Feeling Christ Embracing Us

Feeling Christ Embracing Us so We Might Embrace the Other:
A Third Step Toward Desiring to Embrace an Enemy
(Luke 15.11-32)
A message by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, WA
The 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 16, 2011

The fourth in a series of messages addressing the question, How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ?

The inspiration for this series comes from Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Abingdon Press, 1996.

This fall, what I’m talking about in these messages focuses on one question: How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ? One of the first things Jesus says in that sermon is usually translated, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. As I said several weeks ago that, in the language of Jesus, blessed means, Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called the children of God (Megan McKenna, Matthew: The Book of Mercy, New York City Press, 2007, p. 60).

A bit later in the sermon, Jesus tells us what peacemakers do: Love your enemies, he says. Let them bring out the best in you.
(Matthew 5.39, The Message)

Today is the third of four weeks I’m looking at how we might do that. I’m drawing on the work of my favorite theologian, Miroslav Volf. He’s from Croatia. And he’s doing all he can to try to follow this command of Jesus, and find a way to love people who killed family members and friends in the Balkan Wars. He’s decided being a peacemaker means he has to come to a place where he has a sincere desire to embrace those who brought him so much pain.
(Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Abingdon Press, 1996, p. 126)

This morning I’m focusing on three of the four steps Volf is taking himself to try to nurture that desire: repentance, forgiveness, and feeling Christ embracing us so we might embrace someone who has hurt us. (Volf, p. 126)

I had my monthly conversation about life and faith with the motorcycle-riding ex-nun Shelia, who’s my spiritual director. I was telling her it seems like my brain never shuts down these days. And it doesn’t feel like there’s much room inside me for God to get in. Talking with you, I know many of you are juggling many more balls than you’d like. For many of you, life is more than full. You are anxious. You are stressed. You are hurting.

So it probably doesn’t feel like we have the time or energy to try to love those who’ve hurt us. Doesn’t Jesus know what our lives are like? Why does he expect so much from his followers? Doesn’t he know we don’t have the luxury of the kind of silence and space we need for something huge like loving our enemies?

The author of our theology book group writes, Like us, the men and women who populate the New Testament worried every day about the material stuff of life – food, clothing, health, and work. We misread the Bible when we over-spiritualize it, assuming everything Jesus said was about an inner reality or an otherworldly hope. Jesus was born into the real world – a world of Palestinian peasants, powerful religious leaders, and Roman oppressors – and the people he hung around didn’t have time to listen to a spiritual guru. Like all of us, they had spiritual needs, but it was hard to ponder their relationship with God when they had to wake up before dawn to work.
(Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, God’s Economy, Zondervan, 2010, pp. 77-78).

So Jesus asks his followers to try to walk side-by-side with others who are trying to walk a road of unyielding love and amazing grace. In the midst of our day-to-day lives.

A story Jesus told about repentance, forgiveness, and embrace is the story of a father and his two sons. In your bulletin, it’s divided into three sections so we can look at these three steps that can move us to embrace one who has hurt us.

Listen for a word from God.
(I) Jesus said, "There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.' "So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
"That brought him to his senses. He said “I'm going back to my father. I'll say to him, “Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.”’ He got right up and went home to his father.

When the younger son asks for his share of his inheritance before his father dies, what his father would have heard is, Dad, in my eyes, you’re already dead. But for some reason, the father gives his son what he wants.
The son blows all his money. At some point, he has a God moment. He decides a life of feeding pigs is no life at all. So he repents. He decides to go home. Admit the deep hurt he’s caused. Commit himself to do whatever he needs to do to help heal the torn relationships. Ask his father to forgive him. And to be fully aware that what he did has changed things, so he can’t expect to be treated the same. Since he treated his father like his father was dead, he expects his father to act as if he no longer has a younger son. He expects to be treated as a servant. Repenting opens the door to some kind of return. Though the story makes it clear the younger son never expects his father to open his arms in embrace to him again. Why would his father want to embrace someone who’s hurt him so deeply?

Now let’s look at the next step toward embracing an enemy: forgiveness.

(II) "When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced and kissed him. The son started his speech: 'Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you; I don't deserve to be called your son….' "But the father wasn't listening. He was calling to the servants, 'Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We're going to feast! We're going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!' And they began to have a wonderful time.

We don’t know how long the younger son has been away. However long it’s been, we get the sense the father has been looking for him. It’s clear the father aches to hold his son again. Which is why people look at this story and say, This is how God loves us. We treat God like God’s dead, we reject God’s love, and his way of unyielding love and amazing grace. And still God stands on the front porch, scanning the horizon. Hoping beyond hope that we’ll make the long walk home. And when God sees us, God runs out of the house. To embrace us. And whisper, Welcome home. Why did it take you so long to trust my love for you?

For both father and son, this is a costly forgiveness.

The father has to move past the memory of how deeply his son hurt him. And his son has to let his father embrace him, even though his shame screams, I’m unworthy!

But the father’s embrace silences the shame. Somehow the father has been freed from the poison of his son’s betrayal. Freed from the poison, the door is open to embrace. And the father steps through that door. He doesn’t just step through it. He runs through it. The son steps into his father’s embrace. And the rains come to the parched and broken earth (phrase from the songwriter Fred Small).

There’s one more person in this story who needs to enter the embrace for the family to be made whole. And for peace to come.

(III) "All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day's work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, 'Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast…because he has him home safe and sound.'
"The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen. The son said, 'Look how many years I've stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!'
"His father said, 'Son, you don't understand. You're with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he's alive! He was lost, and he's found!'"
(Luke 15.11-32, The Message Re-Mix © 2003 by Eugene Peterson)

May God help us hear and live this word. Amen.

Part of me wants to shake this older brother. It’s the part of me that wants a happy ending to this story. But Jesus lived and walked with real people. And sometimes their stories didn’t have happy endings. When I get past this need, I can totally sympathize with the older son. I hear him saying to his dad, “How could I not be jealous and resentful? I was loyal to you. I stayed with you all those days and nights when you wept for this jerk of a younger son of yours.” His father tries to reassure him of his love for his older son. The father assures him everything’s not going to be how it used to be. He tells his older son, “Everything that is mine is yours.” Which means the younger son isn’t going to get any more inheritance. Forgiveness doesn’t mean the past is undone. I think the father just wants his older son to know, “Forgiving your brother doesn’t mean I have less love for you. Forgiveness just means we can hold each other in one embrace again. It means we can be a family at peace again.”

The father has opened both his arms as wide as the world. The younger son has repented. He falls into one of those open arms. He receives his father’s forgiveness. Now his other arm is open. But when the story ends, that one arm is still empty. That empty, wide-open arm longs for the older son to step into its embrace. If that happens, the two brothers will be held in the same embrace. Together.

And what would that ask of them? Would they have to imagine, at some point, embracing each other?

It’s the image of Jesus on the cross. His arms nailed in a posture of openness. His open arms inviting anyone into his embrace. Even – especially? – those who hated him so much or were so afraid of him that they wanted him dead.

I love the image of Jesus drawing me into his embrace. But what if he draws me into his embrace with one of his arms…while, with the other, he’s drawing into his embrace someone who has hurt me? What then? What would that ask of me? ...