The Reverend Seth Ethan Carey
3/18/07
First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn,
Illinois
Firstconge.org
Introduction to the Scripture
Some people say that you can
never go home again. Jesus isn’t one of them.
The parable of the prodigal son
is one his most famous teachings and I think that this parable is so popular
because it’s probably one of the least mystifying stories that Jesus ever told.
So many of his parables are hard to understand at first glance, but the meaning
behind this one is obvious: no matter how far you roam from the grace of God,
it’s never too late to ask for forgiveness. It’s never too late to come home.
But I think it’s a mistake to
ever assume that we’ve got a biblical passage all figured out, no matter how
straightforward it may seem to be. And this parable raises a more subtle
question. It tells us that it’s never too late to come home—but it’s not so
clear on where ‘home’ is, exactly.
And neither are we. We spend
our whole lives trying to figure out where we belong, what it is we’re supposed
to be doing, and running back and forth from place to place, juggling dreams
and ambitions, hoping that each journey will be the journey home.
And still—we often find
ourselves lost in the middle of nowhere, miles away.
***
It seems like everybody runs
in this town. I don’t just mean that in the sense of being busy, that everyone
always seems to be running from one commitment to the next; although that seems
to be the case, too. No, when I say that everybody runs, I mean it quite
literally. Driving around in every kind of weather, I see men and women in bright
spandex running gear, jogging and sprinting down the road. When the marathon
comes to town, it seems like half the congregation signs up. And is it just my
imagination, or is most of our teenagers on the Glenbard
West track team?
It seems like everybody runs.
I’m more of a walker, myself.
I also joined the track team
in high school, and I knew right away that it wasn’t for me. You see, my childhood
dream—don’t laugh—was to become a champion potato-sack racer. But my school
didn’t think it appropriate to include that particular race on the roster of
competitive events. Still, in spite of my fierce disappointment, I couldn’t let
myself quit; because that would mean admitting defeat. I couldn’t let myself
quit because I knew that this was a test of character that I couldn’t afford to
fail. But most of all, I couldn’t quit because my mother had bought me a $200
pair of running shoes and I lost the receipt. I don’t even want to tell you how
much she spent on the Nike potato sack.
Yes, it all left a bad taste
in my mouth. But whatever my own aversions to running distances greater than
ten feet, the image of the race has long been a source of inspiration for
people everywhere. Nothing spells victory
quite like the labored breath of the long distance runner, legs rising and
falling like hammers and the heart exploding like the Devil’s own 12-cylinder engine,
the theme from Chariots of Fire
blazing, vapor trails of sweat and tears dissolving in the hot summer air. Yeah,
there goes the runner, running for the finish line, running towards a dream. I’m
sure that we all have moments in our lives that could compare to that kind of
visceral high, that still, small second on the brink of glory.
But what of the times we ran
the other way? Not towards a dream, but away from a nightmare?
***
In 1960, John Updike wrote a
novel called Rabbit, Run. It was a
book about a man named Rabbit who
runs away from home in an attempt to escape the confines of his failing
marriage and soul-crushing job. He goes out to buy his wife cigarettes, and he
doesn’t come back; simple as that. But it doesn’t take long before he gets
lost. Stopping for directions, someone tells him: "The only way to get somewhere, you know, is to figure out where
you're going before you get there.”
That sounds about right to
me. And it seems like that’s where the prodigal son goes wrong. I imagine he
must have felt a lot like Rabbit—namely, trapped—trapped in a life of
predictable outcomes, trapped in a world of mediocrity. He looks into the years
ahead and sees nothing but long days of milking cows and herding cattle. So he
gets an advance on his father’s inheritance, and plunges into the great wide
open with money to burn, a farm boy hoping to break his rusty cage and make it
big. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He just goes.
And that’s when the real trap
is sprung. That’s when prodigal son goes down. That’s when he gets lost.
You can take this parable at
face value and read it as a lesson in God’s boundless forgiveness for those who
wander astray. But there’s a whole other dimension to it; like Updike’s novel, at
its core this is a story about running away. And I’m sure that’s something
everyone can relate to. Maybe you tried to run away from home as a child, or
maybe you flew the coop of a miserable job, or a troubled romance. Maybe it was
smart to run when you did, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe you knew where you were
going, and maybe you didn’t. Either way—
Everybody runs, right?
***
Don’t take this the wrong
way; but when I think of running away, I immediately think of the police. It’s
not that I’m some kind of criminal. It’s just….well, it’s just that I’m still
driving around with a CT Driver’s License, and I guess the local police have a
problem with that.
I suppose it’s only a matter
of time before they find out. I can already tell you how it’ll go down. One of
these days I’ll get pulled over for something stupid, like a busted tail light.
The police officer will open his door and walk over to my driver-side window.
He’ll take his time with it, real slow, making sure I hear every click of his
boots on the pavement. But in those long seconds I’ll have to make a choice. Because
when he gets to the window he’ll ask for my license. As the sweat pours down my
brow, I’ll have to decide.
Either I give it to him, or I
run.
If I give it to him, I’ll get
a ticket. But if I run away, I’d better be ready to run for a good long time.
I’d better be ready to trade in my car for a black Cadillac, change my middle
name to “Danger,” and head for Mexico with an army of squad cars on my tail.
“But why,” you ask, “why would
you risk such peril? Why not just go to the DMV tomorrow and straighten this
out?” Because the DMV is closed on Monday, that’s why.
I guess we all make excuses
for running away. And there’s a difference between running away from
responsibility and running away from a genuinely bad situation. But either way,
if you’re going to run, you’d better have a good sense of direction; because "the only way to get somewhere,” after
all, “is to figure out where you're going
before you get there.” It doesn’t matter if your destination is a lifelong
dream or the Mexican border.
Either way, you really can’t
afford to get lost.
***
So this scripture is about
running away from home. But actually, that’s not the whole story. It’s also a
story about running back home. Not
just running away from our fears, but also running towards our hope. Not just running away from the nightmare, but towards the dream.
The prodigal son is searching
for something. He doesn’t think he’ll find it on his father’s farm, so he
leaves in search of adventure, in search of his bliss. He blows all of his money
on nice clothes and expensive liquor and houses of ill repute, relentless in
his pursuit of happiness. But he doesn’t find happiness, not in any of those
things. He ends up destitute and alone, so he runs again. But this time he runs
back home, where he finds that his bliss was waiting for him all along.
Now, there’s a very fine line
between running towards and running away. Every time you run towards
something, you’re running away something else. That’s what makes this story so
rich and so complicated. It’s not a black & white issue. It’s not that it
was wrong for him to leave home and right to return, it’s not that simple. In
fact, I have to give the guy credit for leaving home in the first place, even
if he was running away, because he left in search of something better. He was
trying to follow his heart, to do the things he wanted to do.
The expert mythologist and
storyteller Joseph Campbell tells a wonderful, true story about his early days
as a young professor. He was sitting alone in a restaurant, eating dinner, when
he overheard a nearby conversation between a father and his son. The small boy
sat before glass of tomato juice, and he refused to drink it.
“Drink your tomato juice,”
the man told his son. The boy shook his head. “Drink your tomato juice,” he told the boy, raising his voice.
At this point the man’s wife
chimed in: “Don’t make him drink something he doesn’t want to drink.” To which
her husband replied:
“He can’t just go through
life doing what he wants to do. Just look at me—I’ve never done a thing I wanted in all my life.”
It’s sad, really, the way
some people resign themselves to their misery; the way they force feed
themselves the proverbial tomato juice of malcontent, pouring it down their
throats until they can’t even taste it anymore. So my hat’s off to the prodigal
son for trying to follow his bliss. But he goes about it all wrong. His compass
is way off. Get gets lost. He tries to find abiding happiness in earthly treasures,
and his hedonism leaves him cold—
—for one cannot find lasting
happiness in fleeting things. The flesh always grows old. The money always runs
out.
***
But when the prodigal son
goes home, he finds a joy that endures. It’s really one of those, “And they all lived happily ever after” stories. And that’s what we all want, right? To
live happily ever after? Not just to chase a dream, but to catch it.
Christ—the one who tells this
parable—models the fulfillment of that dream. He followed his bliss, his
passion—not for hedonism, or wealth, or mundane success, but for something much
bigger. He followed his passion for life, his love for the whole of the human
race, his dream for a better world; he followed his passion all the way to the
cross.
And it’s been said that even
hanging up there with slivers in his back and nails in his hands and thorns in
his skin—dying—he was more alive than
the people who watched him die. Why? Because he was true to himself, even in
his final breath. Because he became what he was born to be.
We’re expected to live a
certain way in this pseudo-automated machine world. Go to work. Pay the bills.
If you have time, watch some TV. Eat. Sleep. Point. Click. Repeat. Die.
But God wants so much more
from us. God wants so much more for us.
God doesn’t just want us to be maintained, sustained, and entertained. God
wants us to be fulfilled. And that
only happens when we fulfill our
potential, even as Christ fulfilled the scriptures in his death and
resurrection. So with God as your compass, point yourself in the right
direction—and run— run towards something pure and good and true, something that
will bring your weary soul to life; towards your love, towards your dream.
Everybody runs. But will you
run towards your bliss? Or will you run yourself into the ground?
Amen.