Preacher: Dana Cassell

Scripture: Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

I have felt a lot of feelings towards the people who removed my ordination for officiating the wedding of two women two years ago. Like, a LOT of feelings. 

The Virlina District Board defrocked me in June of 2023, after I officiated the wedding of two young women from my then-congregation. It was clear to me then and remains clear to me now that their decision was rooted in simple bigotry combined with kind of a lot of ignorance. 

It’s important for me to say when I talk about all this that having my ordination removed is a relatively small consequence. It is a made-up credential from an organization that I participated in entirely voluntarily. I am a straight person who happened to find herself allied with vulnerable people in this case, and experienced rather mild consequences for it. The bigotry that led to the removal of my ordination does immense violence to queer people day in and day out – LGBTQ folks experience interpersonal, structural, systemic and legal discrimination and harm that impacts their ability to get married, receive healthcare, be safe walking down the street, simply exist as themselves in the world. Losing a church credential is not the same thing. I know this.

And still: it really, really hurt. And part of why it hurt was that the people who made the decision were not strangers to me; they were people I’d worked alongside, served on committees with, gone to camp with, known for decades. The people who defrocked me were not faceless strangers; they are people I know.

And I have felt a lot of feelings towards them. I don’t really feel a lot of vengeful feelings, but there’s been plenty of anger, betrayal, disappointment and disgust. I can’t quite manage to cut all these people off entirely, or dismiss them as purely evil or unworthy of attention. Mostly, I have resorted to calling them all “knuckleheads,” in the “they know not what they do” vein of Jesus. I genuinely believe that they do not know or understand how much harm they’re inflicting on God’s beloved children. Which, to be honest, makes the entire situation even more frustrating. I am so annoyed and frustrated and, at times, super self-righteous about the whole thing.

Two weeks ago, one of the knuckleheads who led the charge to defrock me started asking for help on Facebook. Some of the members of his congregation, it turned out, are not fully documented citizens and feeling very vulnerable in the midst of the current administration’s project of terrorizing immigrant communities. This man was asking for people to share resources that might be of help to his congregants and his church. I shared some organizations that I knew did this kind of work.

The man’s public facebook post got, as you might imagine, a TON of hateful comments about immigrants. More, I suspect, than he expected. A couple of days later, I got a private message from him: one of his congregants needed to travel from Virginia to Texas to attend an immigration hearing for her teenage son. If she wasn’t there, her son would likely be deported. Could I, this man asked, pitch in some money to help fund her travel?

I just want to pause here to tell you that my first thought was not “oh my gosh, of course, what a worthy cause, what a kind pastor, what a good thing this man is doing in raising money for his vulnerable immigrant congregant.”

My first thought upon receiving this request was not charitable. It was not nice. It was actually pretty petty. THIS guy wants my help, now? THIS man, who orchestrated the end of my vocation as a pastor, who organized people against me, who furthered the bigotry that is hurting and killing so many people I love, who has never once acknowledged that what he did hurt me, never once communicated with me since that meeting two years ago, never once made any effort whatsoever to repair our relationship…THIS guy is asking ME for help?!

My first thought was, in other words, the first thought of the self-righteous, judgemental older brother in Jesus’ parable that we heard this morning.

Maybe you already know this story: a man had two sons and the younger son – who everyone knew was pretty much a scoundrel – demanded his inheritance early and left home to waste it all in what Luke calls “dissolute living.” He wakes up one morning living in a pig sty and decides that he can probably swindle his father out of a little more money – or at least the solid meal that his father fed his servants.

Often this story gets told as a tale about the power of repentance. The younger son, we hear, hits rock bottom and humbles himself, returns home apologetic, and is welcomed with open arms. But that’s not really the way Luke tells the story: the younger son is not actually repentant. Up until the moment he steps foot on his father’s property, he is still scheming, working the angles, figuring out ways to keep being the scoundrel he’s been.

And his older brother KNOWS it. The older brother, who has spent all these years at home doing the right thing, being loyal to his father, working the estate and practicing good behavior, cannot believe what he’s seeing when he comes home one day to his wily little brother returned and his father killing the fatted calf and throwing a massive party to celebrate him.

“THIS guy gets a party?!” THIS guy, who abandoned you, who wasted all his inheritance, who left us behind to take care of the farm, who couldn’t care less about what happened to us, who shows up here with nothing to show for all these years asking for our help…you’re throwing a party for THIS GUY?! Are you SERIOUS?!”

The older brother is steamed. He knows that his little brother isn’t really repentant. He knows that he’s spent all the money on selfish pleasures, that he’s only here because he has nowhere else to go, that he is once again taking advantage of their father’s indulgent generosity. It is NOT FAIR. Things should not happen like this. THIS guy doesn’t deserve a party! He deserves a punishment! How will he ever learn, if his cheating and thieving and taking advantage is *rewarded* with *parties*??

I bet you recognize the older brother’s response, here. I bet you, like me, have said things very similar to what he says to his father. THIS guy? SERIOUSLY? You’re going to let THIS guy back into your good graces? You’re going to throw THIS guy a party? Don’t you know what he’s done? Are you stupid? It ISN’T FAIR!

This parable usually gets told as a story of God’s immense mercy. The moral of the story, we hear, is that no matter what we have done, no matter how far we have strayed, no matter how long we’ve been gone, God will welcome us back with open arms. Which is not WRONG, exactly, but it sure isn’t the moral that Luke wants us to take away from this story of Jesus’.

Luke is very careful to tell us that Jesus told this parable to some Pharisees and scribes, who kept grumbling about the kinds of people that Jesus was hanging out with (namely, tax collectors and sinners). Jesus is not telling this parable to assure the tax collectors and sinners that they are loved, though that is certainly an important part of his overall ministry. Jesus is telling this parable so that the angry, self-righteous religious leaders, who are mad that Jesus welcomes the people they don’t, will have an opportunity to reconsider their response.

A careful reading of the text also reveals something interesting about the younger son: he’s been plotting a way to get back into his father’s household. “I’ll show up and say something like: “ I have sinned against heaven and before you;  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” That’ll be sure to tug at his heart strings!”

But when he does actually show up to his father’s house, his father sees him from a long way off and RUNS to him, arms outstretched. The younger son is so flabbergasted at this welcome, this unbounded mercy, this kind of love, that he can’t even get his whole practiced line out of his mouth. His father cuts him off mid-sentence, telling the servants to bring his son a robe and a ring and to kill the fatted calf so that they can feast, so that they can celebrate this long-lost son returning.

We don’t know what happened, later. We don’t get any further report on whether or not the older son was able to release his self-righteous anger or whether or not the younger son did, in fact, ever choose to repent fully and stop acting like a scoundrel.

But the image we are left with here is pretty clear: the older son’s self-righteous anger is not effective. It does not change his brother, it does not change the unfairness of the situation, and it does not make him feel any better, himself. He’s just left standing there, all alone, stewing in his own anger while the rest of the household parties.

The father’s mercy, however, seems to be working on his younger son. We don’t really know, but the picture we get of the younger son is one of confusion: his schemes are undone a little by the depths of his father’s great love. He is at a loss for words. He gets ushered in, dressed in new clothes and invited to a big party with the best food.

The older son ends up alone, angry, and upset.

The father and the younger son end up together, joyful, and celebrating.

The parable offers a choice: first of all for the grumpy, grumbling, self-righteous Pharisees who don’t like Jesus being so nice to all the wrong people, but also for us.

Every time we feel ourselves falling into that “THIS GUY?!” reaction, as legitimate and called-for as we might feel it to be, we get a choice. We can choose to act like the older brother in the parable: sour, self-righteous, holding on to our hurts and our grudges and our certainty about the rules and what they require of us. 

Or we can choose to act like the father: open-armed, filled with joy that someone we thought was lost has returned to us, willing to make space at the table and in our hearts for the mystery of mercy.

I suspect that the coming days are going to offer us an abundance of opportunities to make these kinds of choices. We have been hurt, betrayed, written off by people, and we have probably done our fair share of hurting, betraying and writing people off, ourselves. 

I saw one well-known journalist say something this week like “I will never forgive the people who voted for this. Never.” And I get that sentiment. I have felt that feeling. The hits keep coming, new every morning.

But I am also convinced that we should be a little more intentional about who deserves our anger, who is behind the horrors, and what we lose when we write people off forever. What happens when the people who voted in a certain way, or who hurt us, or who made our lives very difficult, or who betrayed us in ways we couldn’t understand get caught up in the horrors, too? What do we do when people who’ve hurt us come back to us and ask for our help?

I ended up donating some money to that guy’s congregant who needed to travel to her son’s immigration hearing. And a week or so later, I got a very nice thank you note, reporting that she had made it to Texas and her son’s hearing had gone well and that they are safe, for the moment. I’m glad I responded with some mercy instead of the self-righteous sourness that colored my initial response. It could have very, very easily gone another way. I could have very, very easily made a different choice – I have, certainly, made different choices innumerable times.

I’m not telling this story to make myself out as a hero; I’m telling it because I think we are going to be faced with these kinds of choices about how to respond – with sour vengeance or trusting in the mystery of mercy – more and more. The older brother in this parable stays with me, particularly the image of him, alone, outside, stewing in his anger while his entire community celebrates, inside, together.

If we want to be people who join the party, the we’ll need to be people who are learning how to practice mercy.

May it be so. Amen.