03-14-10 In Search of Embracing Love

I wanted to go HOME! The more I walked with my aching need, the more I came to understand that, for me, home was a metaphor for acceptance and unconditional love -the kind of love that embraces you whether you get an A on the test or make a horrible mess out of your life; the kind of love that cares enough to point you toward the right way when you're headed down a path that will cause you or others harm, but continues to be there for you, even if you choose the wrong path; the kind of love in which you come to know the beauty of who you are. Yes, I wanted to go HOME!

Whether or not we have been blessed with a temporal experience of home that lives up to this metaphor, I believe we all share the same longing in our hearts for the kind of love it represents.

"'There was a man who had two sons."[Luke 15:11] So begins what is perhaps the best known of all the parables of Jesus - a parable that has been called The Parable of the Prodigal Son. You know the story there is a younger son who seems lost even in the safety and security of his father's home. Something about his life doesn't make sense. He wants something more, but he isn't exactly sure what his heart is seeking. All he knows is that he needs some space to chart his own course and find his own fortune. So he convinces his father to give him his inheritance and he heads as far away from home as he can get. Eager to experience all of life and thrilled with his new-found freedom, he spends everything he has and all too soon hits rock bottom. Sitting in a pig-sty wishing he was a pig, he remembers that even the slaves on his father's estate have food to eat and decides to go home and ask Dad to take him on as a hired servant. Now as one commentator points out, there is no indication that this kid is sorry for the pain and embarrassment he his put his family through, he's just hungry. In fact, his request to be taken on as a hired-servant would not restore his relationship with his family. He would simply come to work, get paid and then go on about his life, without any further connection to his family.

But his father will have none of it. This is his son - a son whom he loves; a son whose existence he wants to bless; a son with whom he longs to share his life and he has come home! You know the story; his father runs to him and, before he can finish his well-rehearsed speech, embraces him and welcomes him home with a huge party.

"There was a man who had two sons." And when the older son comes in from the fields and discovers what has happened he is steamed! Do right and receive a reward. Do wrong and receive punishment. That's the code he lived by.

New Testament Professor Dr. Fred Craddock puts it this way:

It was the music and dancing that offended the older son. Of course let the younger son return home. Judaism and Christianity have clear provisions for the restoration of the penitent returnee, but where does it say that such provisions include a banquet with music and dancing? Yes, let the prodigal return, but to bread and water, not the fatted calf; to sack cloth not a new robe; wearing ashes, not a new ring; in tears, not in merriment; kneeling not dancing.

In many ways this older son is also lost. He no more experiences or understands his father's love than his brother did when he sat with the pigs. And his refusal to honor his father's action is just as much an affront to his father as his brother's actions were. Yet the father seeks to embrace and bless his older son just as much as he desired to welcome and bless his younger son.

The invitation to both sons is really the same -come home to yourself; discover the fullness of who you can be in the fullness of my love for you; let me embrace you, bless you, love you; come and discover the joy of who you are and the richness of who you can be through my embracing love.

As the younger son accepts his father's acceptance, receives his father's blessing and opens his heart to his father's embrace, he comes home to himself. But what will the older son do? Jesus leaves this parable open-ended because its intended audience is the Scribes and the Pharisees -those older-brother type religious people who think they have it all figured out but like hired servants live outside of the graciousness and embracing love of God. In fact this is the third parable in a trilogy that Jesus tells to invite the religious leaders into a new understanding of God; a new experience of the Source of Life. A shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep and goes in search of the one who is lost, rejoicing when it is found -that's the nature of God! A woman who searches and searches until she has found the one coin that is lost, rejoicing when she finds it -that's the nature of God! A father who embraces and loves all his children -no matter what- and rejoices in their homecoming -that's the nature of God!

If we dare to hear it, this story is really good news, for it proclaims that the Source of Life loves each and every one of us absolutely, completely, unquestionably; not because of anything we do or don't do; not because we have stayed home and been faithful; not because we have run off and been unfaithful. But simply because that's the nature of God! WE ARE LOVED! And there is NOTHING we can do to earn that love. And there is NOTHING we can do to destroy that love. It is total, absolute and complete. There is no part of us that is beyond God's love. We are welcomed and accepted as we are. That, Jesus says, is the nature of God! All we can do is respond to that love and allow that love to bless us and lead us home to the grace and the beauty of who, in God's love, we already are!

May we each dare to embrace the fullness of God's Embracing Love, come to the party and know the joy!

Amen.