Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Lent 4 Year C March 18, 2007
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
The Rev. Melissa M. Skelton
All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."
So Jesus told them this parable:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "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."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe--the best one--and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.
"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
At the end of the Movie “Smoke Signals,” Thomas, a young Native American man, scatters the ashes of his friend’s father off a Spokane bridge. As the ashes cascade down, we see his friend Victor, a tall, tough Native American young man, on his knees finally mourning the death of his far-from-perfect father, a man who had deserted him and his mother when he was only a boy.
As all this is happening, we hear the words of poem being read. It’s a poem called “Forgiving our Fathers”, and it’s about the challenge to each of us to forgive our fathers for not measuring up to what we had hoped and dreamed they would be.
How do we forgive our fathers?
Maybe in a dream.
Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often,
or forever,
when we were little?
Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage,
or for making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all?
Do we forgive our fathers for marrying,
or not marrying,
our mothers?
And shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth
or coldness?
Shall we forgive them
for pushing
or leaning?
For shutting doors?
For speaking through walls?
Or never speaking?
Or never being silent?
Do we forgive our fathers in our age or in theirs?
Or in their deaths,
saying it to them,
or not saying it?
Native American director of the film, Sherman Alexie, when asked about the ending had this to say: "I've seen the film hundreds of times, and the ending still gets me… when the film goes from a simple, tender domestic drama and becomes spiritual, universal, tragic. The movie is about these Indians, but it seems to affect everyone's life. It's been astonishing: I had no idea of the huge, aching, father wound, of all genders, colors, races. After one screening, a woman told me, 'I'm going to call my father. I haven't talked to him in 12 years.' I saw her in the lobby on the phone."
“There was a man who had two sons,” Jesus begins. And what follows is a parable about a father: the kind of father all of us yearn for but few of us get to have or get to have for very long. He is a father who is not given to fits of anger or periods of withdrawal or abandonment. He is instead the father who receives anger, withdrawal and abandonment from his own children, from his own sons, and in the face of these things, offers them not recrimination but love, generosity and forgiveness.
And so in what should be called “the parable of the loving father,” we are asked to imagine that God is like this, that no matter what kind of parents we had or have, no matter what kind of hand we have been dealt, no matter what we ourselves have done, that God is like this loving father, and that this somehow makes a difference---this love, this generosity, this forgiveness, makes a real difference in our lives.
But how do we touch this love, this generosity, this forgiveness or how do we allow it to touch us when we need it? Writer Anne Lamott, who’ll be in Seattle at the end of the month, talks about a time when she desperately needed access to this kind of God. It was after the death of her own father and after a string of actions that led her far away from herself and from anything that resembled the image of Christ. She got heavily into drugs, alcohol, and a series of affairs with married men. It was a terrible time for her—a time of suffering and sickness. She describes a period when she began to feel so low, she found herself calling a suicide hotline but then hanging up. She also found herself taking walks by the local Episcopal Church.
She had heard that they had a new priest—a fellow by the name of Bill Rankin—and still feeling completely awkward about doing it, she called him and went in to see him.
“It took me 45 minutes to walk there,” writes Lamott, “but this skinny, middle-aged guy was still in his office when I arrived. My first impression was that he was smart and profoundly tenderhearted. My next was that he was really listening, that he could hear what I was saying—and so I let it all tumble out—the X rated motels (with married men), my father’s death, a hint that maybe every so often I drank too much. I don’t remember much of his response except that when I said I didn’t think God could love me, he said, “God has to love you. That’s God’s job.”
“There was a man who had two sons,” Jesus begins, and what follows is the story about a God of love, of generosity and of forgiveness, a God who outruns the brokenness of our lives, outruns our own sense of our unworthiness and even outruns the judgment of others. There was a man with two sons.
And this man, of course, is supposed to be God, and if we have our eyes open, this God is present to us under so many other guises and in so many other places—present in the skinny priest in the California church who said “God has to love you. That’s God’s job.” Present in the partner or spouse who continues to love us through all our pathologies and screw ups. Present in the friend who after hearing our tale of woe yet one more time reaches across the table and takes our hand. Present in the patient therapist or spiritual director who helps us face our demons over and over again. Present in the string of men, women and children who all our lives have gathered us unconditionally in their arms in one way or another.
Present even in the longings we carry in the deepest parts of ourselves for the generous father—the one who upon seeing us dragging ourselves back home after all the wrong turns, the bad attitudes, the broken dreams, the dead-end paths, does not stand at a distance waiting with an “I told you so” or a handful of moral lessons we should have learned from our painful experiences.
Our longing for the generous father who, seeing us weary and vulnerable, hurries to meet us just as we round the corner and begin our trek toward home, who grabs us with a hug while shouting over his shoulder for someone to make our favorite dish, by God, and to turn the radio up loud.
“There was a man who had two sons,” Jesus begins. And in telling the parable Jesus is opening a window onto the unbelievable, the preposterous love, generosity and forgiveness of God—a generosity that has already spilled into our lives if we only have the eyes to see it, the ears to hear it, the awareness to feel it, the willingness to let it sink in.
Let it sink in. Let it sink in.
Works Cited or Consulted
The poem “Forgiving our Fathers” is by Dick Lourie and was read during the closing credits of the film Smoke Signals. A portion if it is included in the sermon.
