Luke 15: 11-32
March 10, 2103
Pine Valley Christian Church
Rev. Dr. David Hansen
Finding Our Way Home
The parable of the Prodigal Son, also known as the Parable of the Waiting Father, is one of the best known of all the parables of Jesus. It speaks to deep places in us because it is about family. We can see our family in this family. We know the people and the emotions at play in the relationship between the two brothers and between the children and their father. We can identify with the younger son who is eager to see the world, and the older brother who feels left out of important events or treated unfairly. And we know the waiting father who wants nothing more than for the family to be together again. We know this story because it is our story. It is a pastoral story. We know what it is like to feel estranged from loved ones we want to be close to. And, perhaps, we can remember also times when wounds have been healed and we have experienced some reunion or reconciliation that has brought us joy beyond measure. The parable gives us courage to hold on to hope when things are unresolved in our hearts.
On one level that parable has tremendous pastoral power to speak to our deepest needs; on another level it has prophetic power to address our social world. The only time that I was privileged to hear Joseph Lowery preach he spoke on the parable of the Prodigal Son. It was during the days of the Vietnam War. I can still his voice. He said that American had strayed into a far country and it was time to come home. We were squandering precious lives and resources in ways that were wasteful of both and it was time to come home. Today many of us feel that same way as we think about the war in Afghanistan and the growing conflict in Africa. And we wonder about what our government is planning to do in Central and South America following the death of Hugo Chavez. It is our role to be the world’s policeman?
I think of a story that comes from President Lincoln’s time. As the Civil War was drawing to a close, he asked members of his Cabinet what they thought should be done to the leaders of the Confederacy. Members of the Cabinet said that those who had tried to destroy the Union must be destroyed. Lincoln listened to the debate and then asked, “If we transform our enemies into our friends, have we not thereby destroyed them?” It is a lesson we need to learn again.
Another time when the prophetic power of this parable came through to me was in a Bible study. I was with a group that engaged in Bible study very much like we have here on Wednesdays. It was an ecumenical group with Catholics and Protestants from various traditions. One of the members of the group was a Nazarene. When he was asked to share how the parable touched his life, he said, “I think this parable is about social justice. It tells me that people should not have live like animals.” He went on to explain that in this the richest country in the history of the world people should not have to live like animals rummaging through other people’s garbage to find food, or waiting for scraps to fall from the table. Yet today in this land of plenty, 15 million children are food insecure. One person in five living in this breadbasket of the world is food insecure. Programs like food pantries and the Lord’s Dinner are essential. But to me the presence of persistent poverty in this land of plenty says that we need a positive revolution in values. People want jobs that pay a living wage that will lift them out of poverty, not trap them in poverty. I refuse to believe that the richest country in the history of the world does not have the resources needed to feed and educate its children. I cannot accept that. It is time for America to come home.
Some of us have been talking about starting a buying cooperative of some sort in the church to help people keep their food budgets down. Once we learn how to do this, we can extend it and make it available to people in our community. I’ve been wondering if we could transform some of the land we own into a community garden. We are asking how we can play our part to help people not only in this congregation but in our community come together, to come home.
The parable of the Prodigal Son and the Waiting Father is both a pastoral parable that speaks to us on a deep personal level and it is a prophetic parable that speaks out against injustice, and it seems to me, now, that there is a third dimension of this parable that can speak to us.
The parable turns on questions about money. It begins when the younger son asks for his share of the inheritance and it turns when he runs out of money. Economics plays a pivotal role in this parable. The younger son wants to get his share of the family pie. He wants to get a taste of the “good life.” As parents we want our children to dream worthy dreams. We want them to believe in their potential. We want them to have a good life. We want them to go forth and do wonderful things. We want to do for them as our parents did for us—and more if we can.
But now we have a problem. We are something like five or six percent of the world’s population using something like 30 percent of the world’s resources and contributing 25 percent of the world’s carbon pollution. We are living beyond our means and asking the rest of the world to pay for it. But it gets even worse. The minimum wage is not a living wage—so personal debt spirals as people scramble to find ways to make ends meet. Public schools are underfunded, city budgets are strapped and now it seems certain that climate change and water shortage will soon challenge some of our most basic assumptions. We have strayed into a far country. We are squandering precious resources and robbing from the future.
Coming to our senses does not mean doing more with less. It means learning to think and live differently. We have bought into what some economists and ethicists call “redemption by consumption.” It is the belief that the market can supply all of our needs and fulfill all of our desires—without limit. Some economist and faith leaders are telling us we need to exchange the idea of redemption by consumption for an economy of well-being. The measure of a successful economy is not how high the stock market is going, but how well people are doing when we sit down at the kitchen table. How well are our schools being funded when our children go off to learn? Do we have an ecologically sustainable economy?
The younger brother came to his senses after he had traveled into a far country. When he came to himself, he rose up and found his way home. It is time for us to find our way home. The church, as Dr. King said, can be the headlight and not the caboose. We can help show the way to a new economy. We can be the salt that Jesus talked about and the leaven of hope for people wanting to come home. It is time to come home.