Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church--Unitarian Universalist

Warm Hearts and Thankless Tasks

Rev. David Takahashi Morris

February 11, 2007

So if you were born into the Prodigal family, which sibling would YOU want to be? The stay-at-home, who keeps everything together and then gets what feels like second best? Or the ne’er-do-well, who squanders it all and then comes home to find his old room and his old place in his father’s heart?

Which brother is the star of Jesus’ parable?

It seems obvious from the fact that we call this story “the prodigal son,” I suppose. Most interpretations of that story have concentrated on the wandering squanderer who was lost but is found. His is certainly the more dramatic part of the tale.

But Jesus didn’t call his story “the prodigal son.” He didn’t call it anything; later generations decided what the focus of the story is. At the time, Jesus told this story in response to a challenge. The keepers of the common wisdom in his culture, the etiquette subcommittee of the holier-than-thou task force, also known as the “scribes and Pharisees,” asked Jesus why he was hanging around with the dregs of society. Tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners and the like—why are you wasting your time with them? In reply, Jesus told a string of parables, allegorical stories about the generosity of God. This is where he tells the story of the Good Shepherd who leaves behind his flock to find the one lost lamb, along with this tale of the prodigal and others which make the same point: I look after the lost sheep because that’s the one that needs the most attention.

So naturally, there’s a focus on the one who left and returned. But really, haven’t you ever sympathized at least a little with the brother who stayed at home?

The older brother has come off pretty badly over the centuries. He has been considered ungenerous and unforgiving. People assume he’s there as a stand-in for those scribes and Pharisees Jesus is arguing with. He’s the jealous one, threatened by his father’s love for the younger brother, afraid he’ll lose his inheritance. He doesn’t understand the way of love.

He’s a grind, too, which has especially gotten him in trouble with poets who write about this parable. He’s the stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud, unimaginative drudge. Maybe he’s really just upset because HE never went out and sowed his wild oats. He never dared to make the trip to Singapore and blow it all on the stock market. He never had a good round of “riotous living,” as the old Shakespearian King James version has it. Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the prodigal has the younger son deciding to go back out on the skids because it’s more fun than staying home with his pious parents and sour sibling, and his last words as he leaves are: “Brother, you are a hound.”

I don’t think this is fair, and I don’t think it’s what Jesus has in mind when he tells the story, either. The older brother is responsible and committed to the family, and his confusion at his father’s behavior is perfectly reasonable.

Have you ever been that person? Have you ever worked long and hard for something you loved, kept things going by doing thankless tasks one day at a time, and then some fair-haired boy or girl comes along and all eyes and hearts turn toward them?

It isn’t fair. It isn’t reasonable.

Of course, that’s one of the points of this story. That word “prodigal” means “recklessly extravagant” or “lavishly abundant.” Who really fits that description? It’s the father who’s really the prodigal one in this story. The parable of the prodigal is at one level a story about God: God as a prodigal parent—extravagantly lavishing abundant love, without regard for who’s worthy in our eyes and who’s not. If God is Love, as Jesus teaches, then it is a mistake to expect God to be reasonable, or fair, or measured. An infinite, ever-available source of love is unreasonable.

And an infinite, ever-available source of love is the meaning of God for Jesus, as it has been for our Universalist forbears, as it could be for us. Love that is there for everyone if they are ready to receive it. A door that’s always open, a heart that is always has warmth enough to embrace one more life—warmth enough for me; warmth enough for you.

Does that make any sense? Of course not. And it’s what we teach.

So here’s that stay-at-home sibling: Responsible, committed, loyal, and reasonable. He says, “Look—all these years I have worked like a slave for you and I never disobeyed your commands, yet you never gave me so much as a little goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has squandered your wealth with prostitutes, you killed for him the fatted calf!” And I don’t blame him one bit.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think the prodigal father blames him either. He comes out to find his older son, just as he ran out to meet the younger. He doesn’t criticize him. He loves him too, and he lets him know that he has something the lost-and-found sibling does not have. “You are always with me,” he says. “All that I have is yours.”

Leslie’s retelling of the Prodigal story reminds us that the older sibling does have choices, does have freedom, does after all have the parents’ love.

You have been with me always, and all that I have is yours. Remember, this is a Jewish story, told by a revolutionary Jewish rabbi to a Jewish audience. In that context, that message to the older son, all that I have is yours, is literally true. The stay-at-home sibling in the original parable is the eldest son: the heir by Jewish custom; the future owner of the whole place—including responsibility for the one who was lost and is found. Including the fatted calf and the welcome-home feast. This is not just a party for the younger son; it is the older son’s chance to take his place as the host at the family’s celebration.

The older brother has been there all along. His work has made it all possible; he is the farmer, the worker in the fields, the one who gives value to what the father gives away so easily. If it weren’t for the older brother, there would be no home to welcome the wanderer back to. It will take a long time and a lot of work for the returning one to possess the home place the way the stay-at-home already does.

People have told me they think it’s too easy to join our church. You don’t have to make a declaration of faith. You don’t have to promise to hate Satan and love Goodness; you don’t have to declare that you’re devoting your life the ideals of the Seven Principles. You don’t have to say there was anything wrong with your life before you got here. You don’t have to reject or renounce any faith community you’ve been part of before. You don’t even have to sign a pledge card. All you do is put your name in a book.

It’s true; it’s very easy. It is as easy as falling off a log to become a member of this church, or of most Unitarian Universalist churches. On our good days, we’re like the prodigal father, with warm hearts for whoever walks through the door. If you’re lucky, it’ll be a first Sunday and there might even be a little fatted calf at the monthly potluck, although fatted tofu or fatted lasagna is probably more likely. It’s easy—but it’s a lot harder to BE a member than it is to join. To be a member, it helps to have a little of that older brother in you.

Today is a day for the reasonable, committed, loyal ones who stay, the ones who have worked this year in the fields—and kitchens and classrooms and committees and shelters and conferences and all the other countless places, ways, and tasks that make this community the vibrant, living, rich experience it is. Even if this was the year when your work was just to show up, to look inward, to receive the care of others—those too are acts of being in community.

The people who give their time, their effort, their imagination, their presence, and yes, their need to a church are the ones who give it value, the ones who make it worth joining. Without them there would be no door to open. We encourage newcomers not to do this at first, but rather to take time to learn in their turn how they will be members. In time, you too will possess the church like the older brother in Jesus’ story possesses his father’s farm; like him you will become hosts at the family feast

. There’s one thing missing from the original version of this story that would have rounded it out completely for me. Over the centuries perhaps it would have helped us remember that eldest son more respectfully. It’s implied, but it isn’t made explicit. The prodigal father comes out to reconcile with his confused and frustrated son, he reminds him that he is loved and valued; he doesn’t actually say thank you. Well done, you who have always been with me. What a good thing we have built together. Thank you. Now let us open our hearts and welcome our family member home, because this party is for you, too.

That’s what we’re here to say today. Well done, you who have done and given so much to make this place a celebration of community, a place of caring, a place of justice, a place of exploration. Well done, you who are the warm heart that greets our newcomers; you who take our principles and make them real. There should be no such thing as a thankless task.

Thank you.