Crazy Love
Lent 4C
30 March 2025 11:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
The Mission Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin Oregon
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
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.
In Luke chapter 15, Jesus gives three parables describing God. The first sees God as a shepherd with 100 sheep. When one gets lost, he leaves the 99 to fend for themselves, and seeks out the lost one. He then brings it back on his shoulders, rejoicing, and is so excited that he throws a party (Luke 15:1-7). Clearly the shepherd is a little wacky—he risks all his sheep and probably spends way more than he can afford on the party.
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 probably costs 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 ignores 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, as it always does, 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 be 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 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
that 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. For Jesus,
that’s how God is, and that’s how we should be.
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.
