Embrace Widely

NRSVUE Luke 15:20-24 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

INTRO

This week, we continue our Wesleyan Rooted Sermon Series, as we explore our faith through a Wesleyan lens and come to understand what it means to be a Wesleyan people. We will examine what it means to follow Jesus through the Wesleyan tradition and explore what makes our tradition unique. In this, we hope to increase our understanding of how God’s grace is at work in our lives and work to restore the image of God in our lives as we grow in our call to love God and our neighbors. We began by exploring our call to be deeply rooted in the love of God as we allow God to work within us so that we might be changed. Two weeks ago, we explored what it means to read faithfully as we examined our Wesleyan understanding of reading and interpreting scripture. Last week we examined what it means to love actively. This week we will talk about what it means to embrace widely.

One day, a young person, as all young people do, believes that they know best. They’ve lived under the guidance of their parents for long enough. They’ve obtained knowledge and understanding and their parents are just plain wrong. So, the young man goes to his father and says, I know when you die you’re leaving everything to me and my brother. So can you go ahead and sell half of your stuff, liquidate your assets, cash in your stocks and investments, and give me my share today? I’m going out into the world, and I’m going to do things my way. So the Father does this. But the father doesn’t have as much in stocks and bonds as he does land that has been in the family for generations. Everybody knows how much this ancestral land means to the family and how long it has been in the family. So it doesn’t take long for the church folks to start whispering. Did you hear about this family? They sold half their land and gave it to the son who ran off somewhere else.

Now the son makes good on his word and leaves. Let’s say he moves to Las Vegas…Sin City as it’s known. He buys a house, and a luxury sports car, and throws parties. Different translations report this differently. Some say extravagant living (CEB) while others say loose living (RSV). Regardless, the son doesn’t invest. He doesn’t build a business. He quickly spends all that he has and suddenly finds himself out on the street. As soon as he finds himself on the street, a great recession hits the land and the only job he can find is working on a pig farm. The more he works, the more he wishes he could eat the pig slop. He’s really hungry. All of a sudden, this young man realizes…life at Dad’s wasn’t so bad. Even my dad’s workers have it better than this…

And so we get to our text for this morning. Our text is the tail end of a well-known parable called “The Prodigal Son.” We know the story well. The youngest son comes to his father and asks him to sell half his possessions so that he might have his father’s inheritance now instead of later. The oldest son continues to work for his father and upon hearing how the father embraces the youngest son….the oldest is upset. He is angry because he has been working like a slave for his father. He has been obedient, and yet he has never experienced such generosity from his father.

The parable is one of three parables told in Luke 15 that call the community to embrace widely, to be inclusive, and diverse, and to offer hospitality to those who are on the fringes of society. In this context of the scriptures, the Pharisees have criticized Jesus for eating with sinners. One can imagine that the Pharisees realize that Jesus is depicting them as the elder son. They have always remained faithful to God, they follow the laws, they pray all the time, they give their tithes, they are obedient to God, and they are enslaved to the precepts of God so much so that they “work” for God as slaves. They are disgusted that they’re not shown the same extravagant love as the sinners who were healed on the Sabbath.

So often, we look to the Pharisees and label them as the bad guys. It’s easy to point fingers. Yet, we, so often, also identify with the older brother. We are members of the church. Many of us are lay leaders in the church. We read the Bible. We serve others. We try to obey God. We do all the right things. Those other people who don’t look like us, who don’t come to bible study, who do volunteer like we do, those who want to change things, and who will not conform to what I want to have to return “back home” like the youngest son. It is those people who have to acknowledge their sins, throw themselves on God’s mercy, and accept God’s forgiveness.

And if we are honest, sometimes we get upset that God throws those people a party. In that, we forget the times in which we were the prodigals. We forget the times when we failed, when we strayed, when we needed love, mercy, and forgiveness. And when we come from this place, of anger, we risk turning our loyalty to Christ into a contractual obligation rather than a loving relationship. As one theologian reminds us, “We may constantly invite others to come to the arms of the loving Father; but the very tone of our lives and of our invitation to “sinners” may present to the world not the loving father whom the prodigal discovered, but the harsh, begrudging father that the elder son thought he had.”

This parable reminds us that we are called to have a wide embrace. The father in the parable had a wider embrace than anyone expected. But we must notice just what that means. Truly having a wide embrace means that we must do things differently than they have always been done. At the time of the parable, land-owning, especially land that has been in a family for generations, was a point of pride. The mere request of the younger son to sell this land would have disgraced the father and the family. In fact, the young son is asking for what he should only get upon his father’s death. Yet, meeting the son where he was, the Father agreed. He did things differently than they’d always been done. He rejects the traditions of his day and takes on the shame that is placed on him all out of love for his child. Then, when the son returns, he not only goes out to meet the son but actively watches and hopes for the son’s return. When he sees the son, he runs out to him (also an act of shame). In every single act, the Father departs from what is “normal” or “customary.”

In other words, if we are to truly embrace widely, we must depart from the ways that we have always done things. If we want to welcome more and more people, if we want to draw the circle wider, we must meet people where they are and do things differently than we’ve always done them. We must stop being enslaved by the rules, regulations, and traditions that we have created and stop boxing God in. It means that we must be willing to accept people as they are and allow them to shape and change our culture.

If we examine the word translated as “still far off” we find that it is the same word used for “distant country.” The use of this word throughout the parable is intentional. It indicates to us that the Father’s forgiveness is given, not just when the Father sees the Son coming, but before the Father even knows the Son is coming to seek forgiveness. Much like God’s forgiveness, we receive it not because we deserve it or because we come seeking it, but because God offers forgiveness freely and unconditionally.

Our New Testament reading reminds us that as ambassadors of Christ, this is the same kind of reconciliation we are to offer the world. As God reconciles the world through the free gift of forgiveness, our call is to go and freely offer this reconciliation to the world. In doing so, we embrace widely as we invite all into God’s love and grace. We do not do this by hitting people over the head with their sins. We do not do this by calling people to forgiveness. We do this not by expecting people to fit neatly into our traditional ways of doing church. We do this by being rooted in God and God’s word, reading God’s word faithfully, and loving actively. When we do these things, we embrace widely and invite the least, the last, and the lost. We invite the different and the lonely.

I’m reminded of the story of the woman at the well. Jesus already knows her sins. He knows her actions. Rather than naming her sins, he asks for water, meeting her where she was. They engage in conversation, and then Jesus mentions her husband. Even when he names the facts of her relationship, he never names them as sinful. Jesus doesn’t hit her over the head with the law. He engages in relationship with the woman in a way that nobody in town would do. Her response? She realizes that Jesus truly knows her, and she goes and proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ. She is reconciled to God and her community and finds true freedom in Jesus. You see this is what it looks like to embrace widely. It is to sit down, to get to know someone. It is to love them, to minister to them. It is not hitting them over the head with the law. Instead, it is to offer love, mercy, and grace found in Jesus Christ.

John and Charles Wesley model for us what it means to engage be deeply rooted, faithfully reading and interpreting scripture, loving actively, and embracing widely. The Wesley brothers were faithful to their call as priests in the Church of England. They were shaped by the prayers found in the Book of Common Prayer. Yet they also invited others to join with them in extending a wide embrace, of making room for all people. In England, they travel to the mines, to the highways and byways preaching outside of the physical church building. In America, when the church of England left, Wesley sent preachers and bishops to lead and guide the church. Embracing all was at the heart of the methodist movement. And the Wesleys were forever changed by this.

As Theologian Dr. Paul Chilcote reminds us, “To make room for others entails some serious interior work. It involves making space in your heart for those who may be different from you. It means asking God to change your attitudes, transforming hostility into hospitality. It also involves exterior actions—opening your arms to those around you and offering compassion to those in need. It means asking God to teach us how to create safe space for those who are outside, inviting them into the inner circle of our love.”

In other words, we are changed in allowing others to join us. We are transformed by God’s love mercy and grace and by those we are joining in with. And this is our call because it is the work of our Savior. We love because God first loved us. We embrace widely because Jesus embraced us, and calls us to embrace others. If not for the wide of embrace of Jesus we would not be saved, for we are mere gentiles.

So often in the United Methodist Church, we talk about inclusion, we talk about diversity, we talk about embracing all. “Open hearts, open minds, open doors,” right? These are buzz words that we sometimes forget require real reflection, real internalization, and real work as we look to see others as sacred in the eyes of God and that includes their theological perspective. The parable of the prodigal son calls us to break down the traditions that bind us so that we make room to hear, and receive the gifts of the different perspectives offered to us by those who walk into our doors.

Henri Nouwen said “True Hospitality is welcoming the stranger on her own terms. This kind of hospitality can only be offered by those who’ve found the center of their lives in their own hearts.” The center is not grounded only in traditions, how we have always done things, or a list of rules and regulations, but an ongoing relational God. A God who calls us to be relational as we strive to show others the love of Jesus Christ. A God who calls us to constantly examine ourselves, our traditions, our way of speaking and doing, so that we might share with every single person, every child, and every adult the love of God.

It means we are called to intently listen to the world around us, to notice our internal biases, and to truly hear the other. I remember when I was at Duke Divinity School and a group of students asked me if I wanted to join their study group for a church history final. I said I would love to but we needed to meet in a different space than the cafeteria due to my hearing disability. The group continued to meet in the cafeteria and more than likely unintentionally excluded me from the group. If we are going to be people who embrace widely then its time to start truly listening so that God might break down the dividing walls.

In our parable, the father is the first party named and the last to speak. While the others draw dividing lines the father does not. He does all that can and needs to be done to bring about restoration to the whole family. One commentary states “Sin is relational and so is grace. Grace is greater than all our sins”

May our desire to embrace widely lead us to search internally, may our desire to be truly inclusive convict us, and may our desire to be diverse bring us to seek the love of God as God calls us to truly hear one another. Embracing widely begins in relationality. It begins with listening, so go forth, reach out, listen, invite, wonder, ask questions not with an agenda but with a pure desire to know and love the world and its people around us. May we be reminded that in sin and in grace, our call is to sit with one another and embrace one another for all are beloved children of God. Be deeply rooted, open your eyes to read and interpret scripture, love actively, and embrace widely so that we may truly be a people with open hearts for love, open minds for perspectives different than our own, and open doors, welcoming and embracing all of God’s children.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.