I dons't think any of them could pronounce, let alone understand, "Transubstantiation," but they can receive if they grasp that this is not bread, that Jesus Himself wants to live in them.The Reverend James Bradley's sermon from Sunday. My son heard it and we all thought it was beautiful. In fact, at the very end, I had tears in my eyes.
THE PRODIGAL: COMING HOME Lent IV, 2013
In the end, he came home. He came home and found a welcome there. The problem with todays parable is that we have all heard it too many times. Its one of those passages thats familiar to everyone.
Two sons/rich father/younger son wants his inheritance/gets money and goes on a toot/runs out of money and goes home/father rushes to embrace him/cloak and ring and kill the calf/big party/elder son feels betrayed/father says get over it and rejoice. End of story.
So the preacher asks us to consider how were like the younger son and how were like the elder son and what do we learn from all this?
We learn about the need to repent our sins.
We learn God always forgives.
We learn how we feel neglected and overlooked and jealous.
We learn that God invites us to go beyond that and join the party.
End of sermon
.Time for the Nicene Creed.
Thats the problem with this parablewe know it so well we think we know what it means. The truth just seems so
so obvious.
In the end, the Prodigal came home and found a welcome there.
Perhaps the parable isnt merely about the characters or repentance or forgiveness or the invitation to rejoice. Perhaps, there is something deeper, something more profound and, ultimately, more troubling and challenging. Perhaps the subtle, quiet tune that repeats and repeats beneath the louder major chords of Jesus story is the one we need to listen for.
Perhaps, in the end, that tune is calling us to come home.
In Johns Gospel, Jesus says:
Just as the Father has loved me, I have loved you, abide in my love. If you obey my teachings you will abide in my love just as I have obeyed my Father and abide in him.
In another place he says, If anyone loves me
my father will love him, and we will come and abide in him.
The Greek verb that keeps getting translated as abide is monainand one of the possible translations of monain would be make your home with
.
How remarkably that changes those verses:
I have loved you, make your home in my love
If anyone loves me, my father will love him and we will come and make our home in him
.
The noun of the English verb abide is abodea place to live, a place to abide, a home
. As in welcome to my humble abode
.
****
When the younger son has hit rock bottom: alone, disgraced, penniless, sitting among the pigs, longing for their food he came to himself.
He came to himselfwhat a remarkable phrase! We could interpret it any number of ways: he came to his senses; he woke up; he realized who he was; he had a breakthrough, he saw the truth
.add your own way of saying it.
But this we know: once he came to himself, he decided to GO HOME.
GOING HOME is a difficult decisionpainful and wrenching and humiliating. Going home isnt something people do unless they are driven to it by the circumstances of life.
When an adult child moves back in with their parents because they lost their job or their marriage broke up, it is often a source of embarrassment for all concerned. What were taught, in this culture, from the time we are children is that the point of life is to LEAVE HOME and be on our own and make our own life and pay our own way. Going Home in our middle-class society is an act of desperation. It is the last resort.
So this sub-theme of the Prodigal and his brotherthis call to Come Homeruns against the grain and swims upstream.
The year I went away to college, my parents moved to a different town. So when I came home, nothing was the same. Going Home, even under the best conditions, is jarring and unsettling because the home you come back to is never the one you left.
The great American novelist, Thomas Wolfe, enshrined our view of going home in the title of his best known book: You Cant Go Home Again.
So, what does it mean to us that the story of the Prodigal and his brother is a story of coming home?
Henri Nouwen wrote a book about Rembrandts painting of The Return of the Prodigal Son. In that book, Nouwen relates something a dear friend of his told him. Listen: Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realize that you are called to become the father.
That is true for each of us. Jesus parable calls us to come to ourselves and find, in the innermost parts of our being, the compassion and love and un-judgmental hospitality of the father in the story. It is valuable and important to examine how we are the Prodigal and how we are the elder son. We can grow from that revelation. But the growth of realizing we are just like the brothers isnt nearly enough.
We are called by God to come to our deepest SELFthe SELF that welcomes home both the humiliation and the arrogance within us; that welcomes home both our thoughtlessness and our resentments; that welcomes home both the brokenness and the self-righteousness of our lives.
We are called far, far past recognizing the two brothers in ourselves to un-concealing the wise, gentle and all-loving parent so well hidden in our hearts. And that is theredeeper down and further in. That is there, believe me.
Beyond thatbeyond even thatthis parable calls to US as a church, to create a HOME where God will dwell with us and we will dwell with God.
Let me say it again, just so I can begin to believe it: you and I are called to create the space where God can make a home in the hearts and lives of each of us and those who arent here yet.
What would that look like? How would that be?
I wish I knew completely.
I do know a few things about it. Like the father in the parable today, we must welcome hometo a place of acceptanceall those who come broken and hurting. Like the father in the parable, we must invite the faithful and the dependable into a celebration and a feast beyond their imagining. There must be no judgment here. This must be a place where those who cause pain and those who feel pain are brought together and made one and reconciled. This must be a place of refreshment and hospitality and invitation and healing. This must be a place of homecoming to a HOME like nothing we have ever known before. This must be a place where God can make a home with us and we can make a home with God.
What we do up here is invite Christ to make his home within us. We literally take Christs Body and Blood within ourselves.
Come homebring your brokenness and your prideful-nessGod will give you welcome here.
Come home, come taste and see how sweet the Lord can be.
Come home to your deepest self and make your home with God.
Come home
.