The Third Movement (3.10.13)

A Meditation on Luke 15:11-32

1.

So I count one, two, three movements this morning, in the symphony that is the parable of the prodigal son.  ESTRANGEMENT, EXCITEMENT AND PREDICAMENT.  And though they’re as familiar as any in scripture, though we recognize these progressions and we’ve visited these neighborhoods many times before, they still startle us, these three movements. ESTRANGEMENT, EXCITEMENT AND PREDICAMENT.  Like Duke Ellington in the 20^th century or Michael Tilson Thomas in this one, Jesus evokes our surprise and our wonder; and then he walks away, leaving us to wrestle with new questions and new choices.  Three movements in the parable of the prodigal son.

Let’s say the first movement is the ESTRANGEMENT of a father from his son, and of the son from the father.  And if we’re honest, this estrangement is wrenching and raw and contemporary.  Always costly and often destructive.  I’m thinking this morning of Adam Lanza in Newtown, Connecticut.  And I’m thinking of Jeremy Goulet here in Santa Cruz last week.  The estrangement in their lives.  How alienated these young men were: from their own fathers, and from the communities that raised them, and from their own best selves.  Adam Lanza lost himself.  Jeremy Goulet lost himself.  And whole communities have paid the price.  Estrangement: the first movement.  It’s the bitter taste in the young man’s gut when he can’t find his way home, and it’s the father’s despair, with no idea what to do or where to look.

But, thank God, Jesus imagines a universe suffused with grace, a world where possibilities are never limited or locked in place.  And somewhere in the darkness, somewhere in a pigsty, the second movement of his parable turns toward the light.  The son remembers his father like a limb he lost at war: there, but not there; lost, but not lost.  And he turns, the son: he turns toward the light, he turns toward home.  Imagine the father’s excitement, seeing the once-lost son from the kitchen window.  Imagine his tears and his laughter.  And then imagine the father’s mad dash into the street and the huge holy hug for all the neighbors to see.  Who cares who’s watching!  The second movement, you see, is the EXCITEMENT of reconciliation and love rediscovered.  It’s tables up and down the street, music and dancing, and the family budget busted on a block party for the ages.  It’s “amazing grace how sweet the sound / that saved a wretch like me / I once was lost but now am found / was blind but now I see.”

2.

It’s often seemed to me a little odd that every year—on this fourth Sunday in Lent—Jesus tells us this story.  Here we are, deep into Lent, this season of penitence.  Serious Christians, doing serious things, doubling down on prayer, giving up sweets and pickles, and swearing off ‘alleluias’—at least for a little while.  Deep into Lent we are, and serious about it.

And then every year, this fourth Sunday in Lent, Jesus tell us this story, this story about the wildest, sweetest, happiest, loudest party in all of scripture.  You’ve got tables hauled out of basements and running up the middle of the street.  You’ve got music and you’ve got dancing and you’ve got the long-lost brother: dirt-poor, beat-broke and fabulously flummoxed by all this love.  It’s almost as if Jesus is saying to us: Don’t lose track.  Take faith seriously, but don’t forget that the kingdom is God’s.  Make corrections, work hard on your life, but don’t forget that there’s a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Before you get all carried away with the self-correction of prayer and the nuances of navel-gazing, before you turn Lent into some kind of forty-day spiritual grind, remember this story.  About the homecoming of the lost, the extravagance of God, and the joy that is our own true home.

3.

Now familiar as we are with this old parable, it comes as a surprise—almost every time—that there’s a third movement here.  We move from the painful estrangement of father from son to the joyous excitement of their reunion in the street—to the predicament faced by the older brother, who’s been playing by the rules, and paying the family bills, and watching out for his father all along.  And I have a hunch that this great parable comes down to this: this PREDICAMENT. 

It’s one we all face, sooner or later.

Like that older brother, you see, we are called to celebration and joy.  You, me, every one of us.  The universe offers itself every day, Hafiz calls it “our jeweled dance floor,” and gratitude is embedded in our DNA.  And friends this true of all of us: Democrats and Republicans, rich folks and poor folks, tattooed hipsters and manicured matriarchs.  We are called to celebration and joy.  Every last one of us.

But our capacity for joy is somehow linked—and here’s the provocative piece in this parable—our capacity for joy is somehow linked, even activated by our willingness to expand ourselves, to extend our compassion beyond what we might even think is reasonable or possible.  Without that expansion, without that extension, there is no joy, there is no celebration, there is no party in the streets.

You see, that older brother’s got a choice.  He can kick lampposts all over town.  He can go find a barstool someplace sad and stew in the juices of his own resentment.  Or he can expand himself.  He can extend his compassion beyond what he may think is reasonable or possible.  That’s the predicament.  That’s where this parable leaves us.  That’s what Jesus wants us to think through, wrestle out, pray on.  Our capacity for joy is somehow linked, even activated by our willingness to expand ourselves, to extend our compassion beyond what seems even reasonable or possible.  That’s the predicament.  Without that expansion, without that extension, there is no joy, there is no celebration, there is no party in the streets. 

Just a quick application here—to our situation in town this week.  When tragedy strikes a community, any community, there’s an impulse among us to hunker down, to put up fences and walls, to start sorting out desirables from undesirables.  We saw this after Pearl Harbor, when we sadly drove so many of our Japanese-American neighbors into internment camps.  We saw it more recently, after 9/11, when we defied logic and decency to pursue costly wars that didn’t need fighting. 

There’s no doubt that violence has shaken our city over these past weeks and months.  And there’s no doubt we’ve some deep work to do together—in making our community safer and wiser for everybody.  But here’s the thing.  If this community, if Santa Cruz is to grow and evolve and embrace its particular calling on the Central Coast, we’re going to have to expand our sense of the possible and extend our compassion in every way imaginable.  We will not get there by hunkering down, throwing up walls and fences, and teaching our kids to fear the poor, the migrant, even the tattooed drug dealer.  Our capacity for joy is somehow linked to our willingness to expand ourselves, to extend our compassion beyond what seems even possible.  It’s seems to me that that’s what we get from the parable of the prodigal son.  We come face to face, heart to heart, with the predicament of the older brother all over again.  Do we contract in fear?  Do we withdraw in distrust?  Do we pull back and define our neighborhoods too tightly?

Or do we go where Jesus goes?  Do we expand ourselves, and our hearts and our sense of what’s possible in human community?  Do we extend our compassion and imagine alternatives to poverty and despair? 

Our teacher is relentlessly hopeful.  His story, like his example, is full of surprise and possibility.  Joy and compassion, he says, go forward hand in hand.  Always.  Joy and compassion go forward hand in hand.