DATE: March 10, 2013
SCRIPTURE: Luke 15:1-32
© Alison J. Buttrick Patton
As a parent, I’ve never been crazy about the game ‘hide and go seek.’ Probably because my exuberant and clever children usually want to play it in the public park, or on the playground, where the playground equipment provides fabulous hiding places, but makes a nervous mother even more nervous about what dire things might befall small boys while they are out of my sight. Even as a kid, I remember feeling ambiguous about the game. Yes, it was exciting to find the perfect hiding place… but then again: what if nobody ever found me? Too much of the game is spent sitting alone, scrunched up in some awkward position, holding your breath and straining your ears – hoping not to be found…hoping to be found.
I much prefer Sardines. In Sardines, one person hides and everyone else seeks. If you find the hidden person, you join him or her, so that eventually everyone is squeezed into a single hiding place, for the last person to discover. How many young adults can fit in the cupboard under the bathroom sinks in the Cedars, at Silver Lake, or under the bed… or inside the broom closet…
In the game of Sardines, you don’t just get found once; you get found again and again and again. And everyone is in it together.
So today we read three companion parables, three stories that Jesus told, one after another. They are known, most often, as the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son.
But read them closely, and you may discover that at the center of each tale is someone who seeks, and keeps seeking, until the lost thing – or person – is found. The sheepherder searches for his sheep – behind every hummock or outcrop of wilderness rock, straining his eyes in the desert sun, scanning the land for the one shape that might give itself away with the twitch of an ear or the wave of a stubby tail…
The woman searches for her coin, under every couch cushion and in every corner. She reaches all the way under the furniture, among the dust bunnies and abandoned toys…until her fingers close around that one small piece of silver.
And the father in that last parable? You may recall that he saw his son ‘while he was still far off…’ Which means we was watching, watching all along…He stayed by the window, craning his neck, eyes trained on the horizon, waiting for his son to return home.
And what happens when the lost is finally found? A shepherd picks up the sheep, hoists it onto his shoulders and joyfully parades it back to town, calling out to his neighbors to share the good news.
The woman calls all her friends and invites them to a party to celebrate (after all, she’s just cleaned her house!).
The father drops everything and races out to meet his youngest son. Runs, says the text. Picks up his robes and sprints across the field – an utterly undignified behavior for the patriarch of the family. Scandalous, even, given how poorly he’d been treated by that son. The neighbors, peering out between the closed curtains of their homes and watching that father running across the field, would have shaken their heads and clucked their tongues disapprovingly.
But the father didn’t care. What mattered to him was his child: who was, after all alive; who had, after all – after everything – come home. What else could the father do but catch him up in his arms and hold him tight, laugh out loud, and declare a feast.
It’s the parties that these three tales have in common: Raucous celebrations on earth and in heaven. It’s angels whooping and neighbors gathering. It’s the sound of laughter escaping through an open door and the tantalizing smell of roasting beef…it’s dancing past midnight because the news is that good. What was lost has been found!
Jesus, it seems, was trying to make a point, not about sinners, but about God. God, who doesn’t care one wit about propriety or appearances; God the seeker, who looks for us, waits for us, runs to meet us – God whose love and mercy outpace judgment every time. One writer calls this the scandal of grace. The scandal of God’s wide open arms.
Only, the Pharisees didn’t get it. To those grumbling Pharisees, the scandal was that Jesus – who was supposed to be a rabbi, a student of Torah, Jesus, who ought to have known better, was hanging out with tax collectors and other unsavory characters who might sully his record. The Pharisees, believing themselves to be faithful, righteous (as in: right with God – not lost at all, but secure in their place at God’s right hand). The Pharisees peered out from behind the temple curtains, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues disapprovingly: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So Jesus told those three lost and found parables. And at the very end, he introduced the older brother. The one who stayed behind: who obeyed his father and worked the land and never took weekends off. The one who was beyond reproach, who had been faithful in all things.
Except in this: that he could not welcome his brother back home. Surely, that younger brother had behaved badly; had disgraced his father by requesting his inheritance while his father was still alive; had sold off his portion of their ancestral land and run off to Vegas, without looking back. For those choices he had suffered – hunger, poverty, and isolation. Eventually, he had lost everything, even (perhaps especially) his sense of self, of belonging…anywhere. When he found that, when he ‘came to himself,’ (in the words of the parable) then he began his long journey home. How that happened, what soul searching he’d done as he sat among the pigs, his stomach growling – what pain or grief or shame he’d endured, well, that’s his story to tell. The problem is, Older Brother didn’t want to hear it.
Older Brother, like the Pharisees, preferred to keep his distance, to nurse his outrage. That’s the folly of being ‘beyond reproach.’ It separates us, like so many folks playing hide and seek: you on your own and me on mine. Faithfulness is a good thing, but when our sense of our own ‘goodness’ erects a barrier that keeps us from others, then surely we have missed the point; indeed we have lost our way.
Here’s what I think Jesus was trying to remind the Pharisees: faith is not a solo journey, after all. We can’t do it on our own, cannot declare ourselves righteous or work out our own salvation, apart from the rest of God’s family. On the contrary, we need one another – with all our gifts and growing edges, all our failures and fumbling, all our trial and error. We need tax collectors and Pharisees, wayfaring children and stubborn older brothers, all the sheep and all the coins.
Like that game of sardines, we haven’t finished until we’re ALL gathered in, all found each other; until we’ve managed to make room for every last one of God’s beloved family. Each new arrival is a cause for celebration – not just for the sake of that one, but for all our sakes. Because it makes us closer to whole.
Sisters and brothers: let us take the shepherd as our model. And the woman who searched so persistently for one silver coin as our guide. May we search as avidly for one another. May we welcome one another with equal joy. May we listen deeply to one another’s stories, honor every struggle and nurture every hope. May we do so in faith that we all belong to a God seeks us. And in finding us, God laughs. God woops for joy. God runs out to meet us, as many times as it takes, finds us, finds each of us, finds all of us, again and again and again and welcomes us home.
Scripture Texts
Luke 15:1-32
15Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3So Jesus told them this parable:
4“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
8“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
11Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them.
13A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.
17But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20So he set off and went to his father.
But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22But the father said to his slaves,
‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28Then [the older brother] became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29But he answered his father,
‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’
31Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”