The Pride Filled Brother

A Reflection for IV Lent All Saints’ Church Episcopal, Southern Shores, NC March 6, 2016 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Joshua 5:9-12 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Psalm 32

The Pride Filled Brother

About 10 days ago, the day waves of storms with the tornado warnings came through, and I had a busy day before the weather was to hit. First I had to go to the Wednesday Ecumenical Lenten Program at noon at the Presbyterian Church, then I had a 1:00 appointment to give blood at the Roman Catholic church, then I had a 3:30 meeting with the Hospice Team in Manteo - and I figured that I had just enough time to make a visit at the nursing home on the way so that I could get back in time for our Lenten Program at 6:00. 

There were two blood donation sites that day. The other was at the high school, but the schools were dismissed early because the predicted high winds could be very dangerous for school buses, and the blood donors at the school were sent over to Holy Redeemer. By the time I got there, the wait was going to be much longer. I fill out the ticket for the door prize and I wait and wait. I keep checking the weather and gamble that we can still have the evening program and that I still have plenty of time to do the good deed - and I wait and wait. I stew inside because I have to wait and I AM IMPORTANT—don’t they know I am doing God’s work? I keep thinking I should leave because I am so important doing good deeds. Finally I get seen, and I realize there is no time for the nursing home visit, and I will be very late for the Hospice meeting. I am snarling within because I am not in control. I am doing everything right, but my pride tells me that the world should operate better than this for me. I call a member of the Hospice team and find out the meeting is called off, and I go home in time to pick up Pat for our Lenten program. After the program, I get home and get a call telling me I had won the door prize. I felt so foolish because of my inward bad grace when all I could think about was my own pride. There was a party going on and I was tempted not to attend.

Do you know that there are a bunch of people I don’t like? And that there are even more people I disagree with? That there are a few people who have done bad things to me? So what should I do with those people?

We are in the middle of Lent and the purpose of Lent is to repent. Interesting word, “repent”. In the Greek of the New Testament, the word is “metanoia” which literally means to change your mind, turn around your thinking. It doesn’t have a thing to do with feeling sorry; it just means changing your mind, coming to the conclusion that what one is thinking or doing no longer works the way you imagine. An example might be, “Oh, you know I think I will have some ice cream with my slice of pie.” There is no value judgement in that word in the Greek of the New Testament. 

 

The problem is that when the Greek of the New Testament iwas translated into Latin, they used the word paenitiere which, while it does mean to change your mind, it carries more of an element of regret. It is similar to the word for “creep” as in “creep on the ground” and may have to do with the sense of Roman pride which saw shame in changing one’s mind because it indicated having made a wrong decision. One of Wilson’s pet theories about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (in opposition to Gibbon who believed that it happened because of the loss of Roman civic virtue in outsourcing their military because the Christian pacifism tamped down Roman martial ardor) is that they kept trying to do the same old thing over and over again when it no longer worked. When Christianity moves into languages coming from the Latin roots, the Greek word metanoia is translated in practice as combined with guilt and shame about moral failure.

In the Gospel story for today, Jesus is telling a story in response to grumbling from the Scribes and Pharisees about Jesus hanging around people who have moral failures. Remember, a Parable is a story which is like a joke because it has a twist at the end, and the point is not in the details of the story but the twist. It is often called the “Parable of the Prodigal Son”, and its whole point is to tell people who have moral failures that they can be forgiven; no matter what you have done God loves you. I have preached that sermon a number of times in other churches and venues because of my own moral failures. Others have wanted to call it “The Parable of the Foolish Father’ because the Father gave so much to the useless younger brother, much as God gives us so much. The rain falls on the just and unjust alike; God’s love is not rationed only to the righteous. As Paul writes in 1^st Corinthians, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” This story is in the Lectionary every three years, and this is the fourth time in my tenure here that I have had an opportunity to preach on it. The last three times I have spoken about the Foolish Father. Today I want to reflect on the Proud Son.

The oldest son was the one who would be the main heir when his father died. You do not ask for your inheritance before your father dies because this is a violation of the Commandment to honor your father and mother. In the act of asking, you would be wishing your father dead. The older brother had never asked for his inheritance, and he was proud because he honored his father. He was right to disapprove of his younger brother’s action before and after the father gave into the younger brother’s unsuitable request. He was right to be displeased about the way his brother squandered the money when the older brother had worked so hard to help his father grow the business. He was right to be angry because, by his brother asking for a cut long before it would be due to him, he was depleting the capital needed to grow a bigger inheritance and thereby the young brother was stealing from him. He was right to be upset because the younger brother’s action brought shame on the household; he was ruining their good name and reputation. No two ways about it - the older son was a good man, and he had every reason to be proud because he had done the right things. If he attended the banquet given for the younger son - paid for out of the older brother’s share, by the way - he would be condoning the younger brother’s behavior and he would lose his own moral authority in the community.

Everything the older brother has done is right, and there is no reason for him to be ashamed, no reason for him to be sorry. Except Jesus suggests that the rules have been redefined; life is not about collecting the most Brownie points for doing all the right things, while congratulating ourselves about “what good boy and girls we are”. Jesus is suggesting that this life is about attending God’s party of celebration about all of God’s children. There is a party going on and we are all invited. If you are good that would be nice, but you are invited anyway. If you have failed that is too bad, but you are invited anyway. It is a little bit like how we use the Iona Community Invitation to Communion:

This is the table, not of the Church, but of God.
It is to be made ready for those who love God
and who want to love God more.

So, come, you who have much faith and you who have little,
you who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come, not because I invite you: it is God, and it is God’s will
that you who want God should meet God here.

The Pride Filled Brother (poem)

Scolding the church institution pontificates to stay away

And not partake the reward or eat and drink of our own

Damnation for from neighbor love and charity did stray

As sacrifice’s defiled by our presence if God does groan

To see sinner so unworthily come not hearing book’s nay.

Yet, in that sin state, divine medicine I daren’t postpone

For I am all broken trying to make it through this one day.

Sounding not of psalms of victor but of an also ran’s moan

Come not trusting prideful rewards but trying a new way

Walking one step at a time into a prodigal’s graced zone.

I, other brother disguised as pride filled strutting padre

Come stumbles on father’s robe approaching his throne.

There’s a party ongoing with wine and bread celebrating

A renew life; invitations I no longer need to keep waiting.