Hilton Head Island, SC – July 13, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 15:1-2,11-24;15:25-32
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Texts – “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found,” And they began to make merry. – Luke 15:24 “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this you brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” – Luke 15:32 (RSV)
St. Paul insisted that we must believe in God. St. Augustine insisted that we must believe in God. Luther said we must believe in God, Calvin said it, Wesley said it. The Christian tradition --- Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant --- declares it is a necessity that you and I believe in God if we are to consider ourselves Christians. And it is true. It is correct. For our own good and the good of those around us, we need to believe in God.
But there was a man who seemed to insist the reverse statement was more true, more correct, more accurate. That is, he said God believes in us. He believes in all of us. He believes in you, and He believes in me. God cares about us. He loves us. He loves us unconditionally. There is nothing we can do, nothing we can say, nothing we can think, that places us outside His love for us or His belief in us. That was the astonishing proclamation made by Jesus of Nazareth. That is the essence of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. God believes in YOU!
It seems so counter-intuitive. WE don’t believe in everyone. We don’t love everyone. Who could believe in or love people who murder teenagers in Israel, whether the murderers are Palestinians or Israelis? Who could believe in or love a man who allegedly left his young child in a hot car to die? Who can believe in or love priests who sexually abuse children, or drug dealers who deliberately hook innocent victims on crack cocaine or pain killers or heroin, or religious zealots, who kill in the name of religion? It is not so hard to imagine that God believes in us, in you and me, because we believe ourselves to be relatively upright and righteous people, but how could God believe in some of the people we know or read about or see on television?
And yet God does! God loves everyone! He believes in everyone! Jesus insisted on it, and he illustrated it again and again and again by what he said and did!
Remember the parable of the lost sheep? It comes just before the parables of the lost coin and the prodigal son. All three of these parables were told in response to those who grumbled that Jesus welcomed sinners. “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4). We are meant to understand the parable is not about a man who lost a sheep; it is about God, who constantly is losing sheep, millions of human sheep, every day. When God finds His lost sheep, He rejoices. He brings them home! He doesn’t allow them to stay lost! “Even so, I tell you,” said Jesus at the end of his short parable about the lost sheep, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (15:7) Coincidentally, that suggests there truly are some people who need to repent very infrequently. But also note: the lost sheep don’t repent because they realize they have sinned against God; they repent because they realize God has come seeking them, and He has found them, and therefore they turn to Him. They don’t clean up their act and therefore they turn to God; they perceive that God has turned to them, and therefore they clean up their act.
Thus there are jailhouse conversions; there really are. When people have hugely botched up their lives, when they finally realize they have made an enormous mess of everything, from which they cannot extricate themselves, then they may come to understand that despite everything, God still believes in them and loves them, and they straighten out. It happens. Maybe not with the frequency we who think ourselves righteous would like, but it happens. And when it happens, sometimes it makes people like us angry, because we think that religious conversions under extreme circumstances and extreme pressures are all a charade.
Most movies on Turner Classic Movies are truly classics, but some are more classic than others. Recently they have been showing some really great movies which are compelling to the viewers no matter how many years they are watched after they are produced or how often they are watched. Some movies must be seen again and again over many years to be fully appreciated. Several nights ago they showed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff? The movie starred Richard Burton, Elizabath Taylor, Sandy Dennis, and George Segal. There were no other actors.
I first saw Virginia Wolff when it first came out in 1966. I was at a two-day church meeting in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, and we had the evening free. Some of us went to see the film, which had had much publicity, both pro and con. I was a 27-year-old young minister who in those days perceived nearly everything in black-and-white, just like Virginia Wolff was in stark black-and-white. All of it except the last scene was filmed at night, so there was a lot of darkness, both literal and artistic. In my youthful zeal, I was mightily put off by the gross over-indulgence in alcohol by all four of the characters, and by the atrocious language they used, especially George (Burton) and Martha (Taylor) to one another, although for all I know they were simply re-enacting their actual marriage, or should I say marriages, which apparently were constantly stormy. But at the time, everything about the movie seemed totally over the top to me.
I hadn’t seen it for years, and when I saw it now, I was struck by how needy each character was, and how much they all needed one another. Yet they seemed incapable of having a healthy relationship with each other. Edward Albee was a strange man who wrote strange plays about strange people, but they were no doubt based on real people, not simply fictional characters whom he created out of great imagination. We never learn the names of the Segal and Dennis couple, because George and Martha were too inebriated when they met them earlier that fateful evening to be able to recall their names. But this quartet represent us, you and me, to some degree, whether we like it or not. I suspect Edward Albee anticipated we would not like it.
God loves and believes in all the Georges and Marthas of the world, along with the anonymous young biology professor and his timid, tormented wife. I’m not certain Mr. Albee meant to say that, but I want to say it. I want to say it without reservation or hesitation. And when Martha smarmily declares to the two younger characters, “I’m loud and I’m vulgar, but I wear the pants in this family, because someone’s got to,” she is making a sober observation even when not sober about her husband’s nature, although any man would be hard-pressed indignantly and indefinitely to stand up to Martha.
Think about the five or ten people you personally know who are most likely to drive you to distraction. Maybe it’s your brother or cousin or business associate or college roommate who has been a pain in the anatomical nether regions for sixty or seventy years. You can’t just shun thiese people and shove them out of your life; it can’t work like that, as much as you might like it to do so. Maybe it was a neighbor of thirty years from when you lived back in Ohio. She was catty and unpleasant and an albatross around her husband’s neck, but you couldn’t avoid her because she was always there, right next door. Thank heavens it never occurred to her also to move to Hilton Head Island in retirement, just to vex you, but even thinking about her now, twenty years after you left Ohio, the thought of her turns you brain into hydrochloric acid.
But it’s people we don’t know personally we find it the most impossible to believe God could ever believe in or love: Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein. Most of these misanthropes seem to be men. Have any women ever been like that? Can they be like that? Are the most despicable of human beings always of the male persuasion?
Strangely, some of the most saintly people in history have also been the most convinced that God couldn’t possibly believe in them, despite their fervently believing in God. Martin Luther felt that every time he broke God’s laws (of which in his mind there were myriad), he was potentially outside God’s love and mercy, and God had to bring him back into the fold. He was a theological giant and a bit of a psychological mess. David, the monarch and sweet singer of Israel, fell into colossal depressions whenever he sinned, which was often. I know a woman of immense talent who has made a huge success of her life. However, because of the way she was treated by her mother, she thinks that every day she has to earn her way back into God’s good graces, since she always had to try to do that with her mother. She hopes that whenever she dies, it will be in the morning, so that she will not have to win her way back into the love of God, whom she has never fully accepted believes in her even more strongly than she believes in Him.
We all do foolish things, inconsiderate things. We make mistakes, we misjudge events and people, we fall off the proverbial wagon. It seems to be in the nature of many of us to beat ourselves up when such things happen. It is imperative that we acknowledge our sins and shortcomings, but it can be spiritually and psychologically lethal to grovel in our errors. When we fail, we must acknowledge our failure, and then confidently move on. The best way to move on is to accept the profound truth that God believes in us, despite our goofs and gaffes, and He loves us, regardless of our foolishness and mistakes. The best of parents do that, and God, our celestial parent, always does it.
There are three characters in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son: a father, whom Jesus intended to represent God, an older son, who was basically a loyal offspring to his father, albeit a self-righteous one, and a younger son, who seemed to be a ne’er-do-well from the outset, and never definitely straightened himself out, even to the last verse of the parable.
Most of the story revolves around the younger son. He asked his father to give him his portion of the inheritance. The only way anyone ever gets an inheritance is for someone to die. So this ungrateful young pup as much as said to his father that he wanted his father dead, and he wanted his part of the estate now. Incredibly, the father gave it to him, and the son took off for “the far country,” where he “squandered his property in loose living.” Jesus didn’t tell us where the far country was or what loose living was, but we can easily imagine it all for ourselves. The prodigal ended up feeding pigs to try to make a little money. Here is a Jew feeding pigs! You can’t get any lower than that, and everyone who heard this parable knew it instantly.
When he was about to starve to death, the young man decided to go home and cast himself on his father’s mercy. He prepared a speech, and recited it to himself as he went along: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.” We don’t know if he really meant that, but it was true, and that’s what he was going to say to his father. And remember, the father in the parable represents God.
Well, at a distance the father saw his son coming back home. Instead of waiting for him to come groveling up to the front door, the father ran out to meet his son. He told the servants to put the best robe on him, and to put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, and to prepare a feast. And why? “Because this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”
The younger son didn’t really believe in his father, or he never would have asked for his part of the inheritance! Nevertheless, the father believed in his son, even when he made his scandalous request, and when he took off for far-off sights and sounds, and when he saw him headed back home in pitiful contrition, whether real or faked! The father never gave up on his son --- never! God, our Father in heaven, never gives up on us, on any of us! He believes in us!
When the older son came in from the field and saw that there was a party, he asked what it was all about; he knew nothing of any party that had been planned. A servant told him that his brother had returned home, and his father ordered a feast to be prepared. The older son was furious. (By the way, unless I miss my guess, most of us for most of our lives have behaved more like the older brother than the younger brother. Maybe we sowed some wild oats, but only a cupful or two. But when others sow their wild oats by the barrelful, it infuriates us, because we kept our nose relatively clean and followed the rules, and these other yahoos do all kinds of wicked stuff and get away with it, and they end up okay in the end anyway. What a travesty of injustice! Virtue may be its own reward, but wild oatery does have its appeal, doesn’t it?)
When the father was told that his older son was outside sulking, he went out to talk to him. He genuinely thanked him for staying home and tending to the farm, and told him that everything he owned had already passed to him when the younger son got his inheritance. But, said the father, “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).
Nothing either son did made them worthy in the eyes of their father. It was what their father did that made them worthy. He loved them --- no matter what. He believed in them --- no matter what. He would stick with them both --- no matter what. They also were stuck with him --- no matter what. God our Father is like that.
The other night TCM showed Carousel, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical from the Fifties. It is the story of Billy Bigelow, a young man of very dubious moral character, and Julie Jordan, a girl from Maine who is as pure as the driven snow. She falls in love with Billy, despite her own misgivings and those of everyone who knew her. But, she says in one of her songs, “Somethin’ made him the way that he is, whether he’s false or true,” and she is willing to put up with it. Besides, she asks, “What’s the use of wonderin’ if he’s good or if he’s bad? …He’s yer fella and you love him; and all the rest is to talk.”
Julie Jordan has an almost unearthly love, a celestial love, a godly love. She wants Billy to be better than he is, but she loves him and believes in him anyway. Her love is like God’s love.
God’s love depends on His nature, and not on our behavior. That’s the main thing I wanted to say in this sermon, and that’s why I had that statement put on the bulletin cover today. Maybe that way it will stick with you longer. God cannot not love us. He cannot not believe in us. Because we are His, He will always love us and believe in us. After all, He is God. And that is Good News that will never stop being good, thank God!