2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
From Privilege to Welcome. I am not sure I like that theme! It has been disconcerting and unsettling to work with that theme, that contrast this week. Maybe because it is too personal, it hits too close to home. But it is important to take this theme seriously. It is a theme that can be liberating, even as it causes us to take a deep look at our own selves. Bringing this theme, this lens, to the Prodigal Son story also opens up lots to ponder and has allowed me to see this story in a new light.
The first comment Chip made when we met to talk about today’s theme in our worship planning, was that ‘From Privilege to Welcome’ was quite the jarring juxtaposition. We more often have had themes like ‘From Outcast or Outsider to Welcome’ or ‘Welcoming the Stranger’ or something along those lines. Nothing wrong about a theme like that. There are so many Biblical passages about offering hospitality and welcome to the stranger, the foreigner, those most vulnerable in our society, those without power. Luke 15 even starts with Jesus being questioned about why he welcomes tax collectors and sinners and eats with them. Being an outsider or outcast is a barrier to be overcome with the compassion of welcome. We are called to offer hospitality and welcome. ‘What you do to the least of these, you do to unto me.’ This is a solid and significant Biblical Theme and has enough challenge for us in and of itself.
But today’s theme starts at a different place. It starts with the word ‘Privilege,’ and moves from Privilege to Welcome. Privilege itself is the barrier or obstacle or stumbling block to Welcome, to being welcomed. This touches a sensitive place, because most of us are in some ways or many ways privileged. Of course, privilege is easier to see in others than oneself. One can look to the ultra-rich or famous. You can always find someone with more privilege than oneself. It is easy to be blind to one’s own privilege. When I stop to really think about it, and name it, I know I have much privilege in our society and our world. I don’t need to worry about the basics of life – I have a place to live, I have food on my table and I live in safety. I am white/Caucasian. English is my first language. I don’t have to deal with some of the overt or subtle racism that so many face. I am male, cis-gendered, middle class, well educated… tall. I am respected for the most part. I have and carry both personal and societal power, and power in my role as a pastor. Both Rachel and I have jobs, regular income. We own a house, have investments and retirement savings. We have a supportive family and a good network of friends and community around us. We belong to a healthy congregation and I have a great work environment and team to share ministry with. I have many places to share my gifts. I live in a vibrant and naturally beautiful and safe part of the world. I can go on vacations. So much of this is an accident of birth. So much of this has very little to do with my own effort or hard work. I had a place to start from. When I sit back like this, I am grateful; these are things I wish for all people. But I also realize that for the most part I go about life without being particularly conscious of my privilege. I just live life. Privilege is this invisible layer of my life, our lives, that simply goes with me – whether I am conscious or aware of it or not. This doesn’t mean life is always smooth. Bad things happen. There are personal disappointments or failures or crisis points. Life can be hard at times. There is struggle. There is heart ache. But there are also more naturally available the resources there to deal with much of what might happen or come my way. There is a responsibly here, but also a burden. This very privilege can become a stumbling block to living with full compassion and engagement in our world, and a barrier to welcome itself.
In our conversation, Chip and I started to wonder if one of the destructive or insidious elements of privilege is that it tends to create distance. We can maintain a safe distance from others. We live with financial security. We live with safety. We can remain blind to parts of our society. We don’t really need to get too close to others, or rely on others. We interact and have community with those most like us. We keep others at a distance and miss the broadness and richness of a much more diverse and interesting and beautiful community and world around us. We can distance ourselves from the pain in our world, and even the pain within our own lives. Often struggles and crisis and famines and wars happen on the other side of the world, to those with less privilege, and they soon disappear from our media cycles and focus. We quickly distance ourselves from some of the initial compassion or concern we might have felt. We have the option to leave it be – to not think it effects us, to go back to our TV shows, or sports watching or entertainment or reading or Wordle Games. We forget the interconnected nature of our world. The awful war and invasion of Ukraine has had more staying power in our minds and hearts, partly because it is so horrible and wrong, and in part because we intuitively see and feel more parallels – they are more like us – they are European, they too had safe and secure jobs and livelihoods and nationhood that are familiar. This war also threatens our situation, and global peace and sustainability, in a more direct way. The distance is closer and it breaks through our consciousness and concern in a way other current world conflicts and desperate situations often don’t. We should be concerned about Ukraine, and we should be concerned about Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar and others. In similar ways, we can become immune to the pain and issues in our own communities, on our streets, in our families. I think right now about the tent encampment that just popped up on Victoria and Weber in Kitchener. Privilege creates distance. This distance keeps us from the very vulnerability and openness that allows for true community and healing and unity and welcome that we all long for.
It is with these concerns and awareness and themes that we enter this morning into the familiar story of the Prodigal Son. How does privilege and distance and concern and vulnerability and welcome play out in this story, and how might this give us handles and hope within our own lives? The story begins with a Father and his two sons. Right away we know that there is a level of privilege within this family, simply by the fact that the family owned property – that there was land and an inheritance to divide up. There were means, employment, opportunity, a safety net. But that did not translate into a happy family unit. As we soon see, there is an emotional distance between the Father and the younger son, and later, the older son too.
I am sure the Father had all sorts of dreams for his boys, for how they would cooperatively take over the family farm, the family business, and carry on in all the good ways he had established. It must have shaken him to the core to have his youngest son approach him and demand his share of the property. That’s not how it was done. It would have been an insult, an affront, a blot on their family reputation. People would talk. His respect in the community would suffer. Life would go on without his son, but he would suffer underneath, even if it was not talked about openly. His status, his life of privilege, his place in the community, changed, altered. We don’t hear how the Father dealt with all of this pain, or how long he suffered back at home, but somehow this period of introspection, of facing and going into his pain, of being forced to enter a vulnerable and fragile place, of moving beyond and despite his privilege, put him in a place of compassion and openness when his son unexpectedly returned home. We’ll get back to the father.
Both sons would have grown up with everything they could have wanted. But something was missing for the youngest son – was he treated like the baby? What were the sibling dynamics, the sibling rivalry? Did he have a strong rebellious streak? After demanding his share, his money, he heads to a distant country and squanders all he has. His new found freedom soon gets himself into a desperate situation. He can’t rely on his normal safety net, his name, his connections, his family lineage, his place in the community. He is a no-body. This is new territory – both geographically, but also emotionally. He is shaken to the core, all privilege he once had evaporated – by his own actions and rebellion. Desperate and hungry, he remembers back to the hired hands who at least had bread enough and to spare. I love the line – ‘when he came to himself.’ There is this honest self-realization of his life and where it is at and what he needs to do – like the blinders have come off. He could perhaps see both his fall from privilege and his part in it, but also where the beginning of welcome and a renewal of life might begin.
The younger son, the Prodigal Son, returns home. We know the beautiful scene – The father running out with open arms of welcome, filled with compassion. The overwhelmed son protesting his unworthiness. The robe and ring and sandals – the fatted calf. The son who was dead is alive again, the lost has been found. They begin to celebrate! There is something more important than privilege or status – something only possible when those have been reduced, made irrelevant. The barriers and distance have evaporated in love and welcome – in getting to the core of what is really important. Both the Father and the Son have entered into a place of welcome out of facing their own vulnerabilities and their own pain. They have both ‘come to themselves.’ The Father welcomes the Son, but maybe just as much, the Son has welcomed the Father. We cannot automatically get rid of those conscious and unconscious levels of privilege we live with, but there is a gift that comes when enter into our own pain and vulnerabilities, and the pain of our world. It is what can lead us to welcome and to our common and shared humanity.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the story just ended here? But that is not how life works – everything wrapped up in a neat little bow. None of this is sitting well with the older son. He stayed home. He was the responsible one, the reliable one. He did what was expected. He lived the life of privilege but was not happy either. There was just as much distance between him and his Father as there was with the younger son – even if they lived side by side. To the older Son, it feels like he has worked like a slave and not been given any of the love and welcome and celebration with his friends he sees now with the returned son. The Father doesn’t have the capacity to even see this – he is flabbergasted – he can’t see the distance – ‘Son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours.’ The older son has not come to himself, and maybe not the Father totally either. The story ends with this passionate plea to understand the celebration, the life come out of death, the promise of the lost being found – with the implicit hope that this too can be what happens with the older son and him as a Father – that this distance too can be overcome. We don’t hear if this resolves or not. It is left open-ended. The story is not over. What we do know is that this parable is followed right away in Luke by the parable of the rich dishonest property manager and the story of the rich man and Lazarus – both stories pointing to the life of privilege and the burden, how hard it can be to be faithful.
So where does this parable leave us on this 4th Sunday of Lent? Which character in the story did you find yourself most identifying with? What dynamics have been a part of your life? This has maybe been a different lens through which to read this story, this parable of Jesus. The story does though move from privilege to welcome. It only gets there through vulnerability and pain, through an honest look at one’s own life and naming the privilege and the ways that can create distance and detachment from others, how it hides us from the inequalities and issues of our world and the pains and struggles of our own lives. How it takes ‘coming to ourselves,’ to move beyond privilege to welcome – maybe first being welcomed ourselves, and then an open armed welcomed to others. Perhaps we need that wisdom we heard about from Paul – ‘therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view. For if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.’ It takes the reconciliation of Christ and the ministry of reconciliation given to us. It takes a hard and honest view of our own lives, it takes a willingness to be honest and vulnerable and view others with that Christ-like view where we are all new creations, the old privileges and barriers and comparisons and status signs and anything that keeps us distant are put in a broader perspective, it takes accepting welcome from those we might never have imagined needing to give us welcome, it takes naming and owning our own privilege, knowing we can never totally shed it, but can live much more open and compassionate and responsible and loving lives from wherever we stand.
Last week Janet challenged us as pastors to preach 6 word sermons. Too late for that now, but I do offer 2 attempts to end this sermon: ‘Membership has its privileges. Worth it?’ or maybe a better one: ‘Privilege and distance collapsed. Welcome granted.’ May it be so. Amen.