Second Wednesday after Pentecost
Lessons: Psalm 38; Deuteronomy 4:25-31; 2 Corinthians 1:23-2:17; Luke 15:1-2,11-32
My elder brother died when he was twenty-four. He had survived Viet Nam and we had let our guard down when he died on a motorcycle of all things. He and I had been thick as thieves growing up, though his service in Viet Nam and the thickness he had to build round his heart removed him from me. I always held to the memory of closeness. I had to puzzle my way through this change and have over the years since.
My younger brother is a different case. As I look back it is clear we held him at a distance. Coming as he did two years after me, three after Mike, we did not always let him into our little circle early on. Often Mike and I would block him out of our play. The two of them were connected by love of snakes. That is one place I did not share. So maybe they had some things of which I remain unaware.
After Mike's death I found myself away from home and emotionally lost. The return home for his funeral was, I suppose, a help. The return to my life was a trial with something majorly missing. How do you replace the intimacy of family history and a companion of your coming into being?
Over the ensuing years I renegotiated my relationship with my younger brother. I found myself noticing things I had missed: his ability to create a life with changes and possibilities beyond how I would do things, his sense of adventure, his humor, his deep commitment to those he loved. He had run away several times as an adolescent. I was running toward as an adult.
When I read Luke's story of the Prodigal Son, I see it through these relationships always. In some ways I am the elder son by always attending to the family emotional system. In some ways Michael is, being older and the family athlete and my father's clear favorite suddenly deeply missed. Always Rod is the prodigal who runs away toward adventure, who returns home reluctantly and is offered no fatted calf, no ring, but perhaps clothing. And he helps me see me, that part that ran away with him. He helps me find my inner voice, my prodigal self, which separates from my father to be an independent self. He helps me see where I more discretely rebelled or did so in a more hidden way as so many 'good people' do.
Jesus has been criticized for tending to the sinners and tax collectors when he tells this story to those who are religiously uptight, who have done it all by the book as far as they can see. They are not in conversation with their rebellious side evidently and we all have this side. They have no room, no belief in a prodigal's return perhaps.
The father gives too much too soon. Why? He is not obligated to do so but he does. And then he loves too lavishly, exacts too little a penalty for foolishness. Why? Can anyone love so forgivingly? What does it say of God if this is our portrait?
Jesus ends his portrait of God with these words to those who perceive their loyal following.
"But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found." Luke 15:32
If ever you have lost a brother, a sister, a child of your heart, you know how true this is. To have them back would make your days fairly dance with joy even if they remain themselves filled with contradiction and finding their own way. Jesus just wants us to know that with God it is the same, here is the origin of our best affection.
We reflect this place when we forgive another, when we release the past, when we look to the Father's face and hear that the festal garment of divine love is ours. It is given to both the prodigal child in us and the one who stays close to home.
Now it is ours to give away daily to any in need of a bit of forgiving love. Each time we give it away it brightens the heart of God.
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