Here is the sermon I preached in the seminary’s chapel this past Friday.
SFTS chapel, 3.12.10 • “The One Who Waits,” Luke 15:11-32
The story of the Prodigal son is so proverbial in our faith and even in our culture that most people assume this text is about the son. Even the word prodigal has become synonymous with this story in common vernacular though actually, it means “spendthrift” or “reckless,” rather than “lost.”
But any person with a careful eye for textual context can tell you that this story is not primarily about the son. The story is given by Jesus in response to the accusation that he “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” In Jesus’ context, this was seriously problematic behavior. There were all sorts of rules for who you ate with, and what and how you ate. As we learn from Peter in Acts, table fellowship was not just a remote religious rule, it was a visceral determination of your personal holiness. When you ate with someone, you were identified with them and had obligations to them.
Jesus was breaking the rules, publicly shaming himself by eating with people known to be sinners, in a class of people outside the accepted religious standards. And he responds to this accusation by telling three stories. In the first two, items of great value are lost and the owner searches high and low until it is found. In both of these stories, God is revealed both as a God who tirelessly searches for those who are lost and as a God who is always ready to throw a huge party to celebrate when what is lost is found.
There is a different side of God’s relationship to what is lost in this story of the Prodigal. Here, God is the God who waits. The father did not go after the son, and in fact he had sent him off with money and freedom to do as he liked. The father did not know if his son will ever return, but still he saw his son “while he was still far off.” He was waiting with a ready-made feast for the son’s return.
The father was waiting.
The older son wasn’t waiting. He was at home, working hard and obsessed with his own performance, reassuring himself with self-righteousness.
The younger son wasn’t waiting. He was totally into his own pleasure, his self-absorbed discovery of what the world had to offer and then just trying to survive his own misfortune.
The father was waiting. Is it possible that we could define spiritual maturity as one who waits?
Waiting is an underrated spiritual posture in our results-driven, cause and effect culture. Waiting is seen as wasteful and needy. But that is not the picture here. The father does not wait in a codependent way. If he did, he never would have let the son go out on his own in the first place, but tried to accommodate him and coddle him at home. And the father is not at all in an independent, who-needs-you posture towards his son. He is not too busy or absorbed to see his son from a long way off. Waiting, as the father waits, is active – the father is always looking down the road, noticing any changes. This kind of waiting is differentiated – it is willing to let the son do what he wants to do even when it is painful and shameful to the father. At the same time, the father’s waiting demonstrates compassion and presence. The Father’s waiting indicates faithfulness – the penultimate characteristic desired in both God and God’s people the Hebrew Scriptures. Waiting, with a feast always ready, was as much as the father could do to foster reciprocity and mutuality in his relationship with his son.
The father’s waiting indicates that he was living in the reality of relationality. Relationality is my favorite seminary word. Relationality is a quick way of saying that God in the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed as a God who is defined primarily by being in relationship before we ever talk about power, sovereignty, sin or salvation. And in a world that finds its sustenance and origins in God, our basic unit of understanding becomes relationship. God is always calling us into the life of the Trinity that is marked by giving and receiving… and waiting.
Waiting may seem an odd way to define relationality and granted, it is just a part of it, but it seems to be an important indicator of how deeply we are identified with the relationality of God. Waiting could be thought of as giving attention to another, anticipating the arrival of God’s grace in another’s life. We wait for what we love, giving it our full attention. Waiting pulls us into relationality – heart and soul.
In this story and in his own choice of dinner partners, Jesus calls us into this posture of waiting that always keeps an eye out for others, is always ready to celebrate another’s return home.
Waiting is more challenging than it sounds. It is easy to look around to those who have rougher edges and think they are the ones who need to work on this. Those of us who tend to be more naturally pastoral or welcoming in nature can assume we have this down. But relationality is not really about external kindness or niceness, though it can manifest itself that way. It is about an interior posture that truly loves, that is com-passionate, suffering with, even when there is nothing to gain. We all struggle with this and in this sense, we are all the prodigal, starting over and over again to journey towards our true home where we can rest in love and be free to give it others.
I believe we could likely be a successful academician or a brilliant preacher or a justice-loving activist or even a caring pastor without this heart of waiting, but we are not growing more deeply into union with God, nor mirroring the life of Christ without it. Active waiting for others reveals everything about how much the heart of God has permeated my inner self.
An authentic Christian spirituality is utterly subversive to any system that would treat a man or woman as anything less than a child of God. It has nothing to do with ideology or politics. Every praying Christian, every person who has an encounter with God, must have a passionate concern for his or her brother and sister, his or her neighbor. To treat anyone of these as if he were less than the child of God is to deny the validity of one’s spiritual experience. – Desmond Tutu
What Archbishop Tutu knows is that the most subversive thing in this world is not our political or theological stance, but a truly engaged spirituality that grasps ahold of relationality and follows the one who waits.
The goal of our inner lives should always be to be increasingly turning from hostility to hospitality, as Nouwen says. And as Tutu reminded us, this turn has potential to change the systems of our world. This should be the goal of our communities. This should be the track of our seminary. This should be the thing we constantly seek, work for and pray for in our world. It is not rocket science. It takes the slow process of transformation to work this in us.
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When the Corinthian church came to the table, there was a problem. We aren’t quite sure of the specifics but we know the general issue was some rushed ahead to eat before the others. Paul exposes this behavior as completely antithetical to what this table is about. He says, “when you come together, wait for one another.” (1 Cor. 11:33) Embody relationality, the very life of God, here at this table by waiting.
We are related and so we wait. We welcome. We set a table, always ready to feast in celebration of each other and share embodied relationality between us. We set a table in hopeful waiting for the world to find its rest and hope in the interrelated God who is always welcoming us.
