The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
March 14, 2010
National Cathedral, Washington DC
Scripture:
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Now
all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were
grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable:
Then Jesus said, ‘There
was a man who had two sons. The younger
of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that
will belong to me.” So he divided his
property between them. A few days later
the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and
there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine
took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of
the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the
pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, “How
many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am
dying of hunger! I will get up and go to
my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and
before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of
your hired hands.’ ” 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.
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.” 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. And get the fatted
calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead
and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”
And they began to celebrate.
‘Now his elder son was in
the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and
dancing. He called one of the slaves and
asked what was going on. He replied,
“Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he
has got him back safe and sound.” Then
he became angry and refused to go in.
His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like
a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never
given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has
devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Then the father said to him, “Son, you are
always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was
dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” ’
Sermon:
I remember the new years eve of the new millennium, which was the last New Year’s Eve I would spend with my mother. We had decided to go a party that was being held at her wonderful Episcopal church here in DC, St. Marks on Capitol Hill. Before leaving, my mother pulled out a bottle of champagne that was very fine, that she had been saving for years for just the right occasion. With fanfare she suggested we pop it open and drink it together, which we all thought sounded great.
Everyone except her husband, that is. “No, absolutely not,” he said. “We’re saving that for a special occasion.”
“New years eve is a special occasion,” she said. But of course New Years’ Eves had come and gone in the past and this bottle had not been opened on those previous occasions. They argued over this matter and ended up not opening the bottle. But it turns out that by then her illness was past the point of treatment, and I don’t believe she ever drank it. She never got to kill that fatted calf.
Looking back, this was a conflict between family members that is very similar to the one in today’s gospel reading. When should you and when should you not kill the fatted calf? Do you wait for the right and perfect time to celebrate, or do you let the celebration transform the imperfection of the moment? This is the question I want to explore with you this morning.
Jesus spoke often in parables. In other words, he often made his point by telling a story. In this case, there was a situation that prompted his telling this story. Apparently he was sitting at a table eating with sinners, and it made some of the holier people, the ones who tried to be perfect, and well it made them angry. And so to respond to anger and criticism, he told this story of the prodigal son.
There’s a rebellious son who runs off and wastes his parents money on drunkenness, out of control gambling and prostitutes until the money dries up and he’s reduced to living with pigs and eating their slop.
Finally, he got desperate enough to come home, where lo and behold, instead of being met with scolding or shame, he was received with dancing and singing, and the slaughtering of the fatted calf they had been saving up for a special banquet. He was greeted with a huge spontaneous celebration and the warm embrace of a father who had let go of all judgment and was just glad to have his son back at home.
But this story is not without its tension. Not everybody thought it was time to celebrate and to kill the fatted calf. Do you remember the older brother from the reading? He’s the character who creates the real tension in the plot. Lurking in the wings of the welcome home celebration, the dutiful older brother steamed and boiled with resentment. Once again his younger brother was not just getting away with bad behavior, but seemed to be rewarded for it.
I’ve looked at other people with that kind of resentment before, and be honest, you have too. You’ve asked yourself, “Why am I struggling at work and that jerk seems to be rushing by me on the career ladder, coasting through life?” And perhaps you like the older brother have wished for a different plot turn for someone else, one that seems just a little more fair, or at least logical.
For example, the father could have said, “You know what son, I am so glad to see you home. After all those years of irresponsibility, moving out to Vegas and losing all our money, your issues with addiction… after all that you’re finally home, I’m so happy I’ve decided to order us all a pizza. A medium. But can you at least cover the tip?
“And then, in a few years, after you get your college degree, I’ll take you out somewhere nice. And after law school, after you get a job your mother and I can really be proud of, I’ll have a fatted calf waiting for that banquet. But you’re not getting that right off the bat and for no good reason. For now, be glad you’re getting the pizza.”
He could have said that. In fact many parents do. It’s not bad parenting, the incentive system. Besides, let’s be realistic, what did lie in store for the son after he got home? Based on what he would go on to do, did he really deserve a banquet and all that fan fare?
You don’t go straight from that dissolute lifestyle to law school. You don’t go from gambling debt to being the guy who discovers the cure for diabetes. You don’t go straight from eating pig slop to figuring out how to solve the world hunger problem. No, the prodigal son probably got home, ate the fatted calf, enjoyed the banquet and then went down his old bedroom in his parent’s basement and played video games for the next six months and doubled the family’s grocery bill.
So why didn’t the father save that fatted calf for a better occasion, or perhaps even use it as a little incentive to push this underachiever toward something better? That’s what the older brother was thinking. Let’s postpone the celebration for when he’s earned it and hold off for now. This was just not enough of a special occasion.
But the father didn’t want to hold off and everyone celebrated while his oldest son sulked.
It’s been said that resentment is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other guy to die. I think you could say that killing the fatted calf is like celebrating and waiting for the other guy to experience joy.
There’s never a perfect time to celebrate. But there is limited time in life to celebrate.
The last time I sat in National Cathedral it was last summer when our family gave thanks for the short lives of two extraordinary young men, two brothers, Stone and Holt Weeks, killed in a car accident last July – both of them in their twenties. They had made such a difference in so many people’s lives, that their church wasn’t big enough for their memorial service and the National Cathedral opened its doors instead, and this place was packed. If those two amazing young men were to walk through door today, there would be no end to the celebration that would take place. No end.
The scripture says that the father of the prodigal son thought the boy was dead, and that he had returned to life. Of course he was welcomed home with everything the family had to give. Of course. What better occasion could he possibly be waiting for?
“What are you waiting for?” the little girl asked her mother. “When are we ever going to use our fancy china?” She had been asking her mother why they never ate in the formal dining room, why they never used the china her parents had received for their wedding gift, why they never pulled out the silver. “That’s for a special occasion,” her mother replied, and looked sternly at her. “Don’t ever touch this.”
Years later, the daughter, now a teenager asked, “But what are you waiting for?” By now it had become an accusation. It seemed to sum up all the daughter’s frustrations with a family that never seemed to be able to celebrate.
Everything was always done in moderation and it was always fair. The parents prided themselves on that. You got good grades, you got privileges. If you didn’t do your chores, those were ratcheted back. The house was neat and orderly because the expectations were clear. If there was one piece of cake left, they didn’t even ask who wanted it; they just carefully cut it into equal pieces, one bite for each kid.
“Just for once, couldn’t one person get to eat the whole extra piece of cake?” the teenager wondered. Just for once couldn’t someone lavish attention on me, not because of my grades, or what I’ve achieved, but just because?
It seemed like the special occasions never came.
When they did occasionally pull out the good china, it was for some formal meal that seemed stripped of joy. The family seemed to want these occasions to end quickly. They did not feel special. It was as if they were so out of practice at special occasions, they just weren’t any good at them. Her mother worried that someone would drop a plate. “Those plates are irreplaceable, she said. “They don’t make that pattern anymore.”
The girl stopped asking her mother to get out the good china. It wasn’t worth it.
When she married, the young woman didn’t get herself any fancy china. What was the point? But after a few years, she inherited her mother’s. And she vowed that she would actually use it. In the beginning, she pulled it out often for birthdays, for dinner parties and didn’t worry about a plate breaking. But with a baby, then a toddler, and the chaos of everyday life, the good china got put away until one day her own small daughter noticed it in the cupboard and asked “Wow, can we use this tonight?” And before she could catch herself, the mother said, “No, it’s for a special occasion. Don’t touch it.”
“Isn’t today a special occasion?” the little girl answered. She was too young to know that adults like to save up and wait for such things. She was too young to have learned that you earn them.
And her mother stopped and looked around her. The kitchen was covered in dirty pots and pans from an afternoon of kids baking and playing at the house. The dog was once again eating out of the dishwasher. Her husband had just walked in and was grabbing a beer after a long commute, but she still needed to get some strange bubbling plastic container out of the microwave and into her daughter’s stomach before youth group at church, and after that, she still had twenty or thirty work emails to catch up on before this Wednesday night was done.
But the messy house had been full of laughter. It held more spirit and joy than anything she had known as a child, because sometimes the people with the coldest parents end up with a particular gift for warming a nest. And she had grown a faith that reminded her to stop and give thanks for the small things in the present. And in that moment, that’s exactly what she did. She looked at her daughter, changing and growing so quickly, and realized that her presence in this house and in this world was temporary, and said to herself, and then to God, “But that child is irreplaceable. They don’t make that pattern any more.”
She pulled out some plates from the dusty set of good china and put them out on the messy kitchen counter. Surveying the detritus of this, another typical chaotic, rushed and messy Wednesday night, she looked her daughter in the eye and said, “You’re right, this is a very special occasion.”
And together they set the table with the same love that God sets the table for you and for me, and for all the rest of her prodigal, irresponsible, precious and irreplaceable, children.
That is the story that Jesus told the people who criticized him for sitting at the table with sinners.
I once knew a woman who was a magnificent entertainer. There was something about a meal at her house that topped everything. It was not the cooking by the way. Sometimes that was delicious, but other times, the gravy was likely to have burned on the stove, or the chicken was frighteningly undercooked, or the whole meal came out an hour late, blackened and crunchy. And that was just the green beans. But there was something about being at that table that pointed you toward abundance. You knew you were special, that someone had set the table for you, put on festive music, and killed the fatted calf, even if the food was strange. There were flowers on the table and candles – well, the hostess’ motto was “Well, it may not be good but it’ll certainly be fancy.” You knew you had been well served.
One night, she came out more than an hour late, dressed to the nines in a sparkly outfit a couple sizes too small, red high heel shoes clicking across the floor holding, on a giant tray, a magnificent roasted duck. It was a brand new recipe for her. We had waited a long time for the meal, but now it appeared. It was hard to find the duck on the plate, for in her enthusiasm for her project she had gone heavy on the garnish. It was like a parsley explosion of culinary enthusiasm, a product of a long day’s work, cheerfully given.
But then, somehow, the combination of all the greenery, and the grease of the duck and a fold in the carpet just underneath her high-heeled shoes, all came together in the perfect storm. And as she tripped, the duck she had spent the whole day preparing went flying across the room, and landed where once it had had its tail feathers, skidded across the floors only to stop on the muddy doormat in the front hall, a brown trail of grease, gravy and parsley garnish in its sad wake.
The hostess had a moment where tears welled up, and there was a collective gasp among the guests. You could see she was thinking about how she would be judged. She knew from experience how easy people find it to mock a person when things go wrong. But then it was as if a new spirit came upon her, and she pulled her little shoulders back, marched over to the duck on the doormat, stooped down and picked it up, as she announced to the group, “Let me just throw this duck away in the kitchen, and I’ll be back in just a minute with the other duck.”
And a few minutes later she made another grand entrance, this time avoiding the crease in the carpet, and this time with a duck even more heavily disguised in garnish, to cover the bruises, for of course, as we all knew, there was no other duck. This was it.
But the holy spirit of hospitality was such that without a word, it was as if the guests collectively decided to replace the world’s petty practices of judgment and critique with a spirit of generosity. And we sinners all ate well at the table that night, feasting less on the damaged duck than on the grace that was served to both an embarrassed hostess and to her hungry guests.
Our hostess is gone from this world, so she’s the one I always picture ushering me into the afterlife with a plate of burnt hors d’oeuvres, and a pate of fatted calf.
There we’ll all be gathered around the banquet table, not just the perfect people but also the other 99.9 % of humanity. The prodigal son and his hard partying buddies, the joyful father, the oldest son and his responsible friends too, they’re all there along with you, and me, and my cousins and all those who have gone before.
And suddenly in the midst of this banquet, there’s this moment where we finally realize, that all that jockeying for position we did in our lives, all that resentment, competition and score keeping – it’s meaningless because we didn’t earn our place at this abundant table, but got here through God’s extravagant grace.
And Jesus, well used to eating with sinners, now serves us
in person, the bread, the wine, the fatted calf and the other duck. “Now this,”
he says “is indeed a special occasion.”