Sermon March 14, 2010

“ Manna, Pig Pods, Feasts” Joshua 5:9-12, Luke 15:11b-32 3/14/10

For many of us the prodigal is such a familiar story that we tune it out. “Yeah, yeah, I know that one.” For the sake of hearing it anew, and maybe even a little bit differently, we're going to try it in modern times and with women:
There was baker, a woman in her late forties, who had two daughters, both of them worked with her in her two bakeries. The younger one said to her one day, “I'm sick of this and I'm sick of you. When you die, I'll get one of the bakeries. Sell it now and give me the money so I can live the life I want!” The mother did so, and the daughter went off far away, and wasted all the money just before a recession hit.
She found herself in dire straights, desperate, hurting, and degrading herself to make enough money to almost fill her belly. When she came to her senses, she decided to go home. She knew she wasn't going to be daughter to her mother anymore, but at least she could work in the bakery and have some dignity and a full belly. She prepared her words all the long journey home, “I've hurt you and I've hurt God. I'm no daughter of yours. But, I beg of you, let me just wash dishes and sweep floors under your watch.”
Her mother, though, heard she was coming, and ran out to meet her with arms open. She kissed her daughter and cried with joy. When the daughter tried to start her well-worked speech, the mother called to the bakery workers, “Find my daughter's chef jacket, and some better shoes. Get out cakes and cookies, and the good champagne in the back of the fridge! My daughter, who was dead to me, is home and alive! She was lost, but now she is found!
So the party began, but the older daughter, the one who had been loyal and faithful, couldn't just look the other way. She was sulking outside when her mother found her. The daughter said, “I've been here working and you've never given me a bag of cookies to take with me to a party, but when SHE comes back you empty out the whole display case for her! She's been off being a whore and you throw her a party!”
The mother was persistent though. “My daughter, you miss the point! You work by my side day by day, and all that is mine is in fact yours! You have the choice to take cookies whenever you wish! But right now we have to celebrate! Your sister was dead and now she's alive. We lost her, but now she's home again!”


There are three deep truths about forgiveness in this prodigal story. I would remind you that the word prodigal means excessive – and speaks both to the younger child's spending AND the parent's generosity! The younger child, in the midst of utter failure, and living a life that degrades, still struggles to turn around and go home. It doesn't even seem like an option until all of a sudden she sees herself and the situation she is in clearly. Once she lets herself see it, she also realizes that it isn't the way it has to be. She doesn't expect the forgiveness, that's clear in the story. But she realizes that whatever she's done, she doesn't have to live degraded forever. I like the phrasing “when she came to her senses.” Before there can be forgiveness, we have to realize what we've done and what impact it has had. That sudden awakening is the first step, and nothing can happen beyond it.

Secondly, the parent figure in this story is totally over the top with generosity. There is no doubt that this is a God-figure, willing to let the child have free will, and willing to accept the child back with unbelievable joy, and without imposing guilt. Few human parents could be so unconditionally generous. What an image it gives us of God! This parent-figure is so delighted to have the child alive and found that the child can't even speak the words of guilt and remorse. The parent already knows, and the forgiveness is running out to meet the child. How good it is to be a child of this kind of parent!

Finally, the older child speaks to us another truth. If you notice, the story leaves a cliff-hanger. Does the older child go into the party? Can she forgive? Can she rejoice? Does she hear her mother's statement that she and mother are one? Does she realize that staying home, working hard, and being part of the family IS part of her reward – that a life well lived is something her sister is jealous of? It is my guess that we aren't told because its our choice. We live this story over and over – in all the roles. But in the end, we have choices about how we play them.

I just finished reading Desmond Tutu's No Future Without Forgiveness. He tells the story of his work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. The commission hear the stories of victims and perpetrators during decades of violence under the rule of apartheid. Many were kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed – often never to be found during those years. The commission, however, did not punish. Instead, anyone willing to share the whole truth of what they had done was granted amnesty from future prosecution. Even the way this was carried was highly controversial, but the leaders of the government were some of the most prosecuted victims of apartheid, and they choose the way forward. They intentionally did not follow a Nuremberg trial model, which was not truly an option because there had not been a war with a victor. But, in any cause they were intending instead to build stable peace in a land where almost all were victims and very many were perpetrators. So punishing was not going to help – and it would probably keep the truth from coming out. They also intentionally chose not to ignore what had happened and bury it under the rug. They believed that damage had been done and to ignore it would mean that it would rise again later.

So, they set up ways to listen, they heard stories. People willing to say what they had done and ask forgiveness were granted amnesty. They found, to their astonishment, that more people were able to offer forgiveness (for terrible wrongs) then the number willing to ask.

The power to name what has been done is immense! It is like the moment when the younger child comes to her senses. To share the story, and say you are sorry, does make a real difference.

In South Africa, as well, there were monetary sums paid to the victims, recompense for their losses. The intention was not to buy it away, but acknowledge that it had been.

The whole book is a stance for restorative justice (rather than retributive). The country had lived escalating violence for decades, and they choose to step out of it, to speak of it, to forgive, to remember, and then to try to move forward.

Bishop Tutu offers these reflections:
“God does not give up on anyone, for God loved us from all eternity, God loves us now and God will always love us, all of us good and bad, forever and ever. His love will not let us go, for God's love for us, all of us, good and bad, is unchanging, is unchangable. Someone has said there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, for God loves me perfectly already. And wonderfully, there is nothing I can do to make God love me less. God loves me as I am to help me become all that I have it in me to become, and when I realize the deep love God has for me, I will strive for love's sake to do what pleases my Lover. Those who think this opens the door for moral laxity have obviously never been in love, for love is much more demanding than law. An exhausted mother, ready to drop dead into bed, will think nothing of sitting the whole night through by the bed of her sick child.”1
As God forgives, so are we to forgive. To forgive frees two people. One can move from being a victim to being a full human again, and another from perpetrator back to full human. Sometimes, genuinely, that is not so easy to do.

Tutu offers this real life story that comes to the same question as the Prodigal leaves us with. It is, however, not his story, its Simon Wiesnthals:
Simon Wiesenthal in the anthology The Sunflower, On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, tells the story of how he was unable to forgive a Nazi soldier who asked to be forgiven. The soldier had been part of a group that rounded up a number of Jews, locked them up in a building, and proceed to set it alight, burning those inside to death. The soldier was now on his deathbed. His troubled conscious sought the relief that might come through unburdening himself, confessing his complicity and getting absolution from a Jew. Simon listened to his terrible story in silence. When the soldier had ended his narration, Simon left without uttering a word, certainly not one of forgiveness. He asks at the end of his account, “What would you have done?”


What would you have done?
And, more importantly, what will you do?

Amen