Mary’s Song (John 20:1-18)

Early on the first day of the week . . . that’s how our story begins . . . early on the first day of the week . . . so begins Mary’s song, perhaps her finest one yet, early on the first day of the week.  It was still dark, maybe the dogs had started to bark, maybe you could see that thin little slit of red in the East, maybe she looked that direction and remembered tales of a starin the East, a star of great promise, a promise that seemed to have been cruelly extinguished two days before . . . or maybe not, maybe she just trudged to the tomb from where she was staying in Jerusalem, head down, tears staining the cobblestone streets . . .

This is Mary Magdalene, make no mistake about it, the same Mary that has been maligned for 2000 years – by everyone from Hippolytus to Martin Scorsese – as being a prostitute.  The gospels say nothing of the kind about this, and some people say – including a certain Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code  – that the Roman church purposefully assassinated her character, maybe to make the mother of Jesus seem all the more pure.  What the gospels do say is that she was one of a number of followers of Jesus who were women and, as Luke put it, “provided for him out of their substance.” That and apparently she was once filled with seven demons, who no longer cohabited within her . . . 

And that’s it . . . not much information, we’re told almost nothing about her, and a blank slate is one that’s easily filled, easily chalked up with slander and speculation and lies . . . but one thing we know for certain is that she was there . . . both today, at the empty tomb, and two days ago, at the cross . . . And as she stumbles alone over the rough-hewn streets, she can’t help remember, can’t help look back in horror . . . the jeering crowds, the stone-pounded nails, the carrion birds, circling, cackling, waiting . . . 

She can still smell death’s heavy perfume as she lurches along in the dark, and its memory brings back feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, despair . . . all she ever wanted had been on that cross, all her dreams and plans and expectations . . . they were all nailed to that tree, ridiculed, spit upon, mocked . . . and now as she draws near the tomb, she slows, stumbling if possible all the more, knowing what she’ll find . . .

But when she gets there, all she sees is a dark maw, a barren hole, and she is sore afraid . . . grave robbers have come – many of them, from the looks of it, and were they still there?  Would she find them hidden in the darkness with the mutilated corpse of her beloved?  So she runs, with ease now that she’s running away, now that cold light has risen in the East . . . she runs to where she knows Peter and the others are cowering in the darkness, where they’d been since they ran away on that awful day—so much for manly courage—and as she bursts in the door, as she rouses them grainy-eyed from sleep, she wails a hopeless lament:  They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they’ve laid him . . . we don’t know where to go to mournhim, where to construct a monument to our shattered dreams. We don’t know where to bring flowers in the Spring, to comfort one another around his remains, to build a durable legend out of our retreating memories.  If we don’t  know where he is buried, how can we do anything?  How can we build a shrine, a pilgrimage-point, a rallying cry? Without a corpse, it’s over . . . without a body it’s as if it never were . . .

So they tumble off their mats, Peter and the beloved, and stumble through the door, and you’ve gotta know that there’s a little – how shall we say it? – friendly rivalrybetween them, and naturally, it’s the beloved disciple who wins – this isJohn’s version of the story, after all – and he peeks in the tomb, and his eyes adjust to the darkness and the musty tang assaults his nose, and there are the grave clothes, and he’s stopped in his tracks . . . but Peter – is he angry that he’s second? – pushes on past him, into the tomb, and there are the wrappings, but something else as well – the head wrapping, rolled neatly, and with care, in a place by itself . . . and did he wonder at that?  Did he wonder why grave-robbers would be so neat and tidy? Did he perhaps rethink his estimation of just who took the body?  And why would anyone remove the wrappings if they were going to rebury him?  It would have been a puzzle had they stopped to think . . . but they didn’t.  Because seeing isbelieving, and they believe what they see, they depart, troubled and heartsick, for they don’t understand the implications of the neatly-rolled-up bandage, they don’t get the message of the empty tomb.  And so they go back to cowering fear.

But not Mary.  Mary’s grief won’t let her leave his grave, it won’t let her leave the last place she had seen her master’s body . . . and she stands there and weeps, inconsolable . . . the men have come and gone, leaving her to her pointless vigil . . . her tongue still full of bitter Passover herbs . . . she stands there and weeps . . . Tied to that place of vacant death, with nothing to do— no body to anoint, no linen to arrange;  she waits, forsaken . . .

We often make a big deal out of the fact that Mary, a woman, is the first, the first to find evidence of the resurrection – the empty tomb, carefully folded grave-clothes – and it’s true, but she’s alsothe first to disbelieve, to not understand the truly revolutionary, truly new thingGod has done in our midst, and she's certainly not the last . . . Peter and the beloved disciple, trudging back to the house, can’t even conceiveof such a thing, it is beyond their expectations, beyond the scope of their comprehensionthat such a thing could occur.

In fact, the biblical record is filledwith disbelief, with doubt about the resurrection . . . in Luke’s account, when Mary and several other women tell the gathered disciples, they are not believed, because “their words seemed to them like nonsense."  Later on in Luke, Jesus himself appears to a couple of travelers on the Emmaus Road, and they are “prevented from recognizing him” (by what?  Their inability to comprehend?) and then he appears to the eleven, and chastises them for their unbelief “Why do doubts arise in your hearts?”  And of course, poor ol’ Thomas – known formerly as “The Twin” – will go down in history as the “Doubting Thomas” because of his insistence on proof.

And there were others . . . Porcius Festus, governor of Judea screamed at Paul “You are out of your mind!  Your great learning is driving you mad!” Peter was accused of propagating a clever lie, and Paul rebutted Corinthian skeptics who insisted that “there is no resurrection of the dead,” for anybody.   The inclination has always been to disbelieve, to doubt, so this notion that it’s only recently that we’ve become too sophisticated to believe in the resurrection is nonsense. It has always been easier to disbelieve . . . and neo-atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and even Christians like John Shelby Spong, who ought to know better, condescendingly insist that it’s somehow primitive to believe in the resurrection these days, since the wonders of science have banished such superstitions from our rational minds . . . since we’ve advanced beyond those poor, primitive schlubs back in 33 AD.  Outside of the fact that there were folks in Greco-Roman society far more sophisticated than the likes of Dawkins or Harris or Spong – heard of Plato or Aristotle or Seneca, boys? – the fact of the matter is that they were no more likely to believe in a resurrected corpse thenthan we are today, there were plenty of disbelievers to go around . . . and the first was Mary . . .

And she doesn’t even get the picture after a couple of angelsappear to her . . . “Woman,” they say – angels apparentlyaren’t especially empathetic – “Woman, why are you weeping?”  As if they don’t know, as if they aren’t awareof what is going on . . . or maybe they are aware, but couldn’t comprehend her unbelief . . . like Woman, why are you weeping?  Don’t you know the prophecies?  Don’t you believewhat you have been told?  Why are you weeping?  But it is apparent that she doesn't . . . she repeats her lament “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him,” but just as she says it, she senses a presence behind her, and it is Jesus, but she doesn’t know it's him . . .

And he repeats the question “Woman, why are you weeping?  For whom do you look?”  And yet she still doesn’t believe, she thinks he’s the gardener, “If you have carried him away, tell me where he is, and I will take him away . . .”   She is frantic to dofor him, to anoint him, to provide the services that only a close relative can provide . . . she cannot believe the unbelievable, she cannot fathomthe unfathomable . . . somebody musthave carried him away, if not robbers, if not angels, then maybe this unassuming man in front of her, this rough-hewn servant she thinks is a common labourer . . .

And then he speaks, he speaks, and in that instant, all the scales fall away from her eyes, all the doubts vanish . . . and does it hit her right between the eyes?  Is there suddenly opened up for her a space of possibility, a room with a view toward resurrection?  He says just one word, he calls her name – Mary! – and she knows . . . Rabbouni, she responds, which means – John oh so helpfully tells us – Teacher!  And Mary – first to the tomb, first to disbelieve, to misunderstand – is also first to believe.  Mary, the gardener says, Teacher,she replies.

And Behold!  It’s when she hears aWordthat Mary believes, and thus John’s gospel begins and ends with the word, which was after all made flesh and to dwell among us, made flesh to speak to his mother Mary about the production of wine, made flesh to speak to the disciples about a mansion with many rooms, and made flesh to answer Mary’s song with just one word: her name.  It’s not just any word thathe breathes to her, is it?  It is light as a feather, intimate as a caress . . . in ancient thought a name contained a person’s essence,it is a word of power, of knowing,and Jesus uses that word with Mary, and the scales fall from her eyes.

And as we enter this most blessed season, we can be assured that Christ—in response to the song of our lives, in answer to the high notes of joy, and the low bass growl of pain and disappointment—in answer to all of our life-songs, all of our heart-songs, Jesus calls our name.  Can you hear it?  Can you hear him as he whispers your name into the stillness? Mary . . . Chris . . . Vincent . . . Elizabeth . . . Jesus, whom we call the Christ, answers the melody of our lives with all-encircling love, vast compassion and knowingthat we celebrate at this season. Hallelujah!  Amen.

Riding to Zion (Luke 19:28-40)

      A couple of years ago, archeologists unearthed an absolutely stunning find. Buried in an intact urn, on a kosher hog-farm between Bethany and the Mount of Olives, was an almost intact papyrus.  To their mounting excitement, they found that it was from the first century A.D., and as they deciphered the writing – in Aramaic, now a dead language – they almost flipped their scholarly lids: what they held in their hands was the diary of an hitherto unknown follower of Jesus.  And as it happens, the first text to be released to the public – that’s you and me – revolves around the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the events leading up to his death.  And so, because this is Palm Sunday – and so I won’t have to write a sermon– I thought I’d read some of it this morning.  So here goes: readings from the diary of an until-now unknownfollower of Jesus, who identifies himself simply as "Fred."

“March23, 30 Ado Domini,8:30 pm, somewhere South of Bethany:

      “Dear diary: I’m getting sick and tired of always hearing about ‘the twelve.’  The twelve did this,the twelve did that.  Don’t they know that there are a multitude of followers of Jesus?  Well, maybe not a multitude, but at least a veritable throng?  But all they ever talk about are John and James and that idiot Peter . . . what about the rest of us?  What about Ray and Edith and Roy?  Or Judy and Melvin and Ruth?  More to the point, what about me, what about Fred? You’d think guys like me would get at least a littlecredit . . . 

      “Well enough of this whining . . . tomorrow is as they say, dear diary, another day.  And what a day it’s gonna be!  After all the travels, after all the healings and feedings and teaching, after all the exorcisms, demons and dust, we’re gonna arrive at the City!  Jerusalem, the big pomegranate, mother of us all.  And I may be wrong, dear diary, but I think that there just might be some smarty-pants Pharisees who are surprised as all get out about the reception the master’s gonna get.”

“March 24, 30 Ado Domini,9:15 pm, Mary and Martha’s house, Bethany:

      “Dear diary: What kind of King rides into town on a donkey?  And a little donkey – a donkey colt– at that? Last year I got tickets to see Biggus Maximus enter into Joppa – from a Phoenician scalper outside the acropolis, paid a fortune, but it was worth it – and hewas on this gold-bedecked stallion, that looked like he’d just as soon swallow ol’ Biggus as lookat him, but my point is that thatwas a royal entry, worth every denarius I paid . . . but Jesus – King of the Jews, Soon-to-be Anointed Messiah from the royal line of David – chooses a donkey.  And though he isn’t a bigman, he still looked rather – how shall we say it – un-kingly riding in on it, or at least unlike any king I’veever seen . . . 

      “But I gotta tell you, dear diary, I wasimpressed by how he got the donkey . . . ‘go into the town,’ he says to Thaddeus and me, ‘and just inside the gates you’ll see this colt tied up to a post.  Untie it and bring it here.  And if anyone asks you why you’re taking it, just tell ‘em the Lord sent you.’  And behold! just like he said, there was a colt, and as we were untying it, the owner came out and asked what we thought we were doing,taking his donkey, and we told him the Lordneeds it, and he let us have it, no questions asked.  I guess that guy knows a king when he sees one . . . or hears about one, or whatever . . . But what impressed me the most,dear diary, was the way Jesus set it all up . . . for doesn’t it say in the scroll of Zechariah – I believe it’s the ninth verse of the ninth chapter – ‘Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey?’  Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy . . . but those are the things mighty rulers are made of, they know how to exploit the texts, they know how to bring a little political theaterto bear.  What a king our Lord Jesus is gonna make!  I just wonder how he knew the foal was there?

      “Anyway, we took off our cloaks, spread ‘em on the colt, and he got on, and son-of-a-gun if the crowds didn’t spread theirs as well!  They took off their cloaks, young and old, rich and poor and laid them in the street!  And if you ever saw what a donkey’s hooves can do to a piece of cloth, you’ll know what a sacrifice it was . . . especially for the less fortunate among 'em, who might not have had anything else to keep 'emwarm.  But into town we went, and we began to shout ‘Hosanna!’ and ‘Glory!’ And as he rode, it didn'tseem to make any difference that the feet of the Son of God almost drug the ground . . . they just kept throwing palms, and piling coats in the road, and all the while we disciples shouted out ‘Blessed is the king’ – the King! – ‘who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Good old Psalm 118, that oughta clue them into who he is . . . and out of the crowds came morebranches and morecloaks . . .

      “I gotta admit, he had me worried . . . all that stuff about suffering and dying. Just the other day he said ‘The Son of Man’ – that’s what he calls himself, the son of man – ‘must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’ and then, as if we didn’t understand him the firsttime ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.’  But of course we’d heardhim: The Son of Man is gonna be betrayed into human hands!  It’s code,that’s what I told Andrew, it’s codethat says just the oppositeof what’s really going to happen.  He can’t very well go running around Judea, telling all the worldhis plans to rule the kingdom of Israel, to overthrow the hated Romans and their Herodian lackeys... He can’t very well tell them that,now can he?  The Romans have spies everywhere,behind every bush, under every rock . . . Roman spies are everywhere, and before you could say Herod the Great, Jesus would be arrested and strung up somewhere, probably on a cross or something. So he spoke in code,that’s what he did . . .  but that chowderhead Andrew, he kept insisting that it must be true, because Jesus is infallible, and he wouldn’t say something that was a lie, even to save his own skin!  That about made me fall on the floor laughing.  Infallible, I said, who do you think he is, the Pope?  Don’t you know that nobody’s infallible but God?

      “And now, dear diary, we can all see that I was right, confirmed by the crowds, confirmed by the kingly entry.  The crowdssure knew who their savior was, they went nutsover him, they didn’t even seem to noticethat he wasn’t exactly on a warhorse. And we were allshouting and fussing and hosanna-ing up a storm.  I bet they could hear us all the way to Samaria,we were so loud. And a couple of Pharisees came up to us and tried to get us to shut up, but Jesus said ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’  And that was like the final, prophetic icing on the cake, ‘cause even the Pharisees couldn’t help but get it: here, in living color, right before their very eyes stood their prophetic come-uppance, their living, breathing doompredicted so long ago by the prophet Habakkuk.

      “These stoneswill shoutif you silence us! They’ll scream outin protest! Talk, talk, as fast as you can, you can’t silence us, Mr. Pharisee man . . . we’re the voice of the people, the voice of the Messiah, who’s gonna ruleya, baby!  We’re gonna get down,we’re gonna party hearty, when Jesus comes into his kingdom!  Gonna take on over, gonna rock-n-roll, play a little electric guit-tar on some Pharisee beards, a little rolling-thunder drum solo on some Roman heads!  And all this proves it, all this screaming and Hosanna-ing and throwing-of-palms. How can they notfollow him? How can theynotcrown him King of Kings?  It’s like he’s a superstar, or something – Think of it, dear diary! Jesus Christ, Superstar!

      “And all the roles will be reversed, the mighty will be made low, the lowly made high, ‘cause king Jesus is coming to town!  And he comes to bring good newsto the poor, to set the captives freeand bring sight to the blind!  And as soon as he takes care of those Romans – and those draft-dodging, incense-burning Temple hypocrites– he’s gonna do it!  There’s gonna be some sad little oppressors, stripped of all their finery, and the kitchen-help is gonna eat well tonight!  It’ll be like when our ancestors came out of Egypt, and stole all the Pharaoh’s loot!  And just like back then, it’ll be good to stick it to the man!”

      The final entry is from 6 days later, and it’s labeled:

“March 29, Anno Domini30, in a cave, somewhere in Judea:

      “It’s Friday night, and it’s cold and dank and dark . . . I can barely see to write, but I don’t dare light a larger fire.  I’m afraid of the centurions . . . yeah, yeah . . . those same guys we were going to conquer, a few days ago.  Just last week, we were talk of the town, we were gonna rule the world, and now . . . this. I just don’t get it . . . how could he be the Messiah when he’s in the grave?  How could he be the savior, when he’s in the sod?  How can he be the rescuer, the deliverer, the liberator when he’s as cold and dead as ice?  What kind of king isit who’s flogged, stripped of clothes anddignity, and then spiked to a tree in a death reserved for drug dealers, mass-murderers, and pedophiles?

      “I can taste the irony like a bitter tang . . . The donkey, the lowest ride around, no kingwould have come into town on one of those, and that should have given us a clue. . . but no.  Hosanna!  Hosanna! we said.  As the branches rained down on our heads, as we tripped over all the coats strewn across the street, we were already counting our blessings – no! we were counting our loot, reserving our places in the kingdom of heaven.

      “I hear all his precious twelve are gone, now, scattered like chaff before the cold east wind, I hear that Peter wouldn’t even admit he knewJesus, and that Thomas is cowering in the upper room, quaking under the table . . . but in truth am I any better?  And what’s the use, anyhow?  It’s over, finished, kaput.  The new way, the way of Jesus, the way of justice,over before it even started.  So much beauty, so much promise, nailed up to a cross, and sealed in a hillside tomb.  What was God thinking?  What was on God’s mind?  I just don’t get it.”

            

Family Relations (Luke 15:1-3; 11-32)

There are a couple of things to remember when thinking about any parable, and especially, perhaps this one.  The first thing is that it isa parable, which is to say it’s fiction, or more accurately, it may have been true, but that’s not its primary quality: it’s a story told to make a point, or in the case of most of them, points.  Thus, they have the advantages of fiction: they are structured to emphasize those points, things can be exaggerated or rearranged or played down in service of that message.

The second thing to remember is that thisparable was told almost two thousand years ago, to an audience that livedtwo thousand years ago, and who had the world-view and cultural expectations of two thousand years ago, most definitely nottwenty-first century America.  And to understand the parable of the prodigal son, we must take that into account, or else our interpretation of it might go as drastically wrong as many have in the past. 

The Pharisees and scribes were grumbling about something that was absolutely not done:  Jesus was spending time with sinners, with those who were outside the pale of polite Israelite society.  The word sinner, especially in Luke, is a technicalterm, and refers not to someone who steals pencils or even laptop computers, but someone who—for whatever reason—is not welcome in Jewish worship, who cannot come and worship in the temple or synagogue because they have done something that has made them ritually unclean.  Like touching a dead person, or a woman in her period, or—in the case of tax collectors—working against the interests of the community. There were really strict rules about associating with these folks, and the most strict revolved around table fellowship.  It was not allowed for Jews in good standing to share table with sinners, with those who were not welcome—for whatever reason—in Jewish worship.  But Jesus wasn’t just eating with them, he was welcoming them, or as the Greek might be rendered, receiving them.  And this, in turn, implies that he was playing host—like he did at least once before—which was even more over-the-top, scandalously not done.

And it’s in response to this criticism that he tells the parable, introducing it with “There was a man with two sons,” and right off the bat we hear of anotherscandal:  the younger son wants the share of the property that will belong to him after his father dies, and this is absolutely shocking,  because none of the listeners have ever heardof such a thing, and they’d been living there a long time, let me tell you . . . but that’s not the half of it: Jewish custom and law allowed for division,for partition of the estate, but not disposition before the death of the patriarch.  In other words, the younger son could have it divided, but the father would still retain control.  But see what happens: the younger son not only demands division, but disposition as well: he takes his inheritance and sells it—that’s what it Jesus implies when he says the son gathered it: how can you put take up sheep and stored grain and slaveswithout selling them, and you can’t take all of that on the road.

And with the selling, it has spilled over into the community, because where else is he going to sell it in such a hurry but the community?  Everyone knows what’s up now:  the younger son wants his father dead, he wants his inheritance, his property, which amounts to his life . . . and in fact, the Greek word translated here as “property” is his bion,or his living. . . for without that property, the patriarch cannot live.

And what about the older son?  Where is he in all this?  Why do we not see him defending his father’s honor, not to mention his living?  In ancient Palestine, the eldest son would be expected to defend the life of the father, so he is conspicuous by his absence in our story . . . even this early in the parable, trouble can be seen a-brewing on the horizon.

And the younger son has effectively cut himself off, effectively ruined his relationship with the three entities that are important to him in the first century society: his father, his brother and his community.  And he takes his father’s living, and he sells it, and takes off for the far country, and he wastes it away in dissolute living, and although we can imagine what that might be—in the second half of the parable, the brother will say it aloud—Jesus does not get specific.   We are told only that he squanders it, it might have been playing cards or betting on the ponies or any number of things—there are lots of ways to eat up a small fortune, but when he runs out of his money, when he’s used up all his father’s living, he comes to be in need, for there is a famine on the land, and he has nothing to eat, and so he joins himself to one of the Gentiles of the land, who sends him out to feed the pigs.  And the verb in Greek  is stronger than “hired himself out,” it’s, like, cleavinghimself to the citizen . . he has glommed onto him, attached himself to him . .  . it’s as if he has become a gentile himself, and Jesus drives home the point by having him feed those most Gentile of beasts.

But he is starving:  He’d eat the pods that he fed the pigs if they would support a human being, and nobody would give him anything—more evidence that he wasn’t the most welcome person in the world—and he was slowly starving to death.  And he realizes this, so he hatches a plot to survive: he will go to his father, beg his forgiveness, saying “I have sinned against you and against heaven,” and he will ask him to take him on as a hired hand.  And his audience of Pharisees would approve of this, it’s in line with rabbinical thinking: though he won’t get back in the family—that ship has irrevocably sailed—he willbe earning money, and perhaps he can pay his father back, and thus fulfill his duty to care for him.  But we alsoknow that this offer isn’t all that altruistic,  because he would still be independent of his father, and not have to live with his brother, or be dependent upon him—remember, the rest of the property belongs toolder son,though he has not taken possession of it while his father is alive.

So, his plan takes care of two of his three relationship axes, his father—he can pay him back, and thus fulfill his responsibility to care for him—and the brother, through avoidance.  But it doesn’t fix his broken relationship with the community, and he’s resigned to it, to the verbal and maybe even physical abuse . . . when word came that he’d been spotted on the outskirts, people would come to line the streets like for a twisted parade, taunting him, singing insulting doggerel, maybe even throwing rocks his way.

And so he approaches the town with fear, waiting for the first catcall, cringing in advance of the stones, but then an amazing thing happens:  he spies his father runningtoward him, robes flapping, bony old knees flashing and he cannot believe his eyes: no middle Eastern patriarch would be seen running . . .  in that honor/shame culture, that would accrue beaucoup shame, it would be the height of humiliation, and he does it in front of the whole communityto boot, he humiliates himself in front of the whole town . . . he covers his son in kisses, and the community is gob-smacked here’s the son who wished him dead, who cared about him so little as to take away his livelihood, and rather than humiliating himas any other self respecting nobleman would, rather than requiring him to come to himand fall prostrate before him, he does humiliated himself. 

And the son begins his prepared speech, he says “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son..”  But he is so overcome with emotion that he cannot get the rest of it out, the part about his father hiring him, and his father doesn’t give him much time, for he tells his slaves to get a robe—the best one, which is surely his, surely the master of the house’s—to get a robe and kill a calf—not a sheep or a goat but a calf, enough to feed the entire village—and now we know that the whole village is invited:  if it were just the family, it would be a sheep or a goat.  And he says we must celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.

The son wants independence,  he wants to be a hired hand, equal perhaps in stature to his father, but his father wants none of that.  He wants no hired hand, he has plenty of those, he wants no paid underling . . . what he wants is a son.  And the prodigal son,  overcome by the absolutely unheard of enormity of his father’s act of humiliating love, accepts it, doesn’t he?  He gratefully accepts what he has been given and returns to the fold.

Meanwhile, the second half of the parable begins with the return of the older son, come in from the field, come in from working his tail off like a dutiful child—he hears the revelry and asks a by-stander what is going on, and he’s told what has happened. he becomes angry, and refuses to go into the party, which is a massivebreach of social etiquette in itself.  In the ancient middle East, the eldest son was kind of a major domo, or party host, freeing the patriarch up to be, well, the patriarch.  It was the eldest son’s place to plaster a smile on his face and greet the newly arrived guests, saying just the right things, making just the right socially correct compliments, but he does none of that. And he doesnone of it n full view of the entire community, humiliating both himself, and especially his father . . . 

But once again, an amazing thing happens:  the father humiliates himself again. Instead of waiting for the son to come to him and dealing with it in private, he comes to his son.  And instead of demanding an apology he pleads withhim.  He does the same thing as he did with the prodigal:  he abases himself in humiliating love.

But if it’s the same response from the father,it’s a totally different one from the son: in the face of that staggering love, a love so strong and pure that it would take the humiliation of the sons upon itself, he gives nothing back but scorn:  Listen! he says, committing anothergross breach of societal rules by commandinghis father, Listen!  For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command.  Yet, you have never given me even a young goatso that I might celebrate with my friends.”  And suddenly, the full weight of what he says hits us:  he doesn’t consider himself a son, he doesn’t consider himself a member of the family.  He sees himself as a slave, having to rely on his father for something even as small as a goat. The next thing he says confirms our observation: “But when this son of yours” not when my lost brother, or errant sibling, but your son ”who has devoured your property with prostitutes”—which is far more specific than Jesus is, who just says dissolute living—“after he devoured your property with prostitutes, you kill the fatted calf!”

And his father reminds him of his true status, as favored child “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours”—reminding him pointedly of their relationship—“this brother of your was dead and has come to life, was lost and has been found”  And then . . . nothing.  The story ends, there’s no “and the older son turned away in disgust” or “the older son smiled and returned the embrace” it just ends.  We are left with the older son’s intransigence, his unmoving animosity,  but—though we’re never told—we can guess that he is unmoved, even by this, because we were clued in from the beginning, when he refused to step in, refused to defend the rights of his father to have a living.

Some modern interpreters would psychologize this story, and speculate on what kind of father, what kind of upbringing would produce such a disastrous pair of sons, but if they did, they would be far outside Jesus’ intentions.  His hearers would not even think of such a move, they would be concerned with what happened, how the rigid social conventions of the time were violated, and overturned.  Two sons, and two stories that are essentially the same: they both have little regard for the father, the youngest one wants him dead so he can spend, and the older one considers himself a slave, working for a demanding master. Both violate social custom severely: the first most spectacularly, by taking his father’s living before he is even dead, the other equally searing, if not as flamboyant,:  he refuses to do a son’s duty, first to advocate for his father at the outset, and second by upbraiding his father in public, by rejecting him as a father, by calling himself “slave.”  And Jesus doubtless makes the youngest son’s transgressions more spectacular so that his acceptance of his father’s love all the more surprising: the son who seems the most degenerate, especially to our modern sensibilities, is the one to return to the fold, to accept his father’s stunningly unexpected, overwhelmingly humiliating love.

This parable is wonderfully deep, surpassingly complex . . . there are many avenues for fruitful interpretation, most interestingly perhaps the incarnational aspects of the father’s actions, how he humiliates himself, becoming like them,to effect the return of his sons . . . but I’ve talked enough already. It’s Lent, and at Lent thoughts of young men—and women—should turn to repentance, and I think this parable gives a surprising view . . . nowhere is the Greek word metanoia, which we translate as repentance, seen, but there is repentance here nevertheless.  And here, it seems to be an acceptance, a relianceon the grace of the father.  The younger son, when faced with his father’s uncritical, no-strings-attached acceptance, relies on it, doesn’t he?  He doesn’t get out the second half of his planned speech, which was that he would go it on his own, become independent of his father.  He throws himself on the mercy of his Father “I have sinned against heaven and before you,” he says, “I am unworthy to be your son.”  Period, no bid for independence, no command to his father to treat him as a hired hand.

The youngest son’s willingness to put himself into his father’s care, to surrender his entire life, to become part of the family is the crux of the matter.  His reliance on his father ensures that he will live life as a beloved member of the household, whereas what does the oldest son get?  Well, it’s clear that he would rather celebrate with his friends than be a part of the family, and he will doubtless continue on, bitter and leading a life that is less than it should be, cut off from the embrace of his father.

This Lent, I bid you to think on this: do you rely on God’s grace, God’s surpassing love in your everyday life?  Do you surrender to God like the younger son did his father, or do you continue to try to go it on your own, to remain stubbornly independent of the family of God?  Which one do you think will lead to a better life?  Amen.

Crime and Punishment? (Luke 13:1-9)

    Several years ago, on National Public Radio, Scott Simon interviewed James Martin, a priest of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits.  Father Martin is associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, and author of a book on applying Jesuit principles to everyday life.  The two discussed simplicity and poverty, two vows the Jesuits keep, and Martin was witty and funny, but when Simon asked his last question, the talk turned serious.  “I’ve saved the hardest question for last,” he said.  “If there is a God, why do little children suffer?”

“That is the hardest question,” Martin said.  “And I think the answer is ‘we don’t know.’”  Which is an honest answer, at least … he didn’t trot out the latest Christ-o-babble, he didn’t give his pet theories, or Aristotle’s pet theories, he just answered quite simply “we don’t know.”

The ancients in Jesus’ day and before, thought they knew.  They thought that bad things were God’s punishment for sins.  God visited punishment upon people for doing things God didn’t like.  Things such as, oh, invading countries for their natural resources . . . keeping a vast segment of their population in poverty to support the upper class . . . dating foreigners.  Stuff like that.  And for these offences, God would visit plagues and famines and invasions, and visits from your in-laws.  And bad things for seemingly-innocent people like the “little children” of the radio host’s question were explained away by this as well: you see, the ancients didn’t have the same concepts of individuality that we do.  (Which is why those of us in modern Western societies need to take care in interpreting stuff in the Bible, much of which applies to groups of people—nations, peoples or tribes many times—we need to be careful how we take concepts in scripture and apply them whole-hog to the faith and spirituality of the individual.  They often just don’t fit.)

Anyway, the ancients had an answer for the question of why bad things happen to little, seemingly innocent children, and that was that they weren’t really innocent.  Remembering they had no concept of the individual, the sins of the group they belonged to—the peoples, the nation, the tribe, whatever—were thought to be imputed onto all of its members. Thus, they could say “the sins of the fathers is visited upon the sons,” etc., etc., never thinking at the time how that let women off the hook.

Of course, this idea of God punishing one’s sins by doing bad things to one hasn’t completely died—witness the fundamentalist nut-jobs that blamed Hurricane Katrina on Bourbon Street (which Katrina, ironically, missed)—and come on, admit it: we all, from time to time, ask: why me?  And this idea of calamity as punishment for sin, is at least a coherent, straightforward answer for Scott Simon’s question to Father Martin, and it informs the first part of this rather difficult passage.  Jesus is teaching a crowd of people, as he was wont to do, and somebody tells him about some Galileans that Pilate had—apparently—slaughtered.  They said Pilate—who was notoriously brutal—had mingled the blood of these Galileans with their own sacrifices.  And Jesus says: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?”  And he answers his own question:  “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”   And now I bet they were sorry they brought it up, because he goes right on:  “And what about those eighteen others killed when the Tower of Siloam fell—bang!—right on their heads?  Do think they were worse than anybody else living in Jerusalem?”  And again, the answer is “not on your life … and unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

We need to stop right here and acknowledge that all this talk of sin and repentance makes a lot of us modern Christians—myself included, if you must know—really nervous.  What do you mean, repent, we want to ask Jesus.  What do you mean, we’re gonna perish just like they did if we don’t turn our lives around?  Where’s the grace?  Where’s the forgiveness?  For that matter, where’s the God-is-love business that we all like to quote?  Seems a little harsh to me, and a little un-politically-correct as well.  How we gonna pack ‘em in the pews we keep reading about stuff like this?

Good question.  Almost as good as the one about why bad things happen to little children.  And notice that Jesus doesn’t debunk the notion of suffering as a consequence of sin—though he doesn’t support it, either—he simply tells us that the ones who died in those sudden slaughters—some by accident, and some by cruelest murder—the ones who died in those incidents aren’t any more sinful than anyone else in Galilee or Jerusalem.  They were sudden, unexpected, and maybe that’s the key:  maybe Jesus is saying the same thing he says elsewhere.  Don’t wait to repent, don’t wait to turn your life around, because death can come at any time, whether by the knives of bloody Pilate or the simple cracking of a tower stone.  It’s consistent with his teaching, and that of his follower Paul, who warns us to keep awake, lest we be caught napping when the end times come.

And so, the force of Jesus’ argument seems to be not that his listeners will perish without repentance, but that they’ll perish, as he says, “just as those Galileans and Jerusalemites they did.”  That is, in the same, unrepentant state, without having experienced the fullness of life on earth of those who are turning theirs around.  Be careful, Jesus says, to do this while you can, because if a tower falls on you, or a homicidal maniac like Pilate gets hold of you, it’ll be too late.

Now I know that, as in most places we see it in Scripture, we tend to read “perish” as “go to hell,” where the fire will lick your bones, crackle, crackle, crackle, and ol’ Scratch will stick you in the behind with a pointy fork, but that’s not what Jesus is talking about here … he’s not talking about heaven or hell, but plain old death—really perishing—and living life fulfilled and to our greatest potential before we do.  Remember how the Apostle Paul sliced it … he separated justification—the one time making-right-with-God effected by Christ on the cross, that many of us think of as “salvation”—from sanctification, the ongoing conforming of our lives to that of Christ.  And I think that that’s what this repentance is of which Jesus speaks.  We are called to sanctification, turning our lives around—that’s what metanoia, Greek for repentance means.  We are called to holiness, to set-apartness, and that holiness comes from God alone.

But now, he launches into another parable, and it’s not much more promising than the pronouncements about repent or perish.  The owner of the vineyard has a fig tree planted in his vineyard, but when he came looking for fruit, there wasn’t any . . . which is understandable:  room in a first-century vineyard is limited, and if a plant doesn’t produce, the  livelihood of the farmer dictates that it be gotten rid of replaced by one that will produce.  Only natural, only right.  Gotta be productive if you’re a fig plant, or else you’ll get ripped out.

And he tells the gardener—the one who planted the tree in the first place—he tells him “Cut that puppy down!  I’ve come here for three years running, and no fruit!  Why waste the soil?  Cut it down!”  But the gardener sticks up for the poor little plant, saying let it alone for just one more year and let me tend it, let me aerate the roots and pack a little manure around the base, and if it doesn’t bear fruit in a year, then by all means: cut it down!”

And our tendency is to try to treat this allegorically, like we’re used to doing with parables: our tendency is to assign identities to each player.  Let’s see now: the owner represents God, the fig tree is a recalcitrant nation, or is it an individual, or a tribe?  But if God’s the owner, then who’s the gardener, who is it supposed to be who intercedes for the poor little plant?  Jesus?  The Holy Spirit?  And notice that it isn’t the plant’s fault that it doesn’t bear fruit . . . even the most ignorant farmer of the day would know that some will produce, some won’t, them’s the breaks, Jake.

And I wish I could tell you exactly what it means—that’s kind of my job, you know—but it’s just a little too . . . irregular for that, a little too out of round.  On the surface, it’s the same: the plant better turn it’s life around before it’s too late, silly plant, but then what’s all this about the gardener?  What about this entity who helps and nourishes the plant in its efforts at sanctification?  Well . . . maybe Jesus is allowing as how in this, we will not be alone.

On NPR, after Scott Simon asked Father Martin that embarrassing question, why do bad things happen to innocent little children, and Martin admits he does not know the answer, he says this:  “for the Christian, there is the person of Christ, who has gone through suffering himself, and who understands our suffering.”  Christ, he is saying, is with us, along for the ride, and he’s been there, and thus . . . gets it.  He understands. He has suffered about as badly as any human can, and understands, deeply and fully.

But more than that: we are nurtured along the way, in our Christian life, we are helped and taught and supported . . . our roots are aerated and we’re watered, and manure is spread around our base.  Paul put it this way:  “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  We are not alone on our journey of repentance, on our travels toward Christ.  This sanctification business, as daunting as it may seem, is not up to us.  It is under the direction  and guidance of God the Holy Spirit, and we are accompanied along the way by our brother through adoption, Jesus Christ.  And to that I say, Thanks be to God!  Amen.