Sermons

THERE WAS A MAN WHO HAD TWO SONS
Sermon Preached by Jon M. Walton
March 14, 2004

Scripture: Psalm 32; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“There was a man who had two sons,” begins what is one of the best known of all Jesus’ parables. And of course, every family that has two sons or two daughters who are somewhat close in age and in contention know that this parable is about them, because rivalry is inherent among siblings.

Money is involved as well. Not just any money, but inheritance money. And wherever there is that in a family, there is a story, isn’t there?

“There was a man who had two sons,” the parable begins, and we know from the outset that this is going to be a story with trouble in it. Two sons... and a father! Definitely a story with trouble in it.

Someday, I want to write a sermon about the mother in this family, the woman who watched her two sons grow up with enmity between them, who tried with all her heart to make them get along, who talked with her husband so many times about her fear that they might turn on one another. They were, after all, so different.
The first boy, dutiful, obedient, always looking out for her and her husband, looking to please, never sure that he had. “Can I help you bring in the laundry and fold it,” he would say. “What can I do to help you, Mom?” he would ask. “Do you need some wood for the fire tonight?” he would offer. He always did what they asked, but there was something about the duty of it that came through.

The younger son, was more of a challenge, so unpredictable. Always out past dark playing with his friends. Always up to something; a note sent home from school by his teacher said he had stuffed towels in the toilets and made them overflow.
He had a wild streak as he became a teenager, everybody in town could see it, a kind of Todd Bertuzzi who could come up behind you on the ice and knock you down for some old grudge, and do a lot of damage before he realized it. He was a kid who leaped before he looked. Together they were Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, two opposite brothers.
She loved them both, this mother, the way only a parent can, a mother or a father who sees deeply into the heart of a child and sees a part of themselves.

There came a day, these two now grown up... not a good day... when the younger son went to his father and asked for his part of the inheritance. Two thirds, according to Jewish law at the time went to the older boy. The younger was due the last one third when his father died.

It was not so much the money that was the issue, of course, estates are settled every day. The problem was that the estate was being settled with the father still alive. At the least it was thoughtless and selfish on the younger son’s part, mindless of his father’s feelings and reaction. At the worst it was the younger son’s apparent wish that his old man was dead.

What father wouldn’t get that message if a son or daughter came to him and said, “Whatever it is you’re planning on leaving me when you die, why don’t you just give it to me now?”

We all have moments we’d like to take back. Something we said that, once it left our mouth, we already regretted. And while I don’t think I would credit the younger son with that much self-transcendence at this point, you can’t help but know that those words of self-seeking on the part of the younger son were words that cut his dad to the quick.
To the amazement of everybody in town especially the older brother, the father gave the younger son exactly what he requested. And the kid took no time at all to put his toothbrush in a bag, and his Oakley sunglasses on his nose, and got out of town.

He took a loft in Soho with a view at night across the river that would take your breath away. And from there it was quite a ride. Fast cars, fast friends, long weekends in the winter skiing in Vermont, summer at the beach in the Hamptons. Circuit parties. Limousines. Body jewelry, tattoos in interesting locations. And friends, at least I guess that’s what you call them, friends of a sort. As long as the money is there, people hang around. And there was plenty of money… for awhile. Until… it all ran out.

And then, one morning the kid woke up with the party-crashers sleeping on the floor, and the empty bottles on the coffee table, and the landlord banging on the door telling him he’d missed too many months of rent. He was broke and hadn’t noticed until then.

His credit down, and suddenly on the street, he took a job for awhile selling tickets at a strip joint in Hell’s Kitchen, pretty seedy, and he hoped that nobody would see him. But one day somebody came by and did recognize him, an old friend of his brother’s from back home, a tourist in town, who did a double take on the street and looked startled and disbelieving.
It was probably that look of utter disbelief, the kind of look on another’s face that acts like a mirror and tells you how far you have fallen that did it. Because it was essentially at that point that the prodigal came to his senses. He was falling apart and there was no way he was going to get himself back together again without a little help from the people he had hurt.

Hard as it was to come to the conclusion, he decided there was no place to go but home. Robert Frost once said that home is where, “When you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Of course, it’s not always so, which is what scared this prodigal, but it was his last option and he burned all his other bridges.

Anybody here who has been in this kid’s position can tell you just how humiliating and difficult what he did was.
He thought about it all the way home on the bus, what it was that he was going to say to his father when he saw him. He had the dialogue worked out. “Father I have sinned against you and heaven. I’m not worthy to be called your son. Please take me in and treat me like a hired hand, because after all I’ve done to you I wouldn’t expect to be treated like a son any more.”
Was it sincere? Maybe. Was it his last resort? You bet. This was the only thing this kid had left, to go home and face his father and his older brother, and his mother, and everybody in town, and do so bearing the guilt of all that he had done. That, or maybe die on the street while begging for nickels to support an existence that was no longer viable.
There was a man who had two sons. Back at the farm… there was an older brother. And you can boo and hiss this kid all you want, but it is on the shoulders of such as this older son that a just and ordered society exists.

He did everything that the younger son rejected. He stayed home to take care of his aging parents. Got married and settled down early. He got up at five o’clock in the morning every day and milked the cows, and raked the muck in the horse stalls, and threw the feed out in the barnyard for the chickens, and shoveled the grain into the silo with the hot sun on his bare back in the heat of the day.

He rode the fence line twice a week to look for breaks in the wire, and fixed the tractor when it broke down to save on garage expenses. He sacrificed for his own kids, coached the Little League team, went to all the swim meets in which his daughter competed, paid his taxes on time, even reported the income from the fruit stand that the family had out on the side of the road in the summer when they harvested some extra tomatoes and broccoli and squash and sold it.
He volunteered for meals on wheels and sang in the church choir, taught Sunday school, pledged 10% of the family income to the church (before taxes), and donated time to Habitat for Humanity.

He was a dutiful son. Bringing honor to the family’s name, supporting his aging dad, honoring his graying mother, providing grandchildren to uphold the family farm, and in every way being the ideal son.
And, in spite of all he did to earn his father’s respect, all that he did to counteract the disgrace that his younger brother had brought on the family name in that town, all the good reasons he had shown to prove to his parents that he was the good son, and his brother the bad son - in spite of all that - it was a fact that the father’s eyes would nonetheless look with longing toward the horizon as the sun set every day to see if maybe there was that one familiar figure walking toward the house from the distance.

Sure the older son would have liked to have seen the city’s lights, seen a play or two, gone to a party, stayed out all night, put down a few drinks.
But no. Whatever desire he felt along those lines was nothing in comparison to the compulsion he felt to earn his father’s love, to work like a slave from dawn to dusk, to fulfill the commandments regarding dutiful sons, to more than fulfill every jot and tittle of the law, religious and social.
There was a man who had two sons, the story tells us, and even so, the real focus of the story is neither of the sons, but the father.

Because the day does arrive when over the horizon the setting sun bears that prodigal home, that younger son whom everybody knew was a waste of time. And we see him getting off the bus, and walking down the road to the point where, just as the sun began to touch the earth, he started walking through the gate and down the dirt road toward the old farmhouse. While he was still rehearsing the confession he wanted to make, his father hiked up his robe and ran out to him and fell on his neck with kisses and welcomed him home. The boy couldn’t even say how sorry he was; only that he was not worthy to be called a son before the father smothered him with affection.

And his dad ordered a robe put on his son’s shoulders, a sign of hospitality and honor; and a ring to symbolize his restoration to authority; and a fatted calf, a sign of great festive importance, a celebration for the whole town, so that this boy could be restored to the community as well. The disgrace was to be forgiven because he who was wronged held no enmity.
Out in the field, the elder brother hears the band tuning up in the house and the sound of champagne corks popping out of the bottles. The caterer’s trucks are parked in front of the house, and it is unmistakable that something big is going on inside.

In his heart of hearts he knows that this is the day he has most dreaded, the day that his no account brother would come home, and like the spoiled brat that he is, be forgiven everything by his wishy-washy dad.
He waits as long as he can before moving toward the house, and finally when he can stand it no longer, he heads for the front yard. He is determined not to go in, because his father’s hired hands are confirming for him that his little brother has come home. While he is still out in the yard, hosing off his boots, his father comes out to him.
And there, in an exchange that pretty much puts the whole thing into its clearest light, the father and the elder brother speak of forgiveness.

The older boy has a legitimate complaint. “All these years I have been working like a slave for you every day. I have fulfilled the commandments. I have taken good care of you and mom. I’m up early and down late, holding this place together, overseeing the workers. I haven’t so much as taken a drink or thrown a party or wasted a thing of yours. I’ve been here day after day when you’ve needed me and I’ve never taken one step off the straight and narrow.

And now this son of yours, not my brother, but this son of yours comes home after whoring around in the city, and blowing our family’s money, and ruining our reputation, and you’re willing to take him in. You’re even throwing a party for him when he’s done nothing to earn your respect or love, as I have, and you haven’t even given me so much as an old goat to cook for a party, much less a fatted calf. And what’s this with the robe, and the ring, and the party anyway? Have you no respect, at long last, have you no respect for me or for yourself?

It hangs there for a moment. Out on the lawn, with the sound of the band playing “Roll Out the Barrels” inside the house, and the laughter of all the aunts and uncles and neighbors who have come for a slice of the fatted calf from the barbecue.
Until the father speaks. “Son,” he said, “son” which under these circumstances is a name of boundless grace and unconditional love, “Son,” he said, “you are always with me, all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

And that’s it. The parable ends there. The camera backs away, and backs away, and backs away, until it becomes a distant view of the father with his arm around the shoulder of the elder brother, the lights in the windows of the house behind them, the sound of the music blasting out, and the mother standing in the doorway perhaps, half in the door and half out, watching to see if her two boys will be able to get together once again.

It is left unresolved. And so will it be today, as well. For to tell you the ending is to ruin the story. And there is no ending anyway. Because we’re still creating that ending, finishing the story, you and me, as we go along.
Does the older son go into the house? Does the younger go out to join his dad and brother? Does the younger kid really get his act together, stay at home, restore himself in the community? How do folks treat the younger boy at the church now that he has been welcomed back by his father? And is this a story of a family that really comes back together or one that always lives with some level of tension and stress, as families are want to do.

Of course, it’s not just a story about a family having trouble getting it together, even though it sounds a lot like most families I’ve known. Because the larger family that’s being described here is the church, God’s children, siblings in the family of which we are a part, and how we get along knowing how much God wants us to be reconciled to one another.
And we don’t get along in the church. Not that we fight inter-denominationally so much as we fight internally, inside the family. We label each other conservatives and liberals and draw the battle lines on gay marriage, on the ordination of ministers and the consecration of bishops, and how we view our Jewish brothers and sisters and whether they’re saved or not, and what chastity means, and whether if you are a sinner and commit the same sin again you lose your status as a saved person.

The elder brothers and sisters of the faith, are law and order. They see the distinctions clearly, keep a tight morality, are long on law and short on grace, because they are not convinced that with this much grace floating around they can trust God to be just.

The younger brothers and sisters can’t quote scripture very well, replace justice with mercy much of the time, get embarrassed about salvation, and aren’t sure if anything is really wrong. They are not quite convinced with so much cold hearted justice floating around how much they can trust God to be merciful.

And then there’s God, embarrassingly in love with us, unable to stop loving us, hoping that the unconditional, unrestricted love that holds us close when we are near and when we are far away, will be enough to bind us together, elder and younger siblings that we are.

I don’t know how it all comes out. Not yet. I only know that if we trust God more, and listen to ourselves less, it will be very difficult to keep ourselves apart.