Sermon Audio for 5/22, 5/29, 6/5 and 6/12 Sermons
Minister in Residence Tom Clifton
The Sermon Audio Recordings are Available here for
the 5/22 (sermon text below), 5/29 (sermon text below), 6/5 and 6/12 sermons (text unavailable):
Listen to the 5/22/2011 Sermon
Listen to the 5/29/2011 Sermon
Listen to the 6/5/2011 Sermon
Listen to the 6/12/2011 Sermon
“Paying Attention to Grace” Luke 15:2—24 and Psalm 131 / May 22, 2011
The Prodigal Son is unhappy with his life and has a yearning, a burning to get free. He is willing to break his father’s heart. He is willing, as we saw last week, to allow his father to starve in his old age by cashing in his inheritance and taking off to the far country. And as I said last time, we cannot do that. We cannot purchase our happiness at the expense of the welfare of another. There is a spiritual law at work here. It cannot be purchased.
That’s why this chap who was in the news this past week was so right. You know the one. The man who found in the attic of his new home $40,000 in cash among the things stored away. The man who tucked that money away had died, the house was sold and nobody knew it was there. Most of us would have been tempted to say, “Finders keepers!” After all, who would know? After all, it’s my house now. Besides, the man who found the money has needs too. He and his wife were hoping to adopt. That costs money. So it—the money-- would go for a good cause. Maybe God put it there for just that purpose.
How wise to find the family and give it away. That money would have purchased only grief and sorrow. But by giving it back, it blesses giver and receiver—but most of all, the giver.
So the prodigal son ends up at the only place one can. Broke and lonely and friendless and eating pig food and smelling like a pig himself. He memorizes a confession and heads for home. He remembers that in the place he lived before, there is “bread enough and to spare” (v.17).
And so he heads for home, where there is bread enough and to spare. That’s quite a change. Here one day he is miserable because of what he lacks and for that he is willing to hurt and harm. And now he wants only to have enough. He is willing to be a hired hand and be thankful just to be alive and have enough.
As I have been saying, this is not a story about someone else. This is our story, the biography of our life. We have lied. We have cheated. We have taken what is not rightfully ours. We have pulled down a good name to make our name shine brighter. We have used people. We have brought hurt and harm to people that we love and to people that we do not love. The far country is not very far. It is in our hearts. For what we thought we needed, for what we wanted and lusted after, we have been a prodigal.
And right now we are in the process of coming home. We are always on that road back home. We come here every Lord’s Day to say it again: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy…”
But before we are even finished with our prayer, before we are finished telling God what’s on the list, we are welcomed. The robe and ring and sandals are brought to us. The embrace of God is given. And the words are spoken: “…get the fatted calf…let us eat and celebrate” (v.23). Notice it does not say, “a fatted calf.” It’s “the fatted calf.” It’s been selected before we started home. It’s been waiting for us all along. Our name is on it from the beginning.
The prodigal heart is overwhelmed now with gratitude. For now he has everything he needs. The prodigal has “bread and enough and to spare.”
Being able to say that is probably one of the highest moments of our lives. “I have bread enough and to spare.” To say it in every chapter of our lives, in every moment. It takes great spiritual work to make such a confession. It does not come easily. For when we have much, we can feel driven to have a greater abundance. And when we have little, we can feel driven into bitterness and self-pity and feelings of abandonment.
When the NT writer begins his letter to the church at Ephesus, he unpacks this idea immediately by telling the believers that in Christ we have been given “every spiritual blessing” (1:3) and that all this has been “lavished on us” (1:8). We are, in this present moment, gifted with all the goodness and grace and blessing that God has. In Christ, God has emptied his heart and love and grace. It is ours now.
This past week I picked up the memoir of one of America’s notable writers of the 20th century, Reynolds Price. Price was already famous as a writer and teacher at Duke University when he discovered, at age 51, that he had an inoperable tumor on his spine (this was before the use of the MRI and many of the surgical techniques that we have today). That tumor, and his radiation treatments, left him paralyzed from the chest down. Price lived to be 77 years old and died just this past January. His reflections on his struggles are left to us in the book, “A Whole New Life.”
I wouldn’t call Price a Christian saint. He called himself an “outlaw Christian” or something like that. But he does tell us about his prayers and his spiritual experiences, some of which are quite profound. In one of his lowest moments, when his own life, the life he knew had fallen apart, and when the pain was almost unbearable, Price looked up at the ceiling and asked God: “How much more do I take?” After a long pause, Price says that he actually heard a voice, a voice speaking audibly. And the voice simply said, “More.”
None of us would ever choose to go through what Price endured. Inserting a catheter six or seven times a day to keep infection down. Using rubber gloves to induce a bowel movement. Screaming in pain for nearly three years and then carrying pain at some level every day. Never walking on a beautiful summer’s day. No, Price is not a saint but I think he does have something we can hear and need to hear. Price writes at the end of a deep reflection: “I know that this new life is better for me” (p.189). I read this account carefully and listened carefully to what he was saying here. Price says that he wrote differently, he saw the world differently, he connected to people differently. He looks at himself with all the limitations and does not see limitations but possibilities of loving and living that were not there before.
I recall somewhere knowing or hearing that the glory of God in best seen in a human being, fully alive. How much more alive can we be than when we live courageously and gratefully right where we are? This is what Paul points toward in those marvelous words in the Corinthian letter: “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor.4:16).
None of us knows the journey ahead. But wherever it leads we will be at our best when we leave behind the question, “Why me?” and ask the higher question, “What next?” And in that question discover gratitude for what we have. For we have much. At whatever place we are in life’s journey, we have much. We have all that God can ever give. We have bread enough and to spare. I want to be able to say that all the way to the end. And I want you to say it too. Amen.
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Angry No More” / Luke 15:25-32/ May 29, 2011
I once worked in a Methodist Church. It was during my time at Duke Divinity School. They sent me to a fine church outside Winston-Salem for weekend and summer duty. And in that summer there a change of pastors occurred. It so happened that the last three sermons of the departing pastor was on the prodigal son. I preached one Sunday while the pastors were at Conference and the next Sunday a new pastor was already moved in. It so happened that his first three sermons were on the prodigal son. That meant out of seven Sundays, six sermons were on the prodigal son. After that seventh Sunday, a woman came up to me and said: “If I hear another sermon on the progical son (she pronounced it “progical” as I distinctly remember), I am going to leave this church.” Fortunately it was the last of the prodigal sermons there. And, in case you are getting tired of this, today is the last of prodigal sermons from me too.
Whoever named this long parable that Jesus told might have done better to give another name. Jesus does not give a name to this parable, some Bible editor did. Actually, Jesus starts the parable by saying: “There was a man who had two sons” (15:11). And it is the second half of the parable that is probably the most interesting, most troubling and challenging.
For example, consider this. There were four children in a family. The mother grew old and needed constant care. One of the daughters couldn’t bare the idea of Mother going to a nursing home, so she quit her job and spent full time taking care of Mother. The other three kids hardly ever visited and never gave any financial support. After a number of years, the mother died. And when the will was read—you guessed it—all four kids got an equal share. Stories like that happen the time. And it doesn’t seem at all fair. Not in the least.
So of course it is easy to be on the side of the elder brother in this parable. Life is full of stories of people who disown family members over some disagreement—and very often the issue is money. But it does not have to be money. In the language of family systems theory, every family experiences this thing called “cut- off.” People stop talking. Or move away never to be heard from again. Or only relate to the family in anger. We all have that in our family histories.
Well the elder brother is ready for cut-off in more ways than one.
But his issue may be less with his little brother than with his maddening father. After all, everyone probably knew that the little brother was never going to amount to anything anyway. His departure might have been quite expected since he was he was a wild teenager from the moment his hormones kicked in.
But the father. He’s the one who seems suddenly out of control. The father gives inheritance knowing full well it will be squandered. The father receives the squalled excuse for a son with kisses and ring and robe and sandals. It’s the father who has no shame and no justice in this story that drives the elder brother, the older son, to frenzy. I’ve discovered that most people are on the side of the elder brother in this story.
There is a text from the NT that rolls around in my head quite often. Paul is writing to the church in Philippi and in the context of the role of ambition and conceit being present almost everywhere among us, says: “regard others as better than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3).
It is important that we know here that nothing in that statement points to diminishing us. There is no subtraction in this equation. We are to know always that we are created in the image of God, a little lower than the angels, a little lower than divine. Be secure in that. Our worth and value is a given and is attested all through the biblical witness.
But in our relation to others, there is an addition that does not create a diminishing—“in humility regard others better than yourselves.” In lifting up others I am not diminishing me.
Or to turn this idea a bit, do you know that each of us lives from the weakness and vulnerability of our brothers and sisters? I know that on a Memorial Weekend like this one that many of us will give some thought to the soldiers and sailors and marines who fought and died in America’s conflicts. And this we should do, not to glorify war—which must always be avoided—but to remember its victims honorably.
But there is a larger memorial than this day. It lives in recognition that all that we have and hold was given to us by someone else. I love this country, this beautiful land or trees and mountains and seaside and prairie. This is a beautiful land. But it came to me in part because a civilization that was here 5,000 or more years ago, numbering in the millions (no one knows how many…50 million or 100 million?) fell victim to European diseases and died by the millions. It is almost certain that 85% of these indigenous people died of disease alone—not even counting the trails of tears and military exterminations that followed. All that I love in this land was passed down to me from someone who was here long before me.
And how could we fail to remember that the black African slave was forced to this land to do the heavy lifting to build an economy of wealth and international trade and then denied a full citizenship without opportunity to vote or go to school or even visit a public bathroom in my own lifetime?
And now I wear the clothes on my back every day that comes from somewhere—I almost always look at where it was made—Vietnam, Philippines, Bangladesh, and China. I can afford to buy these clothes (and yes, I frequent the second hand shops like the one down the street that I know some of you visit as well). But I have plenty of clothes and new or used I can afford to buy them and even to get rid of them to make room for more—because someone is working in a shop not one of us here would spend a day. We know all these facts. We know that more than half of the human beings in this world live on less that $2.00 a day, that a billion people can’t sign their own name, that 20% of us in the rich places consumes 75% of what the world makes. We are all on a diet while millions of women in the world spend most of their day just carrying water. This is the world of mine. It is a world where I live from the weakness and vulnerability of my brother and sister.
And when I visit my mother in a skilled nursing, I watch those women work around her. They feed her and bathe her and clean her up when her bowels don’t hold long enough. And then they hug her and give her a kiss after she is cleaned up. And I know I could not do what they do for a single hour. I don’t know what they are paid—but it is not enough. And I know that I live off the weakness and vulnerability of others.
When Paul aims us toward “regarding others as better than” (ourselves), he is reversing the whole established pattern and order of human relationships in a fallen world. For in a fallen world the weak and the vulnerable are the objects of our hatred and contempt. It is the weak among us who are neglected and placed in ghettoes and reservations and subjected to human trafficking and economically exploited and jailed. The way of the world is to project our self-destructiveness onto the weaker brother and sister.
The way of the world is to play the elder brother. Listen to him: “…you have never given me even a young goat…” (v.29). Hear the anger? He felt diminished because someone else was blessed. It never occurred to him that everything he had was grace and gift from beginning to end. It never occurred to him that the way we treat others is the way we treat ourselves.
The parable ends “open.” We don’t know if the elder brother was able to see any of this. The father ran to the younger brother and now he comes seeking the elder brother. The father gave the younger brother a party and now reminds the elder brother that all he has belongs to him. What do you think? If you could talk right now to this elder brother, what would you say to him? I know what I would say. “Friend, don’t you see it? Your whole life is one big party, one continuous feast of love and goodness.”
Of course this means giving up our anger that grace flows full and free all over the place. And that means giving up any idea that we have earned or deserved more than our weaker or younger brother or sister or friend or enemy. So, how about it elder brother? Do you want to come into the joy? Well come then. But leave your anger outside. You don’t need it anymore.
Posted by Linda Novak on Jun 12, 2011 at 16:44:32 | Article Path: Home: Sermons: Sermon Audio for 5/22, 5/29, 6/5 and 6/12 Sermons
