I'll Be Home 
March 21, 2004 – Fourth Sunday in Lent
Scripture:
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
I received an email this week about last weeks' sermon. And the email said something like, “that sermon last week was sort of interesting, I suppose … but boy it was really depressing.”
And I thought to myself: YES!!! Hey, anyone can write a happy sermon. You know, little lilies of the field … His eye on the sparrow … the little lost lamb … Hey, it takes work to really depress people. I've got to roll around in the mud of despair all week long. Read Dostoevsky. Watch French movies where people do nothing but smoke and talk about how terrible life is.
But today, we're going home.
We've earned it.
This is the last Sunday that I will be preaching in Lent. Next week, Judy will be here. And then we're into Holy Week, which will contain more meditations than thematic material. So, I have a lot of loose ends to tie together here.
We began this journey on Ash Wednesday with the image of a broken clay pot up here on the altar, shards crumbling around it. Symbolizing our brokenness. The we moved, with Dante into the deep, dark forest where we were lost. And we learned last week that the only way out was to go through hell.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Does anyone remember where that's from?
The Gates of Hell. Yes. Up until last year. Now they have been moved to the right field entrance at Fenway Park .
Yes, we're going home. With what I think is the most beautiful parable in all the Gospels. I say that not because it has a happy ending – the ending is, actually, inconclusive. But this story is so resonant. We can come back to it again, and again, and again. And it is a prism through which we see ourselves.
If I were a missionary, and I was sent to a country where no one had ever heard of Christianity, this is what I would take. Sure, I'd have a cross and a Bible somewhere in my bag, but they wouldn't be the first things I'd bring out.
Because here is the message of Christianity. Love. Forgiveness. And re-birth into new life.
I once was lost and now am found. The most famous line from the world's favorite hymn. You know what's remarkable? When I go to Nursing Homes to do a service, I've tried every conceivable method I could think of to break through. Juggling. Dancing. Impersonations.
Amazing Grace never fails. And the singing always gets louder at the line “I once was lost and now I'm found.” And I've seen people in advanced stages of dementia – 98, 100, 102 years old, who aren't even aware that I am there, start to move their lips when we reach that line.
This is what I think is missing in Mel Gibson's The Passion . A little thing like the message of Christianity. It's shoehorned in there but it makes no sense. Let me use the missionary example again. Put me in a country that' never heard of Christianity with his painting. Give somebody else the DVD of The Passion. Who will have more converts?
But now it's time to really take a close look at this picture. Let me start with a comment by a famous critic. Andy Rooney. About twenty years ago, I was watching one of Andy's commentaries and he said something like,
“Ya know, once you turn fifty, a lot of things start to happen. For example, there's always some part of your body that hurts.”
I laughed that off at the time; because I was 30. I turned 50 a couple of years ago, and let me tell you: Andy Rooney was absolutely right. I'm in decent shape, but I get out of bed in the morning like Tin Man.
Things get broken, things all apart.
Life breaks each and every one of us. I said that on Ash Wednesday, and I noticed that a couple of people were taken aback by that. But I don't mean that life breaks us irreparably; that God wants to hurt us.
But we all get broken in some way. Can anyone here truly say that they have never gone through some kind of personal hell?
That's how you get into this picture. That is your ticket, the cost of admission. Look at the Son. He's been through hell. He's the son of privilege wearing a rag. His feet are scarred. He has been beaten down by life. He has been working with pigs. He has squandered all his gifts. He has sinned against his father.
He has been lost.
It is interesting to think of the characters we have been using and their personal hells. Dante. What we have not talked about is his brokenness. Beatrice, the love of his life, who inspired the Divine Comedy, died when she was barely 18. He subsequently married, had four children. Then, in 1302, when Dante was just 35 years old, he was banished from Florence forever, under pain of death. He never saw his wife, his children, or his home again.
Rembrandt. Enormously talented. Arrogant about his talent. Makes a lot of money. There's a self-portrait of him as the Prodigal Son, which precedes this painting by 30 years, where he is in a tavern, consorting with women, well-dressed. Totally unrepentant.
And then life starts to chip away at Rembrandt. Two of his young children die. His wife dies. Two more of his children die. He remarries to a woman who goes insane. He gambles. He runs up debt. He loses everything he owns, including painting by several Flemish masters as well as his own.
By the time Rembrandt paints The Return Of The Prodigal Son , he is broken and near death.
All he wants to do is rest his head against the Father, listening to the heartbeat of God. He wants to return home.
We are all this person. Wounded. Broken. Sinners. Who crave the embrace of a loving Father/Mother God.
If you don't know this feeling … you will.
But this may be the easy role to play in this painting. Look at what Rembrandt has done here. Look at the separation the older son has from the father. He is stuck in what Henri Nouwen calls “frozen anger.” Who is this person?
Show of hands: how many here are he oldest in their family?
Oh, we know this character, don't we? I know this guy really well. Type A. Responsible. Toes the line. Just don't try any baloney with this person. What? You're gonna let them use the car? You didn't let me use the car for that. What? Bs and Cs are OK for them. But I had to get all As? Oh c'mon, I worked 40 hours a week during the summer. I walked to school in the snow. Uphill, both ways. No shoes. Just newspaper and elastic bands around my feet.
And you don't have to be the oldest to be this guy. No. All you have to be is resentful when someone gets something which you think they don't deserve.
In some way, we are all this character. Frozen. Unable to love. Unable to make the first move. Unable to rejoice in the good fortune of others. This may be the part of us that needs the most amount of work. Because the tragedy of this character is that he is there, but he is not home. While the Prodigal Son went to a distant land physically, he has gone to a distant land emotionally. His return home may be even harder. Because he doesn't even know he's left.
Now finally, there's the father.
What are the two most prominent things in this painting?
It's the father's face and the father's hands, right. Rembrandt is the master of light. So we must pay special attention to where he draws our eyes.
The father's face? Is it the face of God? Could be. But what's interesting is the eyes: the old man appears to be blind. What was Rembrandt trying to say?
That God's love is unconditional. It doesn't matter were you've been or what you've done – as long as you return home.
And the hands. I've read in at least a couple of places that the hands of the father were if not the last, then certainly close to the last things that Rembrandt painted just before he died.
I love these hands. Because they can mean so many things. They are the father providing the safety which the son so desperately needs. Leaning on the everlasting arms. They are the hands of blessing. The blessing of return, the father's blessing.
But most intriguing of all, I like to think of them as the hands of a midwife. Look at the Prodigal's head. Is it my imagination, or is that the head of new-born? Someone who has been given new life?
So, who are you in this picture?
Are you the Prodigal who so desperately needs to be held, to return home?
Are you the older brother, your heart frozen in anger, resentment? The one whose heart so desperately needs to be warmed, and to recognize that you have never lost your place at home?
Or are you the father, mother, lover, friend who can offer unconditional forgiveness?
We are all of these people. We are all aching to return home. To be held unconditionally. To put our heads up against the beating heart of God. And perhaps when we do, God will sing to us. Sing to us that at any time we choose we can go from lost to found. Because God is always waiting for us.
What I'd like you to do now is: close your eyes. Imagine who you are in this painting. What people you bring into this painting with you. What your heart is aching for.
