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…”
Luke 15:1-2; 11
Jesus loved to tell stories of the lost being found.
There once was a shepherd, Jesus said, who had a hundred sheep, and he loved them all. He loved them so much that when one became lost, he left the other ninety-nine in search of the one and afterwards invited his friends and neighbors to join in his joy of having found the beloved sheep.
There once was a woman who had ten silver coins, and she treasured them all, so much so that when she lost one, she cleaned her house from top to bottom in search of it. Then she poured champagne for all her friends in celebration of finding what was lost.
And there was a man with two sons, and he loved them both. One son lost himself. The other, perhaps, never had a self to lose. The first, because of his behavior, felt unworthy to be called his father’s son; the second, who always did as he was told, felt as if he didn’t exist in his father’s eyes as a son, but a slave.
There was a man who had two sons, and he loved them both. He saw in them what they did not see themselves. He loved the wayward son, and saw in that son’s homecoming a glorious re-birth, the chance to begin again. He also loved his obedient son and met him in his anger and envy. He saw the agony in his eyes—“What about me?” “Son, you are always with me,” the father said, “and all I have is yours. There is enough love for him and for you.”
Have you ever wanted to be someone’s favorite person? I have. As a teenager, I wanted to be my aunt’s favorite person, and when I was there, I was sure that I was. She made me feel prized and cherished. But then I noticed how she interacted with others, and I realized that they probably thought that they were favorite, too. And I realized that it wasn’t because of me that she loved me the way she did. It was because that was the way she loved everyone.
In God’s kingdom, there is enough love to go around. Envy and resentment are born in those places where we don’t believe it, we don’t believe that if another receives undeserved grace, or fortune, or goodness, that there will be enough left for us. Our entire world is organized around the notion that there is a limited supply of the things which make life living. We feel the injustice of others getting in line in front of us, poised to receive the best for which they have not worked, while we wait for what little remains. Or sometimes we are the ones pushing to be first, willing to cut others out so that we can get what we think we need.
But with God, Jesus says, we don’t have to fight for our place in line. There is enough love to go around. There is love enough to reach out and meet us in our places of spectacular failure, and enough to meet us in our resentment and envy. God’s love for us, Jesus says, is a love that sees us, knows us better than we know ourselves. It knows what lies behind the masks we use to present ourselves to each other; it honors the intention or potential for good that lurks beneath our great mistakes and immaturity. It is a love that, in the end, invites us to love as we are loved—lavishly, with complete forgiveness, without question of merit, solely because of who we are.
Jesus doesn’t tell us the younger son’s reaction to the love he received at his homecoming. The older brother assumes that it was easy, the favored position. My experience is that love isn’t easy to accept when we know we don’t deserve it, when it feels as if we will be marked forever by our stupid choices, when we know that we could never make sufficient restitution to rid ourselves of guilt. Such love, in fact, is near impossible to receive until we understand that love has nothing to do with our “deserving” it, that love isn’t something we ever deserve or earn. It is also near impossible to give such love until we realize that we love not on the basis of another’s worthiness, but rather according to our capacity to love.
Nor do we know what life was like for the elder brother after being gently admonished and reassured by their father. Did he go to the party to celebrate his brother’s homecoming or did he stay away? The real work of reconciliation and repair would have to happen, eventually, if the two were to live and labor side by side. Restitution would need to be made for the damage the younger brother had done, in some form or another. The fact that he had spent his inheritance suggests that he would be dependent on his older brother after their father dies.
There is enough love to go around. But how do we live in love across such differences in personality, temperament, and understanding, and when real damage to relationships has been done?
Yesterday, I spoke at a fundraising breakfast for Samaritan Ministry of Greater Washington, a social service organization established nearly forty years ago by a group of mostly Episcopal congregations to address the needs of unemployed and often homeless residents in the greater Washington, DC region. As its name suggests, Samaritan Ministry sees its mission in light of Jesus’ famous parable known as the Good Samaritan—another story that tells of God’s lavish love as lived out in the actions of a man who saved another man’s life who had been beaten, robbed and left for dead on the side of a road.
So yesterday the Good Samaritan; today the Prodigal Son. Both stories that highlight God’s love for us, and how we struggle to emulate that love. Remember that Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan in response to a lawyer who wanted to know who his neighbor was, so that he might be true to the commandment to love his neighbor as himself. Jesus tells the story of a man who acted as a neighbor to a wounded man, saving his life and providing for his care out of his own money. The power of this story is amplified by the fact that the Samaritan belonged to a race of people that most Jews of Jesus’ people despised and feared. What would it have been like for the wounded man, when he regained consciousness, to realize that an enemy had treated him with compassion and sacrificial love?
So, too, with the story of the Prodigal Son. Jesus told this story to people who saw themselves as right before God due to their behavior—not unlike the older brother. Jesus wanted the Pharisees to know that the Prodigal Son’s reckless behavior was no match for the Prodigal Father’s extravagant love. God’s love is large to encompass everyone, even those whose actions appall us.
After yesterday’s breakfast I had a long-delayed interview with a journalist who lives in Chicago but who writes for a conservative Christian newspaper in Denmark. She told me that to be identified as a conservative Christian in Denmark is not the same as in the US. Apparently, there aren’t the same political overtones for conservative Christians, or liberal ones for that matter. She asked me, as many foreign journalists do, how I understand the deep divisions between Christians in this country. “You read the same Bible; you profess to follow the same Lord,” she said. “How is it that you see the world, and what it means to be a Christian, so differently?”
It’s a question that always gives me pause, because I don’t really know the answer. What I said to her is that differences between Christians is nothing new—there are stories of conflict and profound disagreement in the New Testament. As I spoke, I thought of the sermon I would be preaching to you this morning, and Jesus’ story of the man who loved both his sons. “God loves us all,” I said to her. “Do I think that some Christians are misguided and simply wrong in certain ways? Yes, I do,” I said. “And they surely think the same about me. But were we to find ourselves in the middle of a natural disaster, or some other major crisis, I don’t think we would ask one another for whom we voted or our opinion on a divisive issue. We would help each other, pray for another, and find ways to work together. Or at least I hope that’s true. The fact that God loves us all is a good reminder for us all.”
It’s not easy being in relationship with those whose fundamental beliefs and resulting actions are so different from our own, particularly when the issues about which we disagree are matters of life and death for other people, or have such long-lasting consequences. But we should never give up. And one way to begin is to see ourselves as symbolized by one of the two brothers of the loving father in Jesus’ parable and to see those with whom we are at odds or estranged as symbolized by the other. The father loves us in equal measure, not because of who we are or what we believe to be true, but simply because the father is love, and can do nothing but love us both.
Let me leave you with this imaginary scenario: picture the two brothers of the loving father sitting down for their first meal together after the big celebration welcoming the younger brother home. They have never gotten along. They don’t like each other, and fundamentally disagree with each other on almost everything.
What they do know is that their father loves them both. And that one of them made a series of grievous mistakes, and that the other is still really mad about it. But that the other had also been quite mean-spirited in ways that he’s not really proud of anymore.
Where and how does the conversation begin? Can you imagine a similar conversation with someone with whom you profoundly disagree? How would you begin?
Start with this: God’s love is large enough to contain you both. Learn all you can about the other person’s views. Be curious, as respectful as you can. Speak your truth with dignity. Listen carefully. Remember that in God’s eyes, to quote the Criminal Justice Reformer Bryan Stevenson, the one sitting across from you is more than the worst thing they’ve done; you are more than the best thing that you’ve done; and vice versa. Both of you stand in need of God’s mercy.
In his book Just Mercy, Stevenson writes:
We are all more than the broken parts of ourselves. And there is strength, and power in understanding brokenness, because embracing brokenness creates a need and a desire for me to cry, and a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things that you can’t otherwise see; you hear things that you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.1
This is what I hope we hold in our hearts as gospel truth as we strive to make our way. Our God sees us all as more than the worst thing we have ever done, and loves us. God also sees us as more than the most noble thing we’ve ever done, and loves us. God sees us, in our entirety, and loves us. We are most like God when we strive to do the same.
1Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Random House, 2014).
