[Propertalk] 4 Lent c

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

It's been a busy week, especially its end!

Here's what I've yet to edit.

Bob


EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                                       	 
THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT (c)
JOSHUA 5:9-12                         					        	 
10th MARCH, 2013
2 CORINTHIANS 5:16-21		                            	 
PSALM 32
LUKE 15:1-3, 11b-32

	 “Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.” That’s been 
credited to both Will Rogers and Mark Twain. 1

	Makes sense to me.

	The Hebrew people camped on the borders of the land to which they 
believed God was calling them. They’d survived heat, a repetitive diet, 
family squabbles, fickleness – you name it, it had been part of their 
make-up. You might think they were somewhat suspicious of yet more 
change. No matter that they were camped so close to Canaan they could 
smell the fresh water and the fertile fields, they must have wondered 
what was to happen. So they engaged in a familiar routine. They took the 
unleavened flat bread, possibly made with a few herbs to season it. They 
took roasted lambs. They talked about the Egyptians, the plagues, 
miraculously crossing that body of water, about trust, and distrust, and 
trust again. They got up the next morning and they fed themselves with 
all that they wished. BUT, they continued to eat unleavened cakes. They 
went out on a limb by following Moses; by trying, more or less, to stick 
to what Moses said were God’s hopes; finally by entering Canaan. They 
discovered wonderful fruit. Yet they carried with them throughout their 
lives – right down to this year – the symbol of God’s love: a simple 
piece of flat bread.

	Twelve hundred years or so later, Jesus kept mixing with the sort of 
people that made the general population antsy, maybe even angry.

	Why did He do it?

We’ll get to that, but look at the story He told. Everyone did the wrong 
thing. We’re used to dumping on the younger son, calling him everything 
from a spoiled brat to an insensitive clod. But all the three central 
figures broke every rule in the Middle Eastern book. 2

	The younger son was driven by self-centeredness. He thought of nothing 
but himself, of what he thought was a quick fix to his 
self-satisfaction. If anyone or anything got in his way, that was simply 
too bad. It was entirely insignificant.

	He WAS entitled to that share of the inheritance. No one disputes that. 
But to ask for it as he did was to wish his father dead and out of the 
picture. As one New Testament commentator put it, “A relationship is 
broken, not a law. … The law does not specifically say that the son must 
wait for his father’s death. … (But) he has broken his father’s heart.” 
3 Not only that, however, he’s jeopardized the future of the farm, 
which, by all accounts, must have been sizeable and a valuable property. 
Even to this day in rural areas in the Middle East, loss or catastrophe 
at one farm can affect the livelihood of everyone in the community – 
farm hands might lose their jobs; seed or fertilizer merchants might 
lose a customer on whom they depended to make a profit; the local market 
might lose animals or crops which they were in the habit of selling, and 
people might not be able to afford to buy the necessary foodstuff on 
which life depended.

	This was the act of a truly selfish individual who couldn’t think 
beyond his own immediate satisfaction. He was cutting himself off from 
his family, his rootedness in the land, his affiliation with the whole 
community, damaging or destroying each.

	The older son had his problems. He knew what was going on right from 
the start. We think we may have it bad in this congregation and city 
with regard to rumour mills, but what the younger son did would have 
been completely open, but the elder did absolutely nothing.

	We may not think of it, but social responsibility dictated that someone 
with a strong relationship with both the quarrelling parties must act as 
a mediator and do everything possible to bring things to right. Even 
“(i)f he hated his brother, he would still (have to) fulfill this task 
for the sake of his father.” 4 Moreover, by being totally silent he made 
it impossible for the father to say goodbye to the younger man, further 
breaking the old man’s heart.

Then there’s the father’s behavior. “The expected reaction is refusal 
and punishment. (However, k)nowing what the request means, the father 
grants freedom even to turn away from him. William Temple (early 
twentieth century Archbishop of Canterbury) has somewhere said that God 
grants us freedom, even to reject his love. But in addition, the father 
remains the father. He doesn’t sever the relationship with his son. … 
The father’s suffering provides the foundation of the possibility of the 
son’s return.” This flies directly in the face of what an oriental 
patriarch would have done, or might still do.

It’s a terrible story. It puts everyone in a bind and, as we’ve all been 
taught since our first contact of any sort with a Christian 
congregation, the father in the story represents God, especially as 
revealed in Jesus.

This is an entirely appropriate message for Lent. It talks about the way 
that everything that we do – whether we call ourselves followers of 
Jesus or not – everything we do impacts families, friends, neighbours, 
even those whom we’ll never meet. All we need to do is to think about 
last week’s North Korean sabre rattling and we get the point.

	We’re brought up short by today’s Scripture readings. We’re surrounded 
by so much opulence; we have the opportunity to do so many things which 
would bless our various communities. One way or another, though, we turn 
our backs on those possibilities. Not that life is easy. No one, least 
of all I, is trying to say that. We have decisions to make all the time, 
decisions about responding to someone’s call for help, to someone’s 
invitation to do something with them, to accept a position on a 
committee of one sort or another. Everything we do or are asked to do 
impacts the people all around us and ripples out in good and bad ways 
far beyond our limited vision.

	Then, when we come to our senses and realise that we’ve offended 
someone, belittled them, cut ourselves off from them, still we try to 
rationalise. Just like the younger son, we feel sorry for ourselves, not 
the others in the drama of life.

	Just as an aside, if the North Korean administration thought that it 
was putting only the United States on notice, they vastly underestimated 
how South Korea, Japan and China would react. Then there’s the matter of 
the North Korean population itself. No matter whom Kim Jong-Un believes 
he may be threatening, there’s the matter of retaliation. There’s even 
the spectre of the obliteration of North Korea should someone in 
Pyongyang had have an argument with a spouse or child and be in a very 
bad mood in some situation room.

	The prodigal, just like us, doesn’t see beyond his own needs. He misses 
out how important relationships are, he doesn’t even realise how badly 
he’d disrupted the community – I was going to say “his” community, but 
that’s the point. He doesn’t realise that he doesn’t have a community 
any more. “In the deepest sense the prodigal is not going home. He is 
going back to servanthood. As long as his former attitudes remain, he is 
still in a far country spiritually even as he physically approaches his 
home village.” 5

	This is a tremendously happy story, though, filled with all sorts of 
possibilities for renewal and resurrection. This may be the Fourth 
Sunday in lent, but it’s also “Rose Sunday”, a lightening of the 
atmosphere which reminds us that even in the darkest of situations, God 
stands with us to offer comfort and resolution.

	I said that the father didn’t behave well in this story, and here’s his 
problem. He doesn’t act as he’s supposed to. The younger son has wished 
him dead and cut himself off and shamed him. The elder son refused his 
responsibilities and the chance to bring about resolution before the 
farm is wrecked and the relationships destroyed. The whole ethos of the 
day – of THIS day, and that lets us see how important this story is – 
the whole ethos is that the father should have nothing to do with the 
younger son. To do otherwise would be to threaten how the community 
functions.

	But that’s not what happens. The father breaks every rule and rushes to 
raise the son, to restore him, to put all things back where they 
belonged.

	Normally the younger man’s appearance in the village would have meant 
that he would have been fair game to the village gangs. Not only would 
he have been ridiculed and rejected, he’d likely have been beaten 
physically. His father’s act of unconditional love, however, was 
performed in front of everyone in the village. Anyone not there would 
have heard about it instantly. The son was not only given a place back 
in the family home, his place in the community was guaranteed – unless, 
like the elder son, unless people ignored the father’s wishes.

	The older son was content to leave the relationship broken.

	So we’re left to place ourselves in this picture. On this Rose Sunday 
we’re reminded to what incredible lengths God continues to go to bring 
people back into fruitful relationship with one another and with the 
Godhead. And, as Mark Twain – or Will Rogers – succinctly commented, if 
we want fruit, we have to go to the place where it can grow. We have to 
go so far out on all the limbs of our lives so that we can bring into a 
full and healthy relationship with Jesus those who may feel left out.

	We’re not to be obnoxious about it – the father didn’t hunt down his 
son in that state of spiritual distance. But he didn’t remove the 
possibility of return. As soon as his son made the move he was right 
there.

	Harriet Tubman, as you probably know, was brutalised while a slave and 
beaten so severely that she suffered seizures for the rest of her life. 
She could have left it at that. She could have spent the rest of her 
life using that as an excuse to do nothing. She didn’t. She kept 
reaching out. She saw and answered her vocation to rescue those whose 
relationships had been broken apart. And today marks the one-hundredth 
anniversary of her death.

	She saw the fruit that lay at the end of limbs. She saw fruit that 
could be saved, even if it was as despised as were the tax-collectors 
and others with whom Jesus ate, for whom Jesus gave His life.

God out on a limb is never easy. We know what sort of a limb Jesus 
embraced, and to what cost. But He went, and now we’ve been invited to 
go also.

And as for North Korea, or any number of places that seem like countries 
desperately far off – even there there is life.

“The messianic banquet has begun. All who accept the father’s costly 
love are welcome as his guests.” 6

ALL!

NOTES:

1 	See  http://www.appleseedlittleschool.com/philosophy.html

2	I’m indebted for my understanding on the parable to “The Cross and the 
Prodigal” by Kenneth E Bailey. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill. © 
2005.

3	Bailey, Op. cit. p. 42

4	Bailey, Op. cit p. 45

5	Bailey, Op. cit. p. 62

6	Bailey, Op. cit. p. 89



Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)