Sermon: Not a Party Without You

Luke 15:1-2, 11-32

Not a Party Without You

James Sledge                                                   October 19, 2014 (Stewardship 3)

How many of you enjoy a good dinner party or a big cookout or a great wedding reception with lots of good food and drink? I like nothing better than a gathering of friends enjoying great food and good wine. I’ve been to a few such parties and gatherings where I’m tempted to sound like a commercial and say, “Life doesn’t get any better than this.”

Turns out Jesus thought much the same. When he wants to talk about the coming of God’s new day, he doesn’t use the image of prophets like Isaiah who spoke of a peaceable kingdom where “the wolf shall live with the lamb.”  Instead Jesus speaks of a great wedding banquet.

Wedding were the social occasions of Jesus’ day. They were often huge, lavish events that lasted for a week, and Jesus uses them as an image of the day that is to come. “People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God,” says Jesus. The book of Revelation sounds a similar note as it moves to its joyful conclusion. “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

In the early church, worship included a meal where the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. The imagery is largely lost in our day, but the church gathered at table understood itself to be participating in a preview of the great banquet to come. We still proclaim, “This is the joyful feast,” even if our meager communion elements look little like a grand party.

If a sociologist who knew nothing of Christianity were to study American congregations, I wonder if she would ever conclude that our faith anticipates a grand, extravagant party. Christian faith in our country is so individualistic, about my salvation or my spirituality. People can be members in good standing at most churches with little sense of a joyful, community gathered for a feast. Many seem uninterested in joining a party.

A party figures prominently in today’s parable. We meet only two of the invitees. One doesn’t think he deserves to be there, and the other doesn’t want to go. At the parable’s end, the first invitee is presumably at the party, but we don’t know if the other ever goes in.

This problem of undeserving guest and unwilling guest emerges because of the rather odd ways of the host, who is also their father. Their story is often referred to as the “parable of the prodigal” referring to the younger brother who has squandered his inheritance in wild, extravagant living. “Prodigal” is not a word you hear in everyday conversation, but my dictionary defines it as “spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant; having or giving something on a lavish scale.”

Prodigal certain applies to the younger son, but it also applies to the father. Not only was he willing to give the younger son his inheritance ahead of time despite the impropriety of that request, but then he throws a grand party for this ne’er-do-well who has so dishonored his inheritance. The father’s behavior is strange, even irresponsible, and the responsible, dutiful, older son cannot bear it, or join in it.

It’s not in the story, but I wonder if the younger son isn’t a bit uneasy with this whole arrangement. I imagine him inside at the party, warily glancing around, wondering if his father might come to his senses. But the story never seems to consider that.

Of course Jesus tells this parable, not to those like the younger sibling, but to older sibling types, which includes me and likely many of you, responsible folks who do our jobs and pay our bills and turn our homework in on time. Younger siblings may fret about whether they really belong at the party, but Jesus’s parable seems more worried about older siblings who may decide to boycott the party and miss out entirely.

Now we Protestants have long celebrated God’s grace, the way God gives freely and liberally, but only to a point. We still expect God to take note of our dutiful, responsible behavior, and so our religion is chock full of rules about decorum and things people must do and believe in order to get an invite from God. We’re still a little unnerved by a God who is too much like the father in this parable, a God who is too quick to party.

I’m not knocking duty and responsibility. I’m all for them. My wife and I tried hard to raise responsible children. But we responsible sorts aren’t always sure what to do with the God Jesus shows us.

I should add that responsible types have sustained church congregations over the generations. People who pledge and tithe and never fail to meet those pledges have long kept church budgets in the black. In fact, a big reason many church budgets are struggling these days is that a generation of loyal, responsible, institutional givers is beginning to age out. Later generations are not necessarily less responsible, but they’ve not developed the same loyalty and attachments to institutions or congregations.

Some stewardship programs have tried to counter this with a renewed emphasis on the spiritual discipline of tithing, of setting aside the first share of one’s income for God. Learning this discipline is an important part of the life of faith. But at the same time, it can become a responsible duty, like paying the mortgage, with no hint of the joyful, extravagant generosity of our God. Indeed, the terms “extravagant” and “church budget” have rarely been used together, even in the church heydays of the 1950s. Even in the best times, stewardship campaigns often brought in just enough to meet the budget, to do the things we needed to do.

Now it’s not that we responsible church folks need to turn into the younger brother of the parable. Neither brother is where he needs to be until he gets to the party. The younger has to come to his senses, but the older, and those of us like him, have to embrace the party and the extravagant, prodigal ways of the father who throws the party.

That makes me wonder if the Spirit was not at work when the Stewardship Committee chose this year’s theme: Our Community of Joyful Givers. Joyful givers. Not people who are simply paying the bills or dutifully doing our share, but people who have encountered something of the extravagant love and generosity of our God, and so cannot help but overflow in an extravagant, joyful generosity of our own.

Joyful givers; maybe even people who are ready to party. I hope so, because an extravagant, prodigal God is throwing a party, a party that is not all that it should be until each of us goes in and takes our place.