Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

March 14, 2010

His son has left.

I see the father, day after day, getting out of bed, putting one foot in front of the other, as the day demands, that son-shaped hole in his life, in his heart, as life goes on "as usual" – only, of course, it ISN’T "as usual."

And I see him pause periodically, stand on the porch, perhaps, and gaze out into the distance, the yearning in his being palpable…

And, as he stands there looking into the distance, his love joined with that lonely ache inside him, I feel the presence of so many others, joining him, crowding around him – a veritable chorus of pain linked with hope: mothers and fathers, husbands and wives and partners, friends and lovers, all waiting, seeking the return of a loved one lost to war, to illness, to depression, to addiction, to prison, to gangs, to the allure of something which has taken them away.

Waiting and longing, loving and grieving, and always, in the midst of their despair, hoping, hoping, hoping…

And then one day, the father sees – he spots a figure in the distance, halt and broken, coming towards him…

Could it be?

His heart leaps up and his body springs from its place on the porch and runs to greet him.

Let the celebration begin!

No questions: what were you thinking?

No anger or recriminations: look what you’ve put me through! I’ve been so worried… Don’t you EVER do that again.!...

Just joy. Pure unmitigated joy!

I hold on to this image because it tells me so much about God…

Things I need to remember.

Things I know – here in my head – but forget – here, in my heart.

"GOD" can sound foreboding – out there, harsh, judgmental, critical and exacting, scary, unapproachable…

But this story turns that God inside out.

It doesn’t start with "GOD" so that we get caught up in the disembodied, resonant, authoritarian Charlton-Heston voice, and lose the "love" which comes after…

It starts with LOVE – a love we can understand, identify with, a love we know: because we ourselves have experienced it: the love of a grieving, yearning parent or lover, longing for the return of an absent loved one. It starts with the VERB, and when we have that sounding in our body, all the love and longing rolled into one inside us – it leads us back to the source, to the One Who Loves, to God, and we can see God in a new way.

"Love!" it says.

"The child who was lost is found!"

"Oh!" we say.

"That kind of love!"

"That kind of God!"

That kind of love.

That kind of God.

There was a time in my life when I really struggled with the church. I had God, my father, and the church all mixed up together, and somewhere in the throes of late-adolescent rebellion I finally walked away totally, choosing to "take my inheritance," as it were, and go it alone, rather than to work on the relationship.

I turned my back on the church, threw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. I was FREE!

What had God ever done for me anyway?! Except, perhaps, cause problems between me and my dad…

No more Sabbath constraints!

No more guilt, or would-a, should-a, could-a’s!

No more thinking of Something Greater than myself!

The world was my oyster! My life was what I made of it!

I indulged in Sunday morning brunches with friends, breakfast picnics in the park, or simply sleeping in…

Yet those pleasures quickly became hollow as I became increasingly aware of a gnawing at the edges of my life, a sense of something missing, a hunger within me that wasn’t being satisfied...

One morning, in spite of myself, I knew I had to go back to church.

I recall slipping into St. Matthias just as the service was about to begin – keeping my head down, avoiding eye-contact with anyone for fear of having to say something to someone when my sense of vulnerability was so great, and then dropping to my knees in a rear pew, tears streaming down my face.

I had come home!

I just wanted to rest in the liturgy – be carried by its familiar rhythm, to feel the words and the music wrap themselves around me and heal me…

I didn’t want the service to end.

I wanted it to go on and on, to hold me there in its embrace…

It was MY homecoming celebration – the child who was lost had been found!

It wasn’t an easy homecoming, however.

I may have been broken, but I still had my pride! And as much as I wanted to be there, as much as I NEEDED to be there, Sunday after Sunday, my pride and my anger reasserted themselves, fighting with me even as I gave myself over to the experience.

There was that newcomer card in the pew. I wanted to write on it in big bold letters: "I don’t even know why I am here! I don’t want to be here! I don’t know what I want!!"

And I always left immediately after the service, still guarding my space, careful not to have to talk to anyone.

But I also came back, the next week, and the next.

Actually, I think I was drawn back.

Gradually I began to trust a little more, to feel myself sink a little deeper into "home."

One day I decided it would only be fair to talk with the clergy and let them know clearly what they had to deal with in me, who it was exactly who was sneaking in and out and silently occupying that rear pew.

No secrets! No assumptions!

And so I made an appointment to talk with the Rev. Shirley Rose.

I don’t remember exactly how the conversation began, but I’m sure I had a chip on my shoulder and I probably began with a pretty aggressive statement that sounded like I was throwing down a gauntlet: "This is what I believe, and this is what I don’t," I told her, drawing my line in the sand.

"And this is what I’ll do, and this is what I won’t!" I added, as though I were taking a big black crayon and underscoring my words for emphasis.

I was going to give the church – up front, nothing held back – all the reasons to reject me, to show me the way out, to tell me, "No thanks. You don’t belong here. You’re not one of us!"

I was expecting a fight, or at least a cross-examination of some sort.

The response I got totally disarmed me. Shirley, her face filled with love and compassion, looked me in the eye and said, "That’s all right. We take you as you are. However you are. Welcome home!

The child who was lost has been found!

She began with LOVE, and it led me back to God.

May we all feel the welcoming embrace of the God who loves us, who runs to gather us up and draw us in.

Let the celebration begin!

Amen.