Sermon: Prodigal Love (Luke 15:1-3,11b-32)

In the everyday affairs of swapping carpool duty, returning phone calls, balancing checkbooks, and answering emails, and a host of dealings with other human beings, we may at some point allow the chilly thought creep in: "It's not fair." Maybe it happens when glancing at a co-worker who is spending more time on Facebook than the current project. It may cross our minds when we cook the dinner and do the dishes. Perhaps it is feeling like we've had too many responsibilities dumped on us or maybe it is when someone takes credit for our idea. Or we feel bitterness rise in our throats for no apparent reason. One morning this past week I hurried my daughter Eva to the car, snapping at her like an alligator. After clicking her seat-belt, Eva observed like a suave journalist, "you're in a bad mood, mom."

The older brother stays at home, working feverishly, stewing over his younger brother having taken off, discarding the family and wasting away their father's money on cheap thrills. His brother is called prodigal, which means lavish, recklessly extravagant. His resentment building, he cried out, "It's not fair!" The father has not been keeping score. He loves his children unconditionally. He has been waiting for his son to return. He could just as appropriately be described as prodigal -- lavish, excessively extravagant, calling for a feast, uncorking the finest wine, heaping grace onto his son who had wandered off. The younger brother realizes how foolish he's been. He returns to his father, but his brother thinks it is too little, too late. He's already been serving his father. But where is his heart? He did not recognize that he had been offered his father's grace all along, As his father told him, "what is mine is yours!" The father offers unending forgiveness, he longs for reconciliation. Reconciliation means "radical exchange." It is not like reconciling an account, where everything put in equals everything taken out. Radical exchange is something much different. It is exchanging division for relationship, self-seeking for service, fear for love, greed for generosity.

We probably all have relationships that feel off-kilter. The friendship accounts in our brains show that we should do more for this friend and feel guilty, but with relationship X we are being taken advantage of - why are we the ones to get emotionally dumped on? And when was the last time they paid for dinner? Biblical reconciliation is a radical exchange. It is based on the foundation of our reconciliation to God. A religion professor commented on the story, "The father settles the transgressor’s debt not by exacting revenge or meting out punishment but by setting a table. The forgiveness that is offered and received, the reconciliation that has begun (that will take time to complete), is not a private transaction between two people but a meal for the nourishment and healing of the whole community." (Debra Dean Murphy in her blog, Intersections: Thoughts on Religion, Culture, and Politics).

While the younger son was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Reconciliation is God's initiative. While we begin considering turning back to God, God is already running to us with outstretched arms. God yearns to engage in a radical exchange with us. We are prone to wander -- we get lost, sometimes in trying on experiences and values that simply don't satisfy. God welcomes us back home again and again. When we are welcomed in a home, we are offered food and drink. We are welcomed by God with sustenance, nourishment, and warmth for our souls -- if we take our place at the table, if we are open to receive.

Jesus shared his meals with all sorts - including those who did not work for the betterment of society - those who squeezed every last coin out of the pockets of the poor, those who scoffed at the law. Those who did not seek to make others succeed, but only themselves. Looking in on that meal, we can see why it would feel unfair. Why the older brother is more than miffed. We are not enculturated to engage in extravagant love. But the celebration we are invited to is a meal that is open to all. Sara Miles, in her spiritual memoir Take this Bread, describes the food pantry she began in an Episcopal Church in San Francisco. When people from the community process in to fill their grocery bags, no ID cards are needed. The food is on and surrounding the altar. Candles are lit, icons are displayed, blessings are given. It is a receiving of God's grace, food that is available to all. The extravagant prodigal nature that Jesus modeled for us goes way beyond interpersonal reconciliation and extends to the reconciliation of communities, nations, and the world.

We are always returning to the heart of God. Always needing the reminder that we are God's beloved children. We may leave and return daily, hourly, or from one moment to the next. Returning after being distracted by the worries and cares of life, returning to home, the womb of God. Henri Nouwen wrote that there is hope for us even after experiencing the most divisive of personal encounters . . . "There's nothing as painful as being rejected, but it it is lived against the background of the first love, it becomes possible to survive. This is a story of the spiritual life."

I find it interesting that so many couples choose 1 Corinthians 13 to be read at their weddings. Do we really want to remind ourselves that true love keeps no record of wrongs?! We can give and give and give and appear to be have a heart overflowing with love, but may be internally grumbling like the older brother. The elder son says "All these years I have slaved for you." He never needed to earn his father's love, it was graced to him before his first breath! Yet he tried so hard to earn his father's favor. He bitterly referred to his brother as "this son of yours." Resentment, what Nouwen described as cold anger, lodges in our hearts and hides there, causing us to lose ourselves. The letter to the Ephesians tells us that God's Spirit is grieved by bitterness. With a prodigal heart, we can return from resentment to gratitude.

Our society can be described by divisions. Divisions based on race, ethnicity, political affiliation, income, values. Divisions in families because of past hurts. Divisions in churches because of disagreements. Divisions abound because of fear, of not being open to the other, because it is so hard to let go of that very human urge to keep score.

We have all been hurt by people in our lives. Our parents, our children, our aunts and uncles, our neighbors, church members and strangers, are unable to perfectly reflect God's unconditional love. We too have hurt others. God who loves us extravagantly, gives us the freedom to wander away.

A friend of mine often reminds herself to release her expectations, and live in reality. If we expect to be perfectly loved by human beings, we will be disappointed. They may be trying to reflect God's love, and in some ways they truly do. But God's spirit dwelling within and among us is the perfect love that is real. When we return to the heart of God, we remember who we are.

We have all been lost, frustrated that the grass was not greener when we wandered away, we have been the younger brother. We have hung our heads in shame. We have been resentful, we have seethed over being unfairly uncared for. We have been the elder brother. But where do we go from there? Do we crouch in fear, in anger, in shame? Or do we open ourselves, and take our place at the table? We can begin by saying thanks. What are we grateful for? When we feel like the older brother, we can ask ourselves this question. If we have a hard time answering, we may need to venture outside of our box. We may need to look up at the night sky on a clear night and breathe in some amazing. We may need to get down on our knees and think back over the last day, the last week, the last year, and ask God to show how God's spirit was there with us, especially when we were at our lowest. We can ask God's blessing on those we are having trouble getting along with--or that person who has it all together, who you find yourself hoping that she'll trip and fall. The older brother secretly hoped that if his brother ever returned, he would be shown the door, that he would be told, "if only you had been like your older brother." That his father would be even more pleased with his hard work. But that is not the logic of the kin-dom of God.

The story Jesus told is left hanging. The brothers have yet to reconcile. How will we reconcile with those in our lives, how will we begin the radical exchange? Begin by taking that first step, grounding ourselves in God's love, and open our hearts, our lives. How will we be a church, a community, a kin-dom that keeps no score cards, whose love is given extravagantly? By looking always to God. By trusting that God will give us the strength that we need to come together despite differences, past injustices and pain.

Reckless extravagance calls for celebration. Celebrate people by affirming them, showing your gratitude, by lifting a glass to friendship and love. The celebration and thanksgiving is shared with everyone. Judgment has no place at the table. Resentment has no place at the table. At the party we are connected deeply with community. In this true community, there is no settling of scores, no keeping track, no need to worry about what people think. Think of who you've invited to your table, to whom have you shown a grace that is not of this world? Who might you invite? Who may need to be shown prodigal love?

Rembrandt painted The Return of the Prodigal Son at the end of his life after enduring immense suffering. He had witnessed the deaths of his children and wives and after living quite recklessly was stuck in financial ruin. He was bitter for a time, arrogant and was very difficult to get along with. But at some point he released that bitterness. His biographers believe that that he learned through his losses to become completely dependent on God. When he died, only one book was found among his possessions: his Dutch Bible. He realized that love and compassion outshines all of the worldly pleasures he tried on. He painted his self-portrait into the Prodigal Son painting, depicting himself as the father tenderly welcoming his son home.

May we be so welcoming, so grounded in the grace of God, so nourished and filled by the Spirit, that we find that all of the relationship accounts in our brains, all of the counters and trackers of deeds, have dissolved, and that they are replaced with reckless extravagance, with a prodigal nature. May we celebrate and give thanks.