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Wouldn't you know it, we are still in the season of Lent and today we talk about death and resurrection. That’s what Lent is for, after all, looking death in the face and finding resurrection, and that is what we get today.
To look at the news lately, be it local or global, we’re always looking at death somehow. Why else would we be so easily angry if we were not afraid of death? Why else would we be looking for somebody to blame for our bad luck if we weren’t trying to avoid looking at death? Why else would we worship a crucified God if we didn’t know that death is a reality faced by all that lives?
Maybe you’ve heard it lately in the news, or at home, or at work. Heartbreak. Violence. Injustice. Debates that disintegrate into bullying. Or maybe you’re reading The New Jim Crow in preparation for our Synod Assembly this June, and finding those statistics - about incarceration for profit and children being tried as adults and first time minor offenders unable to find work or housing or even vote - are all a bit much to swallow. We don’t have to look far to find death, do we? As I was filling out our statistics paperwork for the church-wide records this week, I thought of all of the death we’ve experienced over the last handful of years - not only the death of people dear to us, like Flossie and Al and Malcolm, but the death of selling the chapter of our life in Ghent, the death of letting Bob and Bev retire, the death of calling a new pastor into an uncertain three-year term call, while at the same time our area prepares for the death of another pastoral retirement in Valatie… every major change in our lives is a death.
The Israelites in today’s First Testament reading experienced a pretty major death. They had spent a lifetime wandering in the wilderness and relying on God to provide manna, and now that chapter of their history was coming to a close and they ate from the produce of the land of Canaan, which meant the manna stopped coming. Even if they had grown sick of its flavor and texture, it was a certain thing, had become a pattern in their lives, and now was making way for the new life in their promised land. Even reaching the homeland for which they had long waited, even this was a sort of death, for where would their dreams lie now that they had gotten this far?
Admitting to sin is another kind of death. It is the death of a pretended perfect life. Letting go of an image of self which is innocent of wrong means letting go of certainty that we must always be right. Admitting to mistakes, willful and accidental, admitting to our need for restoration, means admitting that we are broken, which means we admit to being breakable.
Being breakable, however, means we must trust the hands that hold us, that we rely on the hands that hold us to also catch us when we fall.
For most of his growing-up and early adult life, Martin Luther was afraid of the hands which held him. He was terrified that he was far too sinful for God to forgive, want, or love him. Everything he thought, everything he did or didn’t do, reminded him of how far from God’s perfection he had fallen. When he confessed for hours and then scrubbed the floors for penance, he found himself grow proud of how those floors shone, and then had to go to confession again, he thought, for the sin of pride. He was depressed, he was anxious, he was despairing. You know the experience of a great day being ruined by one negative comment? His days were full of such ruin, he berated himself and found no mercy in a holy God who demanded perfection.
This is the man from whom our denomination takes its name. Because he was so completely broken, so entirely breakable, because of his constant experience of death, his resurrection was clear and mighty and shook history. He was, for a very long time, the older son in today’s parable. He followed all the rules as well as he could, and never found acceptance or freedom in the home of his Father. He worked himself sick with worry over being acceptable to God, and never could feel enough. He could have become very bitter over this, but he wanted his Father’s approval and love so badly that he just kept on working, not as a son of the household, but more as a terrified slave waiting for punishment.
That is, of course, until he began to regard Christ from more than a human point of view, as the Epistle reminds us today. Once Luther discovered the reconciling work of Christ already completed on the cross, then he discovered the grace that had already long ago restored him to the family of God. It was this discovery that shook him to the core and granted him the freedom to stand boldly before the authorities to declare the power of Grace in the midst of a world that was dying from plagues and fears and terrible abuses of power. I don’t know that we understand enough the culture of the days when Jesus told this parable, not to really grasp how extreme the welcome of the Father was when his weary son returned home for his first decent meal in ages. But the rejoicing of the Father over the return of that younger son was undignified, wasteful, prodigal. Who in their right mind would welcome back a child who had wished them dead and then spent their inheritance and only come back for the possibility of a full belly?
As I ask the question, it seems we might know some of these people, actually, these parents and friends who would welcome back a wandering child with open arms and a tearfully joyful heart if an abusive relationship could be ended or an addiction overcome. I think perhaps parents might understand this parable better than children yet do. Losing a child, for a night, for a year, for any number of days, is like a death, not knowing where they are or if they are safe. Sometimes the kid runs away from home, sometimes they are taken, sometimes they are just thoughtless and wander away in the shopping mall and there’s a moment of panic. This is what sin does to our relationship with God, it pulls us away, it puts time and space and other things between us, it distracts us until we forget our home address and don’t even know who to trust to ask for help any more.
But whatever our reason for turning back - remember, the younger son only wanted a job so he wouldn’t go hungry - even if we only return to God for the good feeling of childhood memories or the possibility of feeling less guilty for something, God welcomes us as the Father welcomes his child long dead come back to life again. Because God rejoices in our resurrection even more than we do. Whether that is a resurrection as the younger son returning home, or a resurrection of the older son being restored to his younger brother once again, it is God’s free gift to all of us to be restored to community, be reconciled to new life.
The image of the Father hiking up his robes and running, completely undignified and unbecoming a man of his age and status, might seem only a little excited in our culture where people of all ages are on stage or screen being excited about football games and winning the lottery and the like. So allow me to indulge in another image which might connect more to the feel of the moment:
I don’t know if you’ve seen these videos going around Facebook every so often, which probably also play on cable news, but the picture I have of the prodigal Father welcoming home his child is expressed in those videos of soldiers returning home after a long deployment. Not only the surprise on the faces of their own children and spouses, but especially the videos of a soldier coming in the front door and their dog welcoming them home. Rolling on the floor, licking his or her face, tail wagging almost enough to spin the poor animal in circles. The prodigal Father welcoming us home in reconciliation and resurrection is the dog so happy to see a soldier home that she pees on the floor and jumps and yips and shakes and almost weeps. This is uncontainable joy, unbounded, unrestricted, timeless and heart-out-of-your-chest love.
When God goes about the work of bringing us to new life after every death we die, God claims us with this kind of joy. When God reconciled us in Christ, it was with this sort of love. When God welcomes us home, restores us to each other as the Father begged the older son to return to his younger brother, it is with the face-licking, tail-wagging, sort of hopeful longing for our rebirth into new life. And God brings us this life again and again, after every anxious time, after every major and minor change we have to readjust to, after -and even during- all of the struggles of fear and uncertainty which bear down on us, personally and communally.
Yes, we are broken, we are breakable, but the hands that hold us are trustworthy and true. The heart that holds us is strong and hopeful. The Christ who claims us, who fed us with manna and led us through the wilderness, is faithful. We know the world is not as it ought to be, and when we are fearful that we cannot change, cannot effect change around us, cannot bear anything else changing, God holds us in all of our brokenness and puts us back together anew, over and over again, with the love and the joy and the glad excitement of a soldier’s labrador retriever welcoming that soldier home after a long time of war. The prodigal Father lavishes love on us, time after time, without end, just to have us back in his arms, just to have us all together at the Table of mercy again, just to reconcile us and make us whole and new, no matter how many times we get lost on the way. God will always find us, as we sing in our confession this season, ‘with calf and robe and ring.’ We who were lost have been found, we who were dead are alive. We who were estranged, far off, angry and anxious and resentful, are being brought near, made new, restored, not with fiery brimstone but with abounding love and much rejoicing.
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