinner repents, I get slaughtered and skewered.” I suppose it must have been Ecology Week. Or Bovine Appreciation Sunday.
“Well,” you say, “if you invite me to get inside the skin of the scripture….and if I am not the younger, the elder, the father or the cow….who else is there?”
I never thought about that much, until a couple of churches back (and several years ago) when the family up the street divorced, leaving three or four youngsters to fend pretty much for themselves. All of them were girls. But the youngest among them was especially attractive…. prematurely mature (if you know what I mean)….always in trouble….always up before the judge….always chasing around and hanging on the tail of every motorcycle that went roaring through the neighborhood. She finally was so truant and so involved in misdemeanors that the judge said, “You’re going to the reform school.” She was sent away to a detention home for girls. About the fourth or fifth month she was there, she gave birth to the child she was carrying. She was fifteen at the time.
Some months afterward, word came to the neighborhood that she was coming home. “Will she have that baby with her?” “Is she really coming home, back to our neighborhood?” The day we heard she was to come, all of us in the neighborhood had to mow our grass. We were out in our yards, mowing our grass, and watching the house. She didn’t show, so we kept watching the house and mowing the grass. I was down to about a blade at a time, you know. When a car pulled in the driveway—and out steps… “It’s Cathy. She has the baby. She brought home the baby.” People in the house ran out and grabbed her and took turns holding that baby, and they were all laughing and joking, then they went in. Another car pulled in, then another car pulled in, and another car. They started parking in the street. You couldn’t have gotten a Christian car down the street, just cars on either side, and they’re all gathering there, don’t you know. Suddenly I got disturbed and anxious and went in my house. It suddenly struck me, what if one of them saw me in the yard and said, “Hey, Bill, she’s home and she has the baby. We’re giving a party, and we’d like for you and Kristine to come.”
Well, I had a sermon to write….which I hadn’t gotten around to, what with all that cutting of the grass. Would I have gone? That’s a good question.
But wait a minute. Why should I always have to answer the tough questions, Sunday after Sunday? Let me ask you. If you lived next door to the prodigal son’s father’s house, would you have gone over to the party? The church is full of people who would rather preach on that than actually go to the party.
Note: The paragraphs referring to “what happened on Monday” make an obvious connection with the execution of Timothy McVeigh in Terre Haute, Indiana. The story that closes the sermon is obviously apocryphal, but is related to real life situations that all of us have experienced. Once again, I am indebted to a wonderful collection of relatively-fresh Fred Craddock material.
