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Sermon – Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32, L4, YC, March 30, 2025

18 Wednesday Jun 2025

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Having studied family systems, and living in a nuclear family with three first-born children, I am keenly aware of, if not wholly empathetic to the older brother in the story we traditionally call that parable of the prodigal son found in Luke’s gospel.  This is such a complex, intriguing story, that our attention is often focused just by naming this parable “The parable of the prodigal son.”  But a seminary professor once warned me that what we call parables highly influences our understanding of them.  I think that is why this year, being so captivated by the older brother, I might rename this story what scholar Rolf Jacobson calls the story:  The Lament of the Responsible Child.[i]

By renaming this parable The Lament of the Responsible Child, we immediately are able to reconsider his story – perhaps not as the petulant stick in the mud, but the justifiably angry family member.  The older son has done what has been expected of him.  He is obedient, hard-working, and would have never insulted his father as deeply as his younger brother does.  He is the consummate good and faithful servant.  And so, when his father, who, by the way, has never given much praise for the older son’s obedience, throws a party for his wayward brother, the older son finally snaps.  He throws a first-class temper tantrum, refusing to come into the party and then yells at his father about the injustice of such a party.

What is so visceral about the older son is we know his reaction all too well.  Two strong emotions take over the older son.  First, he is struck with a serious case of envy.  The older son sees the party for his wayward brother, and covets the party.  Out of respect of family tradition and cultural mores, he never asked for even the smallest of parties for himself and his friends.  But even responsible children get sucked into envy’s power.  I remember when our girls were younger reading one of the Berenstain Bears children’s books call the “Green-Eyed Monster.”  In the book, Brother Bear is celebrating his birthday, receiving gifts.  Sister Bear is mostly fine with this arrangement, remembering her own birthday party earlier in the year.  That is, until Brother Bear gets the most beautiful, sleek bicycle she has ever seen.  Then the Green-Eyed Monster takes over.  But just so that the adults do not think they are immune, before the story ends, Papa Bear gets a visit from the Green-Eyed Monster too when a neighbor gets a fancy new car.  The point is that envy and jealousy are all too familiar to us.

But envy isn’t the only emotion that takes over for the responsible child.  The other emotion that takes over is self-righteous indignation.  The older son is legitimately right about his younger brother.  His younger brother did sin, was disrespectful, behaved selfishly, and disgraced the entire family.  The younger brother does not deserve the reception he receives.  That is exactly what makes the reception so full of grace.  But the older son is so blinded by his self-righteous indignation, that he cannot see the blessing of his father’s reaction.  As one person describes his situation, the older brother is “standing outside in the dark, perfectly right and perfectly alone.”[ii]  Perfectly right, and perfectly alone.

 When I conduct premarital counseling with couples, we talk about the ways that spouses and partners behave in disagreements.  Every family and couple has them, and so our counseling focuses on handling disagreements in healthy ways.  I once had a priest tell me that the three most important words for any marriage are, “I.  Am.  Sorry.”  They sound like three words that are simple enough to say.  But, somehow, we have a hard time saying them.  Partly we struggle with saying them because we think they mean admitting guilt or, even worse, defeat.  Very few of us like to lose.  But that same priest told me, the next three most important words are, “You.  Are.  Forgiven.”  As hard as apologizing can be, sometimes forgiving can be even more difficult.  But forgiveness is the only thing that can keep our relationships in balance.  Ideally, by one person saying, “I am sorry,” and the other saying, “You are forgiven,” both parties give up some of their power.  Both parties submit something of themselves to the other.  When one party is unwilling to say one of those things, they become like the responsible child – perhaps perfectly in the right, but also perfectly alone in their rightness.

What the older brother teaches us is that sometimes we have a choice between being right and being in relationship.  In some ways, much like the younger son has been in a distant country, the older son is also in a distant country.  He has cutoff connection to his brother, to his father, and even to those who have gathered to rejoice over the new life his brother has been given.[iii]  In choosing to be right, he stands out in the darkness, unable to rejoice in another’s joy, closed off to the hope of redemption and reconciliation.  In endless paintings, woodcuts, and sculptures of this scene, whether Rembrandt, Jan Shoger, or Margaret Adams Parker, the older son stands at a distance, hands or arms crossed in front of him, cold and rigid.  Artists capture what our minds have already imagined – the guarded, distant body language of one choosing rightness over relationship.

Perhaps why the responsible child’s story is lingering with me is because we do not know how he responds to the father’s invitation – the invitation into his joy – to celebrate a reconciled relationship – much like the reconciliation the older brother can enjoy if the older brother just comes into the room.  The story ends with the ultimate cliffhanger that does not let you know whether the older son remains outside the party or comes inside the party.  Certainly the father’s desire is for him to come in, but we do not know whether the son chooses rightness or relationship.  I have wondered what would happen if the older brother went into the party.  What if the younger brother fell at his brother’s feet too, saying those three hardest words, “I am sorry.”  What if the two men simply embraced – saving words for later.  What if the joy and laughter of that room cracked through the older brother’s tough exterior, and warmth began to seep into his heart.  What if…

In many ways, I think the story ends openly to remind us that we too have a choice.  We too can choose to be right – to hold on to the things in life about which we are justifiably angry and disappointed.  We have every right to protect ourselves and even our family and friends from the kinds of behaviors that hurt us emotionally.  We can be guarded and keep our distance – standing out in the darkness of rightness.  Or we can choose to come into the party, and see what happens.  We may not be able to say “I am sorry,” or even, “You are forgiven,” but we can at least step through the door, into the warm glow of a room that is bursting with abundant grace and love for us and for all – that place where all are forgiven and all are loved.  Amen.

[i] Rolf Jacobson, as shared on “Sermon Brainwave:  #1014: Fourth Sunday in Lent (C) – Mar. 30, 2025,” March 11, 2025, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/1014-third-sunday-in-lent-c-mar-30-2025 on March 27, 2025.

[ii] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Evils of Pride and Self-Righteousness,” Living Pulpit, vol. 1, no. 4, O-D 1992, 39.

[iii] David Lose, “Preaching the Prodigal,” March 3, 2013, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/preaching-the-prodigal on March 27, 2025.

Sermon – Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32, L4, YC, March 6, 2016

10 Thursday Mar 2016

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Growing up, my Grandfather was considered a saint.  He was kind and funny.  He was a wiz in the kitchen, and he always made you feel good.  He was beloved by all, and was known as a champion for the underdog.  That narrative was affirmed at his funeral as we told stories of his kindness and generosity.  He was without blemish and probably could have remained so had I not asked questions.  But over coffee one day, I had a conversation about the saintliness of my grandfather with my aunt and uncle.  Over the course of our conversation they slowly opened my eyes about how my grandfather was more nuanced that I realized.  What I interpreted as kindness they helped me see as, at times, avoiding conflict to the detriment of others.  What I saw as peacemaking could be interpreted as not standing up to bullies.  Slowly the one-dimensional man I knew developed layers – layers of goodness and weakness; layers of helpfulness and harm; layers of perfection and flaws.

We regularly do the same thing with those who have died – whether canonized saints or beloved family members.  In death, we honor all the goodness about them and gloss over the bad parts.  A classic example is one of my favorite modern-day saints, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He spearheaded a movement with grace, insight, and boldness and inspired generations.  But I remember reading later in life how his treatment of women in the Civil Rights Movement was not always as admirable.  Slowly his layers emerged for me.  Although I still admire his work and writings, his life is more nuanced now.

Now some people will argue that we should not speak ill of the dead – that we should show our respect by letting go of the bad and only honoring the good.  In some respects, I understand why people do not want to dishonor the dead.  But I think telling stories that only make others seem perfect without honoring their flaws hurts us more than helps us.  That is why I love the parable of the two sons from our gospel today.  I resists calling the parable the parable of the prodigal son because I think both sons have something to teach us.[i]  In the parable, we can easily see the two brothers in one-dimensional ways.  The older brother is the good and faithful son for loyally supporting his father and the family business.  The younger brother is the bad son who insults his father, squanders his ill-gotten inheritance, and shamefully asks for more than he deserves.  Those one-dimensional stories are stories we know.  We have friends, family members, or maybe some of us even who are those characters – the responsible older sibling, or the troublemaking younger sibling; the child whom the parent always brags about, or the child about whom the parent seems embarrassed; the child who brings the family honor, or the child who brings the family shame.

But like any good parable, these characters are not as one-dimensional as they seem.  I was thinking about the younger brother this week and I realized we never hear about his impression of the party his father throws.  We suspect he is grateful for his father’s forgiveness, and we honor the humble way the younger son repents, but that party must have been hard.  Everyone at the party knows his sin.  Asking for his portion of his father’s inheritance before his father’s death was tantamount to wishing his father were dead.[ii]  In order for his father to give the younger son the money, he would have had to have sold off some land – a fate even worse for a culture who understood their land to be God’s promised gift.[iii]  Though his father’s forgiveness must have been a relief, I cannot imagine the rest of the town being so gracious.  I wonder whether the son stayed humble and repentant during the party; whether he was able to relax into his newfound forgiveness, laughing and joking; or whether he felt uncomfortable, bristling from his neighbors’ judgment and sideways glances.

Of course, we cannot forget the older brother.  The dutiful, obedient, hardworking brother loses all his perfection in his reaction to this party.  The older brother throws a temper tantrum of epic proportions.  He whines about the abundance his father shows his brother – perhaps rightfully so, since the money and fatted calf used for the party comes from what is left of the older son’s inheritance.[iv]  He complains about how he has never experienced such bounty and celebration.  He resents his father’s lack of gratitude for all the older son’s dutiful work.  Some of the son’s indignation is warranted.  He was, in fact, the good son, and his younger brother had behaved badly.  But the rewards of the story are not playing out so simply.  The older brother overreacts.  You see, his response is equally disgraceful to his father.  In the day of this parable, the host of a party was never to leave his guests.  Going to his older son would have been seen as disrespectful to the guests he had invited.[v]  But just like he goes out to meet his younger son, the father goes out to meet the older son, offering him similar generosity and abundance in the face of his son’s sin.

Part of why we love this parable so much is that we can identify with all the characters.  We are a people of nuanced layers too.  We have our younger son moments and our older son moments.  We have moments when we are bastions of forgiveness and grace, and moments when we withhold that forgiveness and grace.  Those among us who are known as having deep wells of patience have our moments when we snap.  And those among us who are known as being judgmental or stern have our moments of insightful kindness.

Our layers are why we have seasons like Lent and days for healing prayers.  In Lent, we shuffle home from our partying, wastefulness, and self-centeredness and return to our forgiving Lord.  In Lent, we bring our resentfulness, jealousy, and self-righteousness to the altar as we long for another way. In Lent, we bring our judgment of others and our judgment of ourselves and exchange them for freedom for humility and compassion.  Having a healing service in Lent allows us to do those things in a tangible way – not just to pray for physical healing of ourselves and others, but to pray for spiritual healing for those layers that are not as beautiful as others.

In order to honor that work of self-reflection and repentance, the church gives us what is called Rose Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, or even Mothering Sunday.  The idea is that being half-way through Lent, we take a day to break our fasting in these forty days.  In many parishes, to reflect the respite from penitence and fasting, the vestments and paraments change from their usual Lenten array to a beautiful rose-colored array.  On this day, we take a break from wallowing in ashes and our sack cloths, and we find refreshment in our Lord’s forgiveness and redemption.  In England, apprentice boys took this day off to visit their mothers, hence the one designation as Mothering Sunday.  We hear that invitation into gladness today in our psalm, “Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away!  Happy are they to whom the Lord imputes no guilt, and in whose spirit there is no guile!”[vi]  After weeks of repentance, heaviness, and weight, today the church invites us into forgiveness, lightness, and joy.

Rose Sunday is like the father in our parable today – full of forgiveness, grace, and love for us and all our layers – the good and the not-so-good – because we all have the layers.  Today the church runs out to greet us, leaves a good party, and meets us where we are – and loves us.  Today, the church says, “I see your layers, and I love all the parts of you, fully.”  Today the church is a fool for forgiveness, not wisely teaching us a lesson about humility, but senselessly lavishing upon us grace, love, and freedom from our self-centeredness and self-righteousness.  On this refreshment Sunday, the church invites us to remember that we are beloved children of God, a God who knows all our layers and loves us anyway.

I invite you today to take on the fullness of refreshment this day.  Whatever you have been working on this Lent, whatever guilt you have been harboring, or whatever sinfulness you have been examining, know that your sins are forgiven.  Know that you can come forward for healing prayers, not asking for healing and wholeness, but celebrating the healing and wholeness you have already experienced.  Know that you can come to the Eucharistic table not just for solace only but for strength; not just for pardon only, but for renewal.  As we say in our Rite I prayers, Jesus says to us, “Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”[vii]  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “Perspective Matters,” February 28, 2016, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4553 as found on March 3, 2016.

[ii] N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004),187.

[iii] Leslie J. Hoppe, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 119.

[iv] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family,” April 17, 2006, as found at http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com/newsletter374062.htm on March 3, 2016.

[v] David Lose, “Lent 4 C:  The Prodigal God,” February 28, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-4-c-the-prodigal-god/ on March 3, 2016.

[vi] Psalm 32.1-2.

[vii] Matthew 11.28.  BCP 332.

Sermon – Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32, L4, YC March 10, 2013

15 Friday Mar 2013

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The parable of the prodigal son is one of those beloved parables – the perfect parable for a Lenten journey.  Part of the story’s perfection is that there are so many characters with which to connect.  This year, I have been lingering on the older son.  The older son has every reason to be angry with his father’s lavish forgiveness.  The older son has done what has been expected of him.  He is obedient, hard-working, and would have never insulted his father as deeply as his brother does.  He is the consummate good and faithful servant.  And so when his father, who, by the way, has never given much praise for the older son’s obedience, throws a party for his wayward brother, the older son finally snaps.  He throws a first-class temper tantrum, refusing to come into the party and then yells at his father about the injustice of such a party.

What is so real for us with the older son is that we know his reaction all too well.  Two strong emotions take over the older son.  First, he is struck down with a serious case of envy.  The older son sees the party for his wayward brother, and covets the party.  Never once has he been offered even the smallest of parties for himself and his friends.  The older son has a case of what the Berenstain Bears children’s books call the “Green-Eyed Monster.”  In the Berenstain’s book, The Green-Eyed Monster, Brother Bear is celebrating his birthday, receiving gifts.  Sister Bear is mostly fine with this arrangement, remembering her own birthday party earlier in the year.  That is, until Brother Bear gets the most beautiful, sleek bicycle she has ever seen.  Then the Green-Eyed Monster takes over.  But just so that the adults do not think they are immune, before the story ends, Papa Bear gets a visit from the Green-Eyed Monster too when a neighbor gets a fancy new car.  The point is that envy and jealousy are all too familiar to us.

The other emotion that takes over is self-righteous indignation.  The older son is clearly right about his younger brother.  His younger brother did sin, was disrespectful, behaved selfishly, and disgraced the entire family.  The younger brother does not deserve the reception he receives.  But that is exactly what makes the reception so full of grace.  But the older son is so blinded by his self-righteous indignation, that he cannot see the blessing of his father’s reaction.  As one person describes his situation, the older brother is “standing outside in the dark, perfectly right and perfectly alone.”[i]

When we do premarital counseling, we talk about the ways that spouses and partners behave in disagreements.  Every family and couple has them, and so our counseling is a way to talk about handling disagreements in a healthy way.  I once had a priest tell me that the three most important words for any marriage are, “I.  Am.  Sorry.”  They sound like three words that are simple enough to say.  But somehow we have such a hard time saying them.  Partly I think we struggle with saying them because we think they mean admitting guilt or, even worse, defeat.  And few of us like to lose.  But that same priest told me, the next three most important words are, “You.  Are.  Forgiven.”  As hard as apologizing can be, sometimes forgiving can be even more difficult.  But forgiveness is the only thing that can keep our relationships in balance.  Ideally, by one person saying, “I am sorry,” and the other saying, “You are forgiven,” both parties give up some of their power.  Both parties submit something of themselves to the other.  When one party is unwilling to say one of these things, they become like the older son – perhaps perfectly in the right, but also perfectly alone in their rightness.

What the older brother teaches us is that sometimes we have a choice between being right and being in relationship.  In some ways, much like the younger son has been in a distant country, the older son is also in a distant country.  He has cutoff connection to his brother, to his father, and even to those who have gathered to rejoice over the new life his brother has been given.[ii]  In choosing to be right, he stand out in the darkness, unable to rejoice in another’s joy, closed off the hope of redemption and reconciliation.  In Rembrandt’s The Prodigal Son, the older son stands at a distance, hands crossed in front of him, standing in a darker section of the painting.  His face is lighted, but only to highlight the way in which his distance is important.  Like in the parable, Rembrandt shows the older son, in his rigid, distant body language, as choosing rightness over relationship at that moment.

In the face of this stubborn resistance to forgiveness and grace, the father in the parable shows equal abundance toward his two sons.  According to etiquette of the time, leaving his guests at a party was a breach of social mores.[iii]  But the father ignores social mores for both sons.  The father disregards common practice, and seeks out his older son in the same way that he ran to his younger son upon his return.  The father reminds the older son of the promise that still awaits him.  Then the father invites him into his joy – to celebrate a reconciled relationship – much like the reconciliation the older brother can enjoy if he just comes into the room.

Perhaps why the older son’s story is lingering with me is because we do not know how he responds to the father’s invitation.  The story ends with the ultimate cliffhanger that does not let you know whether the older son remains outside the party or comes inside the party.  Certainly the father’s desire is for him to come in, but we do not know whether the son chooses rightness or relationship.  I have wondered what would happen if the older brother went into the party.  What if the younger brother fell at his brother’s feet too, saying those three hardest words, “I am sorry.”  What if the two men simply embraced – saving words for later.  What if the joy and laughter of that room cracked through the older brother’s tough exterior, and warmth began to seep into his heart.  What if…

In many ways, I think the story ends openly to remind us that we too have a choice.  We too can choose to be right – to hold on to the things in life about which we are justifiably angry and disappointed.  We have every right to protect ourselves and even our family and friends from the kinds of behaviors that hurt us emotionally.  We can be guarded and keep our distance – standing out in the darkness of rightness.  Or we can choose to come into the party, and see what happens.  We may not be able to say “I am sorry,” or even, “You are forgiven,” but we can at least step through the door, into the warm glow of a room that is bursting with abundant grace and love for us and for all – that place where all are forgiven and all are loved.  Amen.

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Evils of Pride and Self-Righteousness,” Living Pulpit, vol. 1, no. 4, O-D 1992, 39.

[ii] David Lose, “Preaching the Prodigal,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=672 on March 8, 2013.

[iii] Leslie J. Hoppe, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 119.