Sermon Preached By: Dr. Larry Corbett, Pinnacle’s former senior pastor
Date: March 18, 2007
Scripture: Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32
Sermon Title:

"Another Dysfunctional Family"

Introduction to the scripture reading:

The New Testament story of the lost son is embedded in a long series of stories in Luke’s gospel that Jesus tells various groups. The company that Jesus was keeping, (tax collectors, homeless people, sinners, those outside the reigning system of power) riled the Pharisees and scribes, the respected members of the society. They’re asking, “Who is this Jesus?” And he responds to the question with the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

Probably, you’ve heard this parable so many times you could tell it, but let’s listen again this morning, and see if we may discover a new meaning of God’s grace and redemption.

Text of sermon:

How many of you have a member in your family with whom you just can’t discuss certain subjects? Politics? Religion? Hot topics like abortion? Capital punishment?

Don’t we all? I have two siblings, a younger brother and sister. We are as different as can possibly be. We don’t look alike. Our lives have all gone in totally different directions. About the only commonality we share is a love of music.

My sister, a wonderful person, delivery room nurse for thirty years, mother, wife, grandmother, is a southern Baptist, married, with three children, and several grandchildren. I love her and her husband, but a few years ago I accompanied them to church in their little West Virginia town, and had I not been with her, and seated in the front aisle where she is a respected leader, I would have walked out on the minister’s guilt–throwing, prejudicial sermon. Marcie and I don’t ever talk religion or politics. We spent a whole week together a year ago in Hawaii having a wonderful time in spite of Biblical proportion rains, but never once mentioned the “r” or “p” words, religion or politics.

My brother is another case. His lifestyle is so radically different than mine. I love him also, but we, too, don’t talk religion — when he was active in a church at all it was a huge Pentecostal Bible church whose theology drove me up the wall.

The three of us are as different as night and day. We love each other and enjoy being together — although it’s only been at funerals or weddings when all three of us have been together in the last 40 years. We just have an unspoken agreement that there are certain subjects that are taboo. We don’t go there.

Any of you identify with such family dynamics? Know anyone else with similar conditions? The conditions may be manifest in some other way — some family member may have an addiction or plays around or is habitually late for any engagement… (and the list goes on and on).

If we extend this to the concept of the family of faith, the church, we shouldn’t be surprised at similar disputes and differences in denominations and local churches today. There surely are things we just can’t talk about without the risk of complete alienation. Yet, we are all persons in deep need of God’s grace and redemption. Contemporary novels and literature reflect that need. Jodi Picoult writes extensively on the subject of brokenness of families.

Jodi Picoult’s latest topical novel, Nineteen Minutes, is a story that takes its title from the duration of a New Hampshire high–school shooting rampage like Columbine. The kid with the gun who commits the ghastly crime is a much bullied New Hampshire teenager, and through a series of flashbacks, told with compassion and in great detail, we meet many of his peers, his parents, teachers, and others. No one is perfect and all are impacted by the tragedy. At one point, his mother says, “Isn’t it amazing how, when you strip away everything, people are so much alike?”

All of this brings me to this story of the prodigal son, another story of a broken Biblical family. (There are many of them starting with Cain and Abel in Genesis.)

This story is about a broken family on the mend, a tale of three men (no mention of a mom) trying to figure out what is right. Why the father empowers the son to live a destructive life we are not told. Whether the older son finally accepts his kid brother who may or may not turn things around when he returns home we have no clue.

The parable ends with many lingering questions such as forgiveness seems to come across as condoning, and grace seems to offend a sense of fairness.

But what we do see in context is Jesus mingling with society’s outcasts, and then we hear him tell a story that celebrates the return of a lost soul. When you read the story, and when you look around at life today you may justifiably wonder why is it that God trusts us as beloved partners, and Jesus has an answer, “You are worth it,” he seems to say, “You are worth the risk.” Every soul is worth it. With all our bad choices, secret behaviors, and low self esteems — you are worth it.

I try to see the glass half full; but am not always successful at it. The world is not just. Often, families are not fair. Violence and greed greet us everywhere we turn. Even Christ’s church is not united, as Jesus prayed so beautifully for it in John’s gospel. (“Holy Father, protect them in your name …. so they may be one, as we are one.” John 17:11b) Christians today are as likely to call one another heretics and close–minded as we are to celebrate each other’s uniqueness. There is not much “oneness” among us. Maybe it’s like the older brother in the parable, we’ve spent so much time apart from one another that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be together. So after two thousand years of Christian in–fighting over how we read the Bible, doctrinal issues, theology, and music, and centuries more of human political violence toward one another there are times when I wonder why it is we are worth it. Why would God choose us as partners in reconciliation?

It is no accident that Jesus responds to the question, “Who is this man who eats with sinners?” by talking about a family. Few things in life have the power of family. Professional sports teams try to emulate that power among their players. I watched the Pittsburgh Pirates under Willy Stargell’s leadership thirty years ago win a pennant on the theme, “We are family.” Family can empower us and it can destroy us. Family has the power to hurt and the power to make us whole. The pain of neglect and abuse by a loved one is a devastating, crushing, life and faith impacting event. The peace and security of devoted love by a spouse or parent or child is more precious than any wealth can be. There is no more powerful expression of love than for a parent to be present beside the bed of a sick child. You can watch the child relax and sleep in peace knowing the parent is at the bed side. Two persons in love need only be together reading quietly in the same room to experience the meaning of that love. Families experience loss together,
   celebrate together,
      bicker together and fight,
         and when life makes it possible, families come back together, like the gospel story.

This is a parable about family. People maligned and mistrusted Jesus for the unsavory associates he kept, until he flipped the question. Through this parable he asks, “Who’s in your family? How many are your kin? For my family,” he seems to say, “is greater than you can imagine. My family is wretched and lovely; it is fearfully and wonderfully made. And my family,” Christ says, “offends your common sense of right and fair, because we celebrate each other for just being here, together, before you have any chance to prove who you are or what you’ve done or why you belong. See, my family was made for each other, regardless of our differences.”

As far as I know a Presbyterian did not write this parable, but surely could have. We are family around the Table, a community that values fellowship highly,
   that values connectedness,
      and ordinarily, family.

At the center of our common life, we affirm that all are welcome here, and all belong. As one pastor has said, “It’s in the DNA of the Christian church to value celebration,
   give priority to public worship,
      and prize relationships. Our idea of being church doesn’t demand that you earn the privilege — just show up. In that sense, we’re like family. Just as we didn’t choose our siblings, we don’t choose who walks through these doors, or sits in the pews, but we commit to loving one another as best we can. And all that in spite of what some may whisper, “They’re all hypocrites — they worship on Sunday and demean on Monday. Who are they that eat with sinners and the greedy, and the exploitive, and any number of unsanctioned individuals?”

Answer: we are family. We are kin. Because we are family we know the tremendous power of being together, and that is worth the risk of being together. Though from time to time we may abuse that power and hurt one another, knowingly or otherwise, it is worth the risk if we can stay faithful to the love we share, and the love that centers and calls us together. It’s worth the risk because forgiveness is our goal not revenge; because mutual love and grace are our ultimate realities in God’s care. Some of us may find it nearly impossible to speak politely with one another about our faith, but being church is worth the risk because we know the value of the divine relationship we’re given in Christ.

We celebrate not because of anything we have done or accomplished. We celebrate because just like the dysfunctional gospel family of three males trying to figure it out, we were lost to each other, and are now found. In this season of Lent, may all of us seek to find each other all over again. Jesus is telling you, you are worth it. Thanks be to God. Amen.

I am indebted in this sermon to the following resources: Biblical Preaching Journal, Winter, 2007; Homiletics, March, 2007, Vol. 19; Interpretation, Luke, Fred Craddock; and From This Moment On: After the Shooting is Over, Janet Maslin, book review, New York Times, March 16, 2007.