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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, July 16, 2017

“The Gospel in Storybooks: Where the Wild Things Are” Luke 15: 11-32

Where the Wild Things Are is not a book that I grew up with as a child, however, for many children Maurice Sendak’s book is a favorite. It has won the Caldecott Medal and has been made into a movie in recent years. 
Reading Where the Wild Things Are for the first time as an adult, I found myself thinking that Max, the main character, in all of his antics is both a rambuncious and imaginative child, but he also does not not when he takes things to far. In the first few pages he can be seen hammering nails into the wall and scaring the family dog - misbehavior that he was punished for as he was sent to his room. 
I have to wonder if the son in today’s parable known as the prodigal, but who is simply identified as the younger son, had a heart like young Max. Did he know what he was doing when he told his father, while he was still living, to give him the property that belonged to him. Did he realize how rude he was being? That he was essentially saying ‘I don’t want to wait until you’ve died to get what’s coming to me’? It’s a dishonorable request in any day and time. 
Then the younger son went on an adventure. He liquidated the property he was given and spent the money in any way imaginable. He traveled far away and spent the money on “dissolute living” until the famine came. Until he realized that he didn’t have a plan or any money. Or a family. It was fun while it lasted but now the fun was over. 
In the children’s book, Max also had a field day. His room turned into a forest which he traveled far beyond - across an ocean in fact, until he got to the area where the wild things are located. While others may have been scared of the fierce creatures, they followed Max’s commands and eventually made him their king. Which was all well and good - until he got bored. 
Children’s books can resemble the parables of Jesus in many ways. Parables were stories that Jesus told, in specific contexts, that say something about human nature. But they don’t stop there, they ask us as listeners to examine our hearts, often time after time. For children’s books and parables always have something new to teach us, no matter how many times we have engaged them before.
Take this parable for instance. How many of us have heard the parable of the prodigal son before? How many of us remember when Jesus told this story? Not as many. This story takes place after Jesus is having yet another run in with the pharisees about his table practices. The religious leaders accused Jesus of eating with sinners - and this parable was his response.
The parable of the prodigal son is one that we have probably engaged countless times - in devotions, Sunday School, and sermons. I know I have over the years. But the story keeps speaking. Keeps inviting us in. When I was in college, chapel attendance was required. After years of chapel services three times a week they would seem to blend together after a while, but I still remember a series where the preacher looked at this parable three separate days from different perspectives - the father, the older son, and the younger son. I have a colleague who once preached this sermon to college students from the perspective of the pig farmer who hired the younger son, and that stuck with me as well.
This parable is powerful because it invites us to examine our lives from different perspectives and check in on our relationship with ourself, others, and God. To the ancient hearer before we even get into the part of the story that we so often like to celebrate in church, about the younger son returning how, they would have been shocked. Shocked at the younger son’s crass request. Shocked that the older son looked on an said nothing. Shocked that the father actually gave the son his inheritance early without a word!
Maybe we need to be a  little more shocked brothers and sisters. Maybe we need to be a little more vigilant in identifying those times in our lives when we make demands on God that are crass. Maybe we need to be a little more aware of how our relationship with God can effect our relationship with other people. Maybe we need to be a little more aware of the brokenness in our lives that leads us to misguided understandings of God, even before we go astray. 
The famine hits and the younger son is left in the most uncomfortable position - penniless, working with pigs, which would have been unheard of at the time, as the listeners to Jesus would have considered them unclean. This was rock bottom. And as often comes with rock bottom, clarity starts to emerge. The younger son thinks that even the hired help at his father's house has it better than this - so he needs to go back home and beg for a job. Not beg to be reinstated as a son, but beg to simply be the hired help. 
For Max, rock bottom came as he looked upon his subjects, the wild beast, and realized that he was lonely. That he didn’t want to be a king - he wanted to be with people who loved him. 
What does rock bottom look like for us brothers and sisters? What causes us to realize that we’ve screwed up and strayed from God? What makes us go back into the arms of God’s grace?
Priest and author Henri Nou wen in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, says that so often we focus on this story from the perspective of the younger son and how he screwed up (maybe because we can identify with that as people who go astray), but really at the heart of this parable is the message of a forgiving and loving God the welcomes us back in ways far better than we deserve.
For as the younger son approached home the father came running out to him. He showed acts of reconciliation, offering to the son fine robes and rings and sandals. He even threw the younger son a party because he was so overjoyed! Max, too, was offered acts of reconciliation, after being sent to his room without dinner, he found dinner, still hot, waiting for him when he returned. 

This brothers and sisters is the story, the parable, Jesus told when he was charged with fellowshipping around the table, partying if you will, with those that the Pharisees deemed to be sinners. Do you get what Jesus was trying to say? That it’s not for us to judge who is beyond God’s forgiveness and grace. It is not for us to judge who is welcomed into the Kingdom of God. The Pharisees were acting as if they had been snubbed because Jesus was eating with the sinners instead of them, as if the presence of those they didn’t like kept them from being at the table. But the truth is, God gives us all more than we deserve. God welcomes us back, if we have a repentant heart. God let’s us start anew, seeking after a purity of heart, and God rejoices in that. Let us rejoice too, when the lost ones, including our very selves, come home to the family of God. Amen.

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