Radical Welcome and Embrace: the story of a man with two sons

Lent 4-C March 14, 2010
St. Paul's Church Annual Meeting
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

A parishioner came into the office the other day to rant. That in itself is not such an unusual thing around here, and I have to say the subject of his rant was not all that unusual, either. It was health care, specifically the limitations of MassHealth. The parishioner’s brother had lost his job, and so lost his health insurance. He has a medical condition that needs treatment, and no, he does not want to run up a large emergency room bill that he cannot pay, especially when this condition can be treated more effectively by a doctor, in office visits. The brother makes too much money now, in the lower-wage job he found after he was laid off, to qualify for MassHealth, and before he could find any insurance he could afford, the state fined him for not having health insurance. “Here’s somebody trying to do everything right,” the parishioner ranted, “and still he gets screwed.”

Sound familiar?

If you live in a world where rules make sense, indeed, where the rules are based on what works for you, then, hey. Those are the rules. You don’t have health insurance? You have to pay a fine. You make too much money to qualify for government-funded health care? Then you have to pay for health insurance on your own. You can’t find anything you can afford? Well, then you have to pay a fine. Those are the rules. We are trying to make health care available to everyone but we’re just not there yet. You are one of those unfortunate few who fall through the cracks. Tough, yes, but those are the rules.

This is the world of the older brother in today’s gospel story. The rules are fair. I play by the rules, you play by the rules. If you screw up, wander off to play with prostitutes and end up feeding pigs, well, that’s regrettable, yes. On this farm, we work hard. We follow the rules. You can get back in, be treated well and housed and fed, but you have to play by the rules. Take a number, sit in that chair, fill out this form, provide documentation and your social security number, and wait.

We live in a world run by the older brother. And if that world makes sense to us, we will always be confused by God. Of all the people I have encountered in thirty years of ministry, more of them come to me complaining about this story than about any other of Jesus’ parables. God is just wrong here, they say. The elder brother is right.

This is not the story of the Prodigal Son, the name usually given to it. This is not the story of the older brother. This is the story of a man with two sons, two sons he loves equally and profligately, two sons with whom he shares everything. One son stays at home, works hard, lives well. The other son wanders off, does bad things, feels bad, needs help. He comes crawling home, afraid that he will be punished for breaking the rules he knew all too well, hoping that his father will forgive him enough to let him live at least the minimally secure life of one of his laborers. And what does the father do? This is the story of a man with two sons, two sons he loves equally and profligately, two sons with whom he shares everything. Everything. The return of this lost son is a cause for rejoicing. Throw a party! There is more than enough to go around.

If we act like the older brother, we will never understand this story. We will always be confused by God. We will always resent that bum who got away with it. And we will never understand what it means when that offer of abundance comes our way. The day will come when on some level we have screwed up, made a mistake, or tried to do everything right and still failed, and then someone, standing in for God as that benevolent father did in the story, will say to us, come on in! Great to see you! Now that you’re here, we can have a party! We won’t know what to do when we’re offered something we don’t deserve, and we will never think we are worthy of a life of abundance and security and comfort.

It’s not that rules are wrong, or that the life the older brother lived was ungodly. Perhaps now, the younger brother will realize that squandering his life and living among pigs is not such a good thing to do, either, and that life on the farm has its benefits. The problem is that for both of them – and this is so true for all of us – the rules were the goal, and life was a zero sum game.

God holds out a different vision, a different hope for the lives of the people he created and loves. There is enough to go around. You can have a home. You can come in out of the rain.

Today is the Annual Meeting of this church. We will discuss some serious and important things, and I hope all of you will stay and participate in the discussion. Taking part in the leadership of even this small a congregation is something everyone can do, and each person’s thoughts and contributions are needed. There is a lot to do, and you – each of you – can help.

However, if you cannot stay, or you don’t want to stay, or all you can muster in the way of participation in the life of this congregation is to come to church, that is ok. If you are headed down to lunch after this, fine. If you have to get home and take care of your family, or go to work, fine. This is your church home, and you are welcome to receive all that is offered at God’s table. We’ll see you on Wednesday, we’ll see you next week. Be well.

You may not want to hear all the details and reports and discussions that will follow this service, but at least I want you to know a few things.

This is an Episcopal church. That means we are headed by a bishop, and our bishop’s office is in Boston. This is a mission parish, and that means the bishop takes direct responsibility for us, and especially for where we are headed. I am here on behalf of the bishop, and this is what the bishop wants us to do in the coming year, dividing our time and our goals into three areas.

• First, this tiny worshiping congregation. We will continue our Sunday and Wednesday services, reaching out to neighbors and friends. We will provide pastoral care and comfort to all who come through our doors. The bishop wants us to work with other local Christian groups to offer new worship services at different times, with different kinds of music or styles of gathering.
  
  
• Second, the PleasantGreen Project. This is our vision for neighborhood improvement and community revitalization, including better and more affordable places to live. We want to improve this area where we live and work and worship, to make it safer and more attractive, and to bring the arts, and maybe some job training and opportunities for personal enrichment to people who live in our neighborhood.
  

• Third, the bishop wants us to deepen and expand our outreach to people in need: to the homeless, the underemployed, the people who come to eat lunch and to volunteer at the Table – in short, to be the church IN this place and OF this neighborhood, a place where all of us, the halt, the lame, and the blind, the lost, the last, the littlest and the least, can find a home. We frequently pray, “What is God calling us to do and to be in this place?” What our bishop, as our spiritual leader and guide, has discerned for us is that this deep and open welcome to all who walk by is our calling. This is what it means to be St. Paul’s Church in Brockton, Massachusetts, in this second decade of the 21st century.

This is not the church for everybody – obviously!! If it were, our pews would be filled!! This is not a church that can offer Sunday school for all grade levels, or a youth group, or a choir, in the ways that typical, suburban churches do, but it is a church that offers all of us, children and adults, the opportunity to experience that same kind of radical welcome and embrace that the father in today’s gospel story offered to his two sons. This is the place to celebrate and rejoice, for the dead come to life, and the lost are found.