wild and extravagant

4 Lent C 2010 (“Laetare”—“Be Joyful”)
Joshua 5:9-12;
Psalm 32;
2 Corinthians 5:16-21;
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Gospel came to life on the front page of yesterday’s Oregonian.

The story involves a husband and wife who own a family business in North Portland. They have a prodigal daughter who sounds even more spendthrift and sketchy than the younger son in today’s Gospel. This daughter did not ask to be given her inheritance face-to-face. She is a con artist, and she is having her parents evicted from the business and their apartment after having her mother sign over ownership when her mom was deathly ill with cancer.

It’s a strange story to tell on “Be Joyful” Sunday, but it is in the midst of our real lives that we must seek joy and refreshment. This woman legally evicting her parents from their home and business is as real as it gets. Were do we find Gospel here? Who is God and where is God in a world where daughters evict parents? Who are we in such a world, where demands on the limits and the rules of love confront us over and over again? This outrageous scalawag of a daughter may be an extreme example, but who of us hasn’t taken love and wasted it, taken goodness and disregarded it like the Gospel’s younger son? Or who of us have not felt our insides go cold with anger at the ingratitude of others or the injustice of a world where our quiet faithfulness is taken for granted like the Gospel’s elder son?

The world of today’s haunting story of Jesus is wild and strange, an undiscovered land where love is different and where we do not yet know the rules.

The story has always tempted us to place ourselves somewhere in the cast. Perhaps that young son, that no-good scallywag of a son, is each one of us, at least sometimes. If he is, then we need to face our own waste, and we also need to believe that no matter where we wander, no matter where we wake up and find ourselves, pigpen or motel room or in our own regretful hearts, that there is another chance and there is a road back and there is someone who will fling their arms out wide to welcome us home.

Perhaps we are the older son, at least sometimes. After all, we show up, we pay our dues, and we try to do the right thing. We may find the same resentful words and feelings well out of us that are on the lips of that poor guy who got up each day, went out to the fields, came home at night and ate his well-earned dinner, fell asleep only to have the rooster crow too early as usual and get up to do it all over again. What about me? Who sees me? What is in it for me after all this time? Why do those who do less or even mess up get all the attention? We want to know the answers to all these questions, and maybe we’re secretly frustrated that the father in the story can do no better than tell that angry son that he’s already gotten what is his due.

But what about the father in this tale?

We hear that Dad rolls over and, after giving away half of his wealth, then gives the bedraggled younger son more than he even asks for. He outdoes his generosity in the outpouring of the party and the welcome he gives.

We often cast God in the role of the father, and make this story a comforting tale of God’s unconditional love. That’s fine, but if we stop there we risk making the parable safe. Often we expect things of God that we do not expect of ourselves. What if the casting call in this story points to us in the role of the father?

How did this father get to this place of love with his arms flung wide? Was he this rare sort of naturally big-hearted guy? Or was he another broken soul, with his own history of poor choices like his younger son made as well as knowing the feelings of resentment and judgment like his older son? After all, the kids got it from somewhere.

Had this father been welcomed and loved and given an amazing second chance after he’d messed up? Or had he been loved even when he was acting judgmental and self-righteous and even less lovable than the kid who came home smelling like the pigpen?

Perhaps he was. And the good news for us is, we can be too, and we can live in that place of outrageous love where this father lives.

Paul says we have the “ministry of reconciliation” because we ourselves have been healed and loved by God beyond all reason and beyond all measure. We did not earn it, we did not receive this love by any right. Yes God is this sort of extravagant lover. But God also makes it possible for us to be a living echo and embodiment of this love and this reconciliation. That is why we gather to hear the Word, that is why we receive with awe and delight the Sacraments, that is why we pray and try to live with the Spirit’s power a life open to God’s amazing reconciling love. Because we too may inhabit this land of amazing extravagant love, and we can reveal this extravagant love ourselves.

There are no easy answers to the questions posed along the way. Should I give my kid extra cash even though he burned through his allowance? Should I keep taking my messed-up sister’s calls even though she’s nothing but a user and trouble? And in a sordid episode in North Portland, what does it mean when the prodigal daughter does not come asking for a job, but shows up with a deputy and an eviction notice? I do not know. I wish the world was not that way.

I only know that the Realm of Extravagant Love is possible because Jesus Christ says so and Jesus Christ lived so. And we hunger for that realm, we need to be welcomed in it, and when we are we are equipped to be its ambassadors and its heirs.