“Lost and Found” (Luke 15:11-32), March 1, 2009

“As for the son who stayed, I knew he was not that different from the son who strayed.  Both were too absorbed in their own world to see or understand my father’s heart.  Neither came to me to seek perspective or wisdom – they both thought they could figure it out on their own.  Both were filled with pride, and pride drove the same wedge between each of them and me.”

The son who strayed

Let me tell you my story.  I am the son who strayed.

I grew up thinking I was never good enough.  Nobody told me that, but it’s what I thought.

My father is a good man.  He was always tender, caring, attentive, forgiving, and generous.  He is a perfect father if there ever has been one.  I never recall him raising his voice.  He was there when I needed him, there even when I wanted him.

But I always thought I could never be as good as he is.

I had a great childhood.  My brother and I got along well.  We ran in the fields, we played in the woods, we helped on the farm.  But one day it dawned on me.  I will never be as smart as he is, never beat him in a race, never pin in him a wrestling match.  I will always be behind the only brother I will ever have.  He’ll always be first; I’ll always be last.  No matter what I do, he will do it better.

My teenage years were hard, because I internalized these thoughts.  Looking back now, I could have gone at any point to my father, and shared with him my struggles.  He would have given good counsel.  Instead, I pulled away from him.  And I resented my brother.

I began to plot a way I could prove myself.  It was  a strategy I shared with no one.  At first, it wasn’t even a strategy.  It was more like a determination.  I would find a way to emerge from my brother’s shadow and prove that I could make my own way in the world.  I would achieve.  I would succeed.  I would be happy.  And I would do it on my own.

My change in attitude first emerged in a passive-aggressive attitude on the family farm.  As my body matured, I was expected to do my share of the work.  After all, my brother did.  But no matter how much I contributed, he always accomplished more.  If I got up at dawn, he had already been working for an hour.  If I put up ten bales of hay, he put up fifteen.  If I plowed a field pretty well, he plowed it perfectly.  So in my twisted adolescent thinking, I deliberately did less than my best.  Why try hard if I couldn’t be first?

My brother noticed.  My father corrected.  The servants complained.  I was not pulling my weight.  And for me, that only turned into more reason to pull back.  Everyone was always critical of me.  Often I would just disappear – hide or leave for hours or days – and never tell anyone where I had gone.

I even thought once about killing my brother – “accidentally,” of course.  He was the only one standing in the way of my emerging into the limelight.  But I was smart enough at least to realize that plan could easily go awry.

What I did do almost killed my father.  Although I did not realize it until many years later, what I said to him one fateful day amounted to, “Why don’t we go ahead and pretend that you’re already dead?”

Even with inheritance, I would never be first.  The Bible says that the older brother must receive a double portion (Deuteronomy 21:17), so he would get two-thirds and I would get one-third.  I knew when my father died he would have a head start on me again.

I remember the day I went to my father and made my request.  As I approached him, he seemed to receive me hopefully.  In retrospect I now realize what was in his mind.  He was thinking that I might want to make a new start, give a greater effort, show I was growing up.

I could almost see the blood draining from his face as I stood up tall, looked him in the eye, and said, “Father, I’m a man now.  I want to make my mark on the world.  I want to go out and prove something.  But I can’t start with nothing.  You’ve been good to me.  I have no complaints.  But what I want is a head start on creating my own fortune.  I don’t think I should have to wait until you die.  I would like to have my inheritance now.”

When I walked away from that farm, I left not only with my pockets full of money.  My heart was full of confidence.  I would show them what I was made of.  I would make my father proud of me.  I would make my brother jealous of my success.

I would get as far away from home as I could.  I would use my money first to make friends, and then to create my own wealth.  I would be free of responsibilities, free of criticism, free to do things my way.  One day I would return home in triumph, showing them how wrong they were about me, wearing the finest clothes and rings and shoes and telling stories of how to make money.

That’s not how it unfolded.  The place “far away from home” where I landed was in the midst of an economic boom.  There was a festive atmosphere, and everyone was eager to welcome another spender to town, eager to “network” with me by spending the resources my father had worked so hard to build.

I kept telling myself that soon I would stop spending and start investing, but my resources dwindled and dried up at the same time that the economy tanked.  In a series of events that I myself find baffling, in no time at all I had nothing – no money and no friends.  When you’re a Jewish boy taking care of pigs and wishing someone would give you a bite of their food, you know you’ve hit bottom.

So when reality hit, home seemed, well, not as oppressive and limiting as I had led myself to believe when I lived there.  I realized that my father’s temp workers, the day-by-day hired men, were treated with more respect and had a better life than I had.

So I made my decision.  I would admit my fault.  I had learned my lesson.  I knew I had squandered my inheritance.  I would ask for nothing but a hot bowl of soup, and I would work for that alongside the slaves.  I left the pig pen and went home.  With every step, I rehearsed over and over my speech of shame and confession.

What I expected was a long lecture followed by an opportunity to do exactly as I had asked – to prove that I had learned my lesson, to prove that I had established a work ethic – to enjoy nothing more than a warm bed, a hot meal, and clean clothes.  What happened on my return home surprised no one more than me.

It was as if my father had been planning for this day, waiting for it to happen.  When he saw me from a distance, he ran to greet me.  Older men in our culture don’t run – it is undignified.  He didn’t care.  He threw his arms around my ragged clothes and kissed my filthy face.  He interrupted my rehearsed speech and declared a day of celebration.  He gave me a ring of authority, a robe of honor, and shoes that distinguished a son from a slave.  I was embarrassed by the lavishness of the party as tears streamed down my face.

My brother never joined the festivity and I wondered why.

The son who stayed

Let me tell you my story.  I am the son who stayed.

I will never forget the day my brother left home.  I came in the house and said to my father, as I had said so often before, “I can’t find him.  He promised he would help me today.  I know he’s undependable, but I needed him today.  Do you know where he is?”

My father turned and he could hardly speak.  His eyes welled up with tears and his puffed cheeks gave evidence of an enlarged but broken heart.  “This time he’s not coming back.”

“He’s dead?”

“No, but he might as well be.  He asked me for his shared of the inheritance and I gave it to him.  He’s gone, and I don’t know if we’ll ever see him again.”

Something in my father died that day.  My foolish brother had crushed his spirit.  He just seemed sad – all the time.  I didn’t know what to say or how to help him.  I couldn’t make it better.  I did the only thing I knew to do.  I worked hard.  I never asked my father for anything.  He would know the business would be in good hands with me.  I would be trustworthy, loyal, and hard-working.  Occasionally the thought came into my mind, “I’m really working for myself now,” but that was not my primary motive.  I wanted to be the son my father needed.

When I realized that nothing I did would lift my father’s spirits, I became increasingly resentful of what my brother had done to him.  How could this happy-go-lucky childhood playmate of mine have become so self-absorbed?  How could he have bought into the delusion that he could make it on his own?  His level of initiative, experience, and wisdom were nil.

But above all, how could he do this to his father, to our father?  He had never been treated with anything but love and respect.  How could he thrust that kind of dagger into the man who gave us both life and opportunity?  Some days I had to tell myself, “Just don’t think about him,” because when I did, I boiled with rage.  “I hope he comes back crawling on his knees.”

I was out in the field the day he came home.  Nobody told me he was back, but I heard the celebration as I walked toward the house.  I asked one of the servants what the party was about, and was told, “Your brother has come home.  He had lived a wasted life, but he’s home.  Your father has killed the calf saved for joyous celebrations.”

Something snapped in me.  I don’t think I had even understood how angry I had been at my brother for leaving home, at my father for allowing him, at myself for being the loyal, compliant son.  What good was it all?  My father never threw a party for dependability, did he?  Did I ever get attention for doing the right thing?

I was not about to join any celebration for wasted years, for constant tears, for endless fears.  When my father came out and pleaded with me, the pent up resentment overflowed in words of disrespect and bitterness he had never heard from my lips.  “I am the son who stayed!  I do what you ask – what you expect even without asking.  I’m here and I’ve always been here.  Where is my party?”

The father who loves

Let me share my heart.  I am the father who loves.  I love the son who strayed.  I love the son who stayed.

There have been places in my heart that could be shared with neither the son who strayed or the son who stayed.  There are many words I wanted to say to each, but they were not ready to hear.

As for the son who strayed, I always wanted him to know I was there.  I was not only there in the innocence of childhood.  I was there in confusion of adolescence.  If he felt second best, I wanted to know.  If he felt unworthy, I wanted to hear.  If he felt his future was bleak, I wanted to tell him I saw it very differently.

I wasn’t just there for giving advice.  I was there to listen.

I also wanted him to know that granting his early inheritance request and letting him go was the hardest choice I ever made.  I didn’t just give him some of my money that day.  A part of me walked away that day.

But I felt I had no choice.  Not because I couldn’t have refused him – that was my right.  But, to refuse him might have meant to lose him forever – even if he stayed home.  His heart would have been hardened.

The greatest way to love him was to give him the freedom to self-destruct.  My heart broke when he walked down that road.  I spent every moment of every day pining for his return, watching for a glimpse of his form in the distance.  I somehow knew I would again hear him say, “Abba.”  Sometimes I felt I needed to chain my feet to the columns on my porch to prevent them from going after my son.  But if I did, how would he come to his senses?

As for the son who stayed, I knew he was not that different from the son who strayed.  Both were too absorbed in their own world to see or understand my father’s heart.  Neither came to me to seek perspective or wisdom – they both thought they could figure it out on their own.  Both were filled with pride, and pride drove the same wedge between each of them and me.

His inability to rejoice over his brother’s homecoming exposed the harsh reality that he had not stayed all those years for my sake.  He had stayed for reward – not only the reward of money but the reward of being right.  He was just as much as his brother trapped in a boyhood competition to be first, to be vindicated, to be the last to admit need.

So when the son who strayed was awarded the first party, the son who stayed saw himself as a loser instead of a winner.  It was an unfamiliar, unexpected position.  The return of his brother was like a nail that punctured his heart.  Out of it then flowed the ugly ooze of resentment and bitterness and hate.  My heart ached for him.

And here, most of all, is what I wanted him to know.  My homecoming celebration for the son who strayed in no way diminished my love for the son who stayed.  For me it was never about which son I loved more or honored more.  If competition existed between them, it was not an extension of my heart.  I could rejoice over the return of the son who strayed while honoring the faithfulness of the son who stayed.

For either son, my heart was one of grace.  I wanted them both with me.  I wanted them both to choose me freely – not because of compulsion or reward.  I was waiting for both of them to come around, for both of them to respond to my heart.  And I didn’t want either of them to resent the other.

That’s hardest for the son who stayed.  I know that.  But never did I want my heart to overflow into his more than the day the son who strayed came home.  Never more than that day did I want him to see his own selfish heart so that he would welcome his brother back the same way I did – without condition, without reservation.

What I did for one, I did for both.  I loved them.  I waited for them.  I went to them.  I treated them like sons.  That is my heart.  Amen.