Crazy Love
Homily delivered For Sung Eucharist
Homily delivered For Sung Eucharist
for group of Expatriate English Teachers
Saturday 13th May 1 p.m. Haidian District, Beijing
4th Sunday of Lent (Year C RCL TEC)
Saturday 13th May 1 p.m. Haidian District, Beijing
4th Sunday of Lent (Year C RCL TEC)
Readings: Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
The second parable compares God to a slightly eccentric woman who has 10 silver coins. When she loses one, she lights the lamp, sweeps the house, and, when she finds it, throws a party to celebrate with her friends (Luke 15: 8-10). The party may cost more than the coin's value.
The third parable told is today’s gospel, often called “The Prodigal Son.” If you listen to it carefully, though, you soon realize that it should probably be called “the Parable of the Loving Father with Two Lost Sons” or the "Parable of the Dysfunctional Family." It too is about a slightly crazy person, a father who does not respect the conventions of good parenting in his society and who throws a party in his joy at the return of a wayward son. In this parable, the coin and the sheep in the previous parables talk back in the persons of the eccentric father's two sons.
The family is clearly dysfunctional (as most families seem to be in some way, once you get to know them). A younger son is impatient for his father to die off, and demands his share of his inheritance in cash, now. The father is not a good father by the expectations of Jesus’ society: he does not stand up to defend his own position, his own dignity, and does not defend the integrity of the family nest egg or put up anything even approaching an argument to dissuade the son. He simply caves and gives the son what he wants. The son goes off among hated and despised gentiles, and wastes all the money in pleasure seeking and immorality. When the money runs out, he is reduced to feeding the unclean pigs the gentiles raise for food and hits bottom when he realizes that the pigs are eating better than he is, and that slaves in his father house are better off than he is. He resolves to go back and ask to hired as a servant in his father’s house, knowing that there is no warrant at for him to be restored to anything close to his former status after the harm he has done his family. But the father, again, does not meet even the minimum standards of decency and honor then expected of parents. Not worrying about dignity, honor, or even fairness to the other son, he loses all semblance of acting as a proper father should and runs out to meet the boy as soon as he sees him in the distance. He doesn’t even wait for the reprobate to come to him and beg forgiveness. He welcomes him back, and throws a big party.
At this point, the older son’s reaction takes center stage. He is the one most disadvantaged by his brother’s actions, and by his father’s lack of concern for his own duties and the family’s standing in the community. “I’ve worked night and day my whole life to build our family’s security. I’ve obeyed and honored you without question. And now this son of yours [note he can’t even bring himself to call him his brother] comes back and you throw a big party for him. You never threw a party for me.”
The old man’s reply is touching. “But we had to celebrate! This whole place is yours, I know. But this is your brother we’re talking about. He was dead, and now he has come back to life! We have to throw a party!” The father seems genuinely bewildered at the cold, self-seeking calculation of the older brother. He seems to vaguely recognize the validity of the older son’s demands for fairness—he says, “Yeah, yeah, everything I own is written over to you in the will.” But he seems totally stunned by the older son’s contempt and anger, contempt perhaps even worse than that of the younger son when he ran off. “He’s your brother. He was dead, and now is back from the dead. We have to throw a party.”
Jesus here is saying that God is more than a little crazy when it comes to loving us. In God, love trumps demands of dignity, of face, of justice, of purity, or even of fairness. The calculus of God’s love is not a zero sum, but a geometric expansion. This parable of a dysfunctional family has the same point as the parable of the bad personnel policy (the parable of the day laborers) found in Matthew (20:1-16). There, laborers who work throughout a long hard day complain when latecomers hired in the last minutes of the day are paid the same wage as they. There, the boss says, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Are you going to going to give me sour looks because I am generous?”
Jesus did teach that there was one situation where God's love was not so obvious, where, in fact, it looked more to its recipient as anger, not love. It is in when God stands before a heart that because of its lack of gratitude itself has no love, no mercy. There is the parable of the merciless servant-- whose own debt of millions is forgiven, but then who is unwilling to forgive a $200 debt from a coworker. The boss is merciless on him when he hears. In the story of The Pharisee and the Tax Collector Jesus tells the story of a “religious” man who goes to the Temple and prays, “Thank God I’m not like the sinners around me.” Beside him stands a traitor—a collaborator with the occupying Romans, a man who profits from the sufferings of God’s people. The traitor stands far off due to his shame. He won’t even lift up his eyes to God because he fears that God might give him what he deserves. “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he prays. And Jesus says that the traitor went away right with God while the so-called religious man went away as stone-cold-hearted as he came (Luke 18:10-14).
The difference is the heart itself. When I was a much younger man, for several years I went around with what I now see what an attitude of resentment. "Why don't people give me what I deserve? Why doesn't God give me what I deserve?" I'd ask. As long as I was this way, I caused a lot of damage to the people around me. Finally, when I hit a bottom like the younger son looking at the pig's food, I changed perspectives entirely. I let go, and let God. My attitude now was, "Thank God hasn't given me what I deserve!" I was a lot easier on myself, and a lot easier on others. Much of the previous damage was healed, and the past redeemed.
Jesus' point is that the basic, most fundamental nature of God is to love. It is a love that is non-contingent. It does not respond to requirements met, to expectations satisfied, to standards conformed to. It is a love that actively creates gratitude and love in its recipient, and with this the ability to better meet expectations, standards, and requirements. And it is not accountable to standards of fairness, justice, honor, or convention. But it produces in the heart of a person who willingly accepts it such gratitude that that person, too, goes a little crazy and loves wildly.
In Jesus’ parable picture of God’s love, it is always a little over-the-top, inappropriate, and, the truth be told, embarrassing. If our hearts are right with God, it is the kind of inclusive, accepting love we should have as well.
In our society, we like to praise the value of love, but we tend to deceive ourselves about what unconditional love actually means. It means ignoring our deep-felt need to establish our own dignity and “save face.” It means losing our ego. It means losing our self-seeking, and pursuing mercy to the point of ignoring appeals to fairness on occasion. It means forgiving the unforgivable, and welcoming not just those seen as outcast by others, but those who we ourselves think should be cast out.
Being a little crazy in loving doesn’t mean being stupid. Jesus does tell us to be as clever as snakes but harmless as doves. But often we tart up our ego and fear and call it street smarts. But the issue here is our hearts, not the pretty self-deceptions we are able to sell ourselves on.
God is crazy about us. God is crazy about you. Let us be thankful, overwhelmingly so, and respond in kind.
In the Name of God, Amen.
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