Scripture: John 14:1-14; Acts 7:54-60
I want to speak to those of you who are grieving the death of someone whom you love, or
anticipating their impending death. I suppose that's about everyone here. For some, the
pain is acute right now. For others like myself, the pain gradually receded and life went
on. But still, without warning sometimes, grief jumps up and grabs you again. Those whom
we love keep leaving, keep journeying to "that land from which no traveler has ever
returned."
A friend told me about sitting in church one day, more than 10 years after his father's
death, and suddenly, without warning, dissolving into tears. He said, "I don't know
what happened. I thought I was fine. I haven't cried about this in years." But he
kept crying all through the service and couldn't turn the tear faucet off for hours.
"It wasn't even Father's Day, and I was utterly undone," he said.
Paul says that we Christians do "not grieve as others do who have no hope" (I
Thess. 4:13). We still grieve, yes, but not without hope. What is our hope when those whom
we love slip away from our loving embrace and journey into that unknown land from which no
traveler has ever returned?
On his last night with his disciples, Jesus spoke of death in a way that exudes peace
and hope, without any fear at all words of comfort for those he leaves behind. In the
story of Stephen's death by stoning, we hear again words of peace and hope: "I see
the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God! Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit."
Each time that I have had the privilege of being with those on the threshold of death,
I have been awed by their lack of fear and their sense of peace as they leave this part of
life for the next. Even their concern for the ones they leave behind seems at the end to
turn into a sense of trust that we will ultimately be all right without them. I've come to
believe that as the dying draw close to the loving embrace of God, they realize all of us
are held in the love of God much more than we know, and they can trust us to that love,
even as they step into God's greater reality and leave us behind.
Jesus told a story about a father who had two sons. The youngest demanded his
inheritance that he may leave home and go away into "the far country." The
impudent, little brat! As youngest son, he had no claim to anything of his father's.
Surprise! His father took an extravagant amount of his living and gave it to the boy, who
promptly slipped away into the far country where he wasted every cent on booze and loose
women.
Eventually, in great hunger and want, the young man said to himself, "I will die
here. I've got a home and a father whose servants live better than I. I will go
home."
And when he was "a long way off," the father saw him and ran and embraced
him. The grieving father, who must have been waiting for his prodigal son to return every
day, cried, "Come celebrate with me. My son who was dead is now alive!"
I wonder how long that father waited for his son's homecoming. I wonder how the father
waited. For all he knew, his son was dead. I can just hear helpful friends telling him
"Face facts, Ben. He isn't coming back." Or, "You've got to get over it.
Focus on your older boy who's still here with you." Still, the father waited.
As a pastor, it is my experience that just about nothing is worse than the loss of a
child. I still remember the agony of each parent with whom I have walked at such a time.
The father in Jesus' story must have felt similar grief at losing a son on the threshold
of adulthood.
The son was still alive in the "far country," but the father didn't know
that. Young kid, pocket full of cash, first time away from home, is an easy mark. For all
his father knew, he might as well have been living under a freeway bridge or shootin' it
up in a tenement, or long dead. Still the father waited, looked down the road in front of
the house, straining to see, hoping for a glimpse of the son.
We call it the story of the prodigal son, but just as well we might call it the story
of the prodigal (that is the reckless, extravagant) father. When the boy left home the
father recklessly gave him his entire fortune, and when the boy at last returned, the
father recklessly threw a huge party, holding nothing back for himself. He loved his son
extravagantly on his leaving, and he loved him prodigally, extravagantly, lavishly upon
his return.
It's a parable of effusive, reckless, prodigal love. It's told by a Savior who, when
the wine ran low at the wedding at Cana, made from water 150 gallons more wine. When the
bread and fish gave out in the wilderness, Jesus said, "See, the basket is full.
There's enough there to feed 5,000!"
Love tends toward excess, prodigality, overflowing. I like grief that's excessive, too.
Coming from reserved Anglo Saxon stock that didn't grieve openly, I was fascinated by my
first encounters with Irish and Italian wakes, and by cultures in which people wail and
sob freely in the presence of one another. From what I've observed, they often seem to get
done with their deep grief the fastest. I'm still trying to learn from them how to weep
extravagantly.
When Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus had died, Jesus wept bitterly and the crowd
seeing Jesus grieve was right to say, "See how he loved him."
The poor, uptight, do-right, older brother in Jesus' story of the prodigal son was such
a miser. When he got word of the huge party going on at the big house to welcome his
wayward little brother back, he sniffed, "A party! And on a Sunday!"
We've got, in our worst moments, a miserly view of life, as well. Life is a measured,
zero sum game. Three score and ten, says the Bible. Life begins with such potential, such
vitality; then it wastes away to nearly nothing, just death and grief and memories. The
older brother in each of us tells us to face facts, admit defeat, let go, stiff upper lip,
dead is dead.
But what if God is a prodigal, a father who, when it comes to life, holds nothing back?
The father loved the absent son as abundantly when he was away, as when he was back home.
The father waited in the confident expectation that the good-as-dead son would return
home, would be back, and then the party could begin.
It's time to talk resurrection, eternal life. It's time to put our grief in context,
why our grief is different from those who have no hope. We grieve, yes, and well we
should, and our grief itself is testimonial to what a gift God gave us in the lives we
love. Grief is real because the loss is real.
Yet our grief is set in the context of our conviction that the same God who so
recklessly, extravagantly, overflowed in giving life shall give life even in death. The
Father waits, confident that the far country of death shall not be the last word. The
Father waits, ready to give life and that abundantly, to give more than we deserve, life
eternal, not because of who we are, but because of who God is; namely, extravagant love.
Those whom we have loved and lost for awhile have left us, but they have come home. The
God who gave them to us, now embraces them for eternity, and they await us. Grief is not
all there is. There is also home. What we called "home" was only a way station,
and what we thought was the end, death, is in Christ, the beginning. And what we thought
was unredeemable loss, death, is in Christ, homecoming.
Have you noticed that the story of the prodigal son doesn't really have an ending? We
wonder if the older brother ever let go of his sniveling logic and relaxed, and joined the
party. We wonder if the younger son ever learned from his mistakes and got more mature and
responsible. We don't know. All we know is that both boys are finally safe at home with
the father, that the father has at last gotten all he wanted: a family, a home. Maybe the
story doesn't end because it is eternal. We know when the party began, but we don't know
if the party ever ended.
The ones we love and whom death seems so cruelly to have snatched from us, are not
lost, but found; not dead, but alive in a God who shall not let miserable, miserly death
defeat divine extravagance. What we experience as the pain of giving them up to that
unknown, far country is, through the eyes of faith, coming home to a house with many
rooms. Look at all God has gone through down through the ages to save us, find us, embrace
us. Shall death defeat the purposes of such an extravagantly life-giving God? I don't
think so.
In two weeks, I will fly back east for General Assembly meetings and piggy-back a few
days with my mother in Ohio. She has sold her house and, at the end of the month is moving
into an apartment in a retirement community. This is the third house my parents owned
together. They moved from the first when I was three. Fifteen years ago, we helped them
move from the house I consider my childhood home, to one with a smaller yard and fewer
bedrooms.
Now, three years after my father's death, mother is moving again and we will say
good-bye to the house where we last gathered as a whole family for Thanksgiving dinner, to
the flowers my mother nurtured, to the ham radio tower my father insisted on climbing up
on the roof to fix, even when his footing was unstable on the solid ground, good-bye the
last home my parents shared together. Such life transitions make us think of home and
life's ultimate impermanence.
Home is not any of the temporary living quarters of this life, however comfortable or
beautiful or shabby they may be. Home is not ultimately Tiffany Drive where I grew up, or
Kenwick where I will help my mother sort a lifetime of memories, or even Owens Court in
Altadena.
These are all temporary quarters. We have, as Paul says, an eternal home, not made by
hands, not made with brick or mortar or stucco, in the heavens, so to speak, where God
receives us, and those who have gone before us await our homecoming. A home with many
rooms, says Jesus, where he has gone to prepare for us.
William Willimon, one of my favorite preachers, tells of a recurring dream he had
following his mother's death. In his dream, he was back home again, the home designed and
built by his mother, a house whose every inch she cherished, and whose every corner spoke
of her and her love of beauty.
In his dream, he'd move from room to room and be surprised that all of her dispersed
furniture was back in its original place. Every book was there on the shelves, all
perfectly remembered from his childhood.
He would awaken and wonder why he kept having this dream of his mother's house. She
never appeared in the dream, though he could feel her presence there amid the place she
created and lavishly loved.
Finally, it dawned on him, he says. It wasn't a dream about his being home again. It
was a dream about her being home. She was now safe, embraced, at home with the God who
loved her in life, now loved her forever. She was home. It wasn't a dream about the misty,
lost past. It was a dream about a still unfolding, extravagant future. She was home, and
by God's grace, so shall I be one day, and you, too. Home.
NOTE: This sermon idea and the notion of the father as prodigal are from a sermon
by William Willimon entitled, Homecoming.
