Listening for God: Our Prodigal Father (The Third Face of Power)

Sermon, 3/14/10 (Lent 4). God is prodigal – extravagantly wasteful – with grace by running to welcome the prodigal son home. In so doing, God moves beyond threat power and exchange power to integrative power: doing the right thing, so all will feel closer. And, in so doing, God runs so we don’t have to.

 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

(Biblical storyteller: Jean Dudek)

Listening for God:

Our Prodigal Father (The Third Face of Power)

“But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him … and kissed him.”

Far off …

Father saw …

Filled with compassion …

Ran.

Hugged.

Kissed.

Remarkable images, aren’t they?

All the more remarkable considering that fathers throughout human history generally don’t beat their delinquents to the homestead’s front doorstep.

Take the case of my beloved brother, Jim. A true prodigal, in his younger years – extravagantly wasteful with his life. Not just a younger child, he, but the middle child.

One Halloween, Jim and a couple of our wilder cousins came upon an outhouse on our grandfather’s farm and – just for kicks – they rolled it down a hill.

Later that day, my father called Jim and his cousins together and shouted, “Who rolled the old outhouse over the hill?”

Jim stepped forward and accepted responsibility – albeit with typical grandiosity. “Dad, I’m like George Washington when he chopped down that cherry tree – I cannot tell a lie. It was I who rolled the old outhouse down the hill!”

Dad didn’t come running to welcome the prodigal home. Figuratively speaking, he kicked my brother so hard Jim thought he was in his hip pocket!

“But wait a minute, Dad!” Jim sniffed. “George Washington’s father did not punish him, because George told the truth!”

My dad replied, “Yeah, but George Washington’s father wasn’t sitting in that cherry tree when George chopped it down!”

Computers run for us …

Cars run for us …

Mothers, they may run for us, some of them unconditionally …

But fathers – generally speaking – they do not run for us.

The Darth Vader, or dark father, resists being prodigal – that is, extravagantly wasteful with love – with their prodigals – those extravagantly wasteful with their lives.

Perhaps this has to do with the fact that fathers, like me, have been taught to misunderstand the value of power in our world.

We don’t like to talk about power. That is, unless we are calling attention to the negative aspects of it. And so we hear of End the War rallies – and not  Create the Peace ones. Get the picture? Out of our fear of certain types of power, we are apt to flail against it in general.

When we think of power, words that often spring to our D.C.-addled minds are “abuse”, “violence”, and “exploitation”. And, perhaps for good reason.

And yet the spiritual foundation of our response to power abuses must be rooted not in flailing against power in general, but in some alternative source of power. Jesus and the earliest disciples called it Spirit-power. If you take only one thing from this Witness today, let it be that power can be a good thing.

The late Kenneth E. Boulding was an economist, a poet, and a onetime president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also a Quaker and a peace scholar. In Boulding’s book Three Faces of Power,¹ I find observations especially salient in more deeply understanding our gospel narrative today.

Boulding outlined the faces of power in three ways:

·        First: threat power. “Do something I want, or I’ll do something you don’t want.” Threat power – often used in political relationships. Generally not desirable. Indeed, what we often associate with power abuses.

·        Second: exchange power: “Give me something I want, and I’ll give you something you want.” Exchange power – often used in economic relationships. Not bad. But, Boulding believed, we can do even better.

·        Which leads us to the third face of power. A force we still know little about as a society. Perhaps it’s because it belongs to no particular discipline. Or, perhaps it’s because it takes great ethical rigor to practice. Boulding called it integrative power. It can be described as, “I’m going to do what I believe is right, and we will end up closer.”²

The gospel narrative begins today with the use of threat power. “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me,” the younger of two sons demands. In our American context, we may consider the younger son’s request to be … well, rude. But in the Mediterranean world ancient and modern, it meant and means a whole lot more.

Kenneth Bailey comes to our aid here. Bailey is a New Testament scholar who lived much of his life in the Middle East. He writes:

For over fifteen years I (had) been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The (conversation) has almost been emphatically the same(:) “Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?” “Never!” “Could anyone ever make such a request?” “Impossible!” “If anyone ever did, what would happen?” “His father would beat him, of course!” “Why?” “This request means – he wants his father to die!”³

Talk about threat-power: “Father: I want you to die!” We can only speculate what such an unimaginably brash son might have done if the father did not grant him his request. But how about the father? Per the honor-shame code of the Mediterranean world ancient and modern, the father is now required to have his son beaten.

But strangely, this father does not do this. Strangely, he evacuates that power. Strangely, he will live, as we later see, by another code. A code of forgiveness. Of prodigal – that is, extravagant and generous – forgiveness.

A prodigally merciful father whose threat power the prodigally wasteful younger son still fears. A father whose running steps and open arms in effect cry out Boulding’s third form of power: “Regardless of the violence you sought to do me, I’m going to do what I believe is right, and we will end up closer.”

Now, that’s power. That’s integrative power. That’s … Spirit-power.

And yet, lingering in the fields, there stands that older son. A son who has faithfully lived within his society’s honor-shame threat power code. A son who now angrily steps forward and makes his own plea of power to his father.

First, he invokes his obedience in face of his father’s threat power: “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command.” Rightly sensing perhaps that his father no longer abides by that code, he ups the ante. The older son says, “Yet you have never given me even a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends.”

That poor, confused boy! All along, he has assumed his father has held the keys to punishment for disobedience (threat power). Now, in the face of his father’s inexplicable mercy (integrative power), he must believe that if he continues to give his father what he wants, he – the son – can wheedle out of him what he wants (exchange power): “For my obedience to you: What about my fatted calf? What about … a young goat, even?”

And yet, the long-held logic of parent-child threat power – “do what I want, or else” – and, increasingly in our society, parent-child exchange power – “do what I want, and you’ll get what you want” – is utterly dissolved by the prodigal father in this story. It’s dissolved by the unconditionally loving response of a God who does the right thing, bringing us closer despite – and, yes, because of – both our rowdy younger and our righteous older selves.

Our prodigal father – or mother, if you wish. A God who runs, and after us.

All so we don’t have to.

We’ve all read recently about the first legally recognized same-gender marriages in D.C.

I must admit – and this may not be popular with some – that I am not in the least concerned, as a Christian, with the gender of whom a person chooses to share a lifelong, loving bond – folks, we need all the committed love we can get in this world! Saying that: I am concerned by the rush to the altar by so many who could not make that legal commitment for so long.

Not by the rush to get their lawful rights as a married couple – as important as they are. I am concerned by the rush to make a lifelong commitment simply because – suddenly – same-gender couples are legally allowed to do so.

Forget the legal bennies for a moment – as if that’s what marriage is all about. Why – in the name of God – the rush to the altar? Why – for Christ’s sake – run?

Why, when our prodigal God runs … so we don’t have to?

That hoary maxim of old remains wise and true: “Take one step toward God … and God will take two steps toward you.”

My anxious and proactive and headlong friends – and I resemble that remark: Always remember this about our powerful, prodigal God – a God who models power in a third and holy and integrative way:

  God runs. After us. So we don’t have to.

Whoever has ears to hear … let them hear.

¹Sage, 1989.

²Background on Boulding and sketches of three faces of power are taken from Michael N. Nagler, Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books, 2001), pp. 43-44.

³Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 161-62.

Benediction …

A well-know professor among preachers, Thomas Long, writes:

Recently a popular theologian declared, "The Jesus who ‘died for our sins’ has simply got to go. . . . Christianity must move beyond a rescuing Jesus." Part of me wants to purr like a kitten in relieved agreement. Yes, let’s sweep away the cobwebs clinging to Jesus the rescuer. But then I realize that I am face down on a linoleum floor somewhere in my life, powerless, praying like mad, "You’ve done it for others, God. I am begging you, do it for me."⁴

That’s what a prodigal – an extravagantly generous – God can do for us.

That’s a God who runs – and embraces – and kisses us home.

Go out into the world in peace, and do likewise.

⁴Thomas G. Long, “Just As I Am”, The Christian Century, March 21, 2006, p. 18.